Re: Directional audio

Sound has been FUBAR for a while now.

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@GRiPSViGiL wrote:

Sound has been FUBAR for a while now.

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I use €150,- headphones, and have experienced literally not a single issue in all these months.

I use £5 skull candys and i legit know I've got enemies near me but i can't work out where from for for the life of me, i can't properly pinpoint distant gunfire either lol. I have to just rely purely on instinct,experience and my reflexes. XD

Seem's we both need a better headset for this game lmao. ;p

Randomly missing sounds has been a problem in Apex from the start, but 1) it's not consistent and pretty rare, 2) it has nothing to do with this topic about positioning of sounds. If OP can't tell direction of sounds even remotely correctly then that's definitely a problem on his end, since I have no problem telling at least general direction of sounds, even if it's not as precise as in PubG (but that one has it's own set of different problems).

Using 7.1 simulation can completely mask sound directionality. Using sound compression significantly hinders ability to tell distance from loudness. Those 2 options should always be turned off for BR games. Just a couple of potential errors on user side (apart from the obvious already mentioned terrible headhpone problem).

P.S. I use HyperX Cloud II's, which are really pretty bad headphones in terms of sound quality and the sound stage is not great, but still work well enough for sound positioning. They also have "7.1" option - tried that once - that was a horrible experience I don't want to even think about XD.

P.P.S. As weird as it sounds, I know some headphones are not even Stereo, but mono. Obviously telling sound direction on such headphones would be physically impossible. I guess there are windows setting that could also turn the output to mono and maybe broken headphones may (I dunno) fail to produce stereo output. If turning around near a constant sound makes absolutely no difference at all - a mono output may be the most likely source of problem.

The team is aware of directional audio sound issues and it's being tracked on the Trello board.

Via Microsoft on Window update - KB4515384 (OS Build 18362.356)

"Microsoft has received reports that audio in certain games is quieter or different than expected after installing this update. At the request of some of our audio partners, we implemented a compatibility change that enabled certain games to query support and render multi-channel audio. Due to customer feedback, we are reverting this change as some games and some devices are not rendering multi-channel audio as expected. This may result in games sounding different than customers are used to and may have missing channels."

Workaround
To mitigate the issue, open settings in the impacted game and disable multi-channel audio, if this option is available. You can also search in the Windows Control Panel for third-party audio device control panels and disable Multi-channel audio or Virtual Surround Sound, if these options are available.

We are working on a resolution and estimate a solution will be available in late September.

Link
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4515384/windows-10-update-kb4515384

@GRiPSViGiL 

From Blueberry's reply here.

"Microsoft has received reports that audio in certain games is quieter or different than expected after installing this update. At the request of some of our audio partners, we implemented a compatibility change that enabled certain games to query support and render multi-channel audio. Due to customer feedback, we are reverting this change as some games and some devices are not rendering multi-channel audio as expected. This may result in games sounding different than customers are used to and may have missing channels."

Sounds like you got ripped off by whoever sold you those "studio monitor" headphones.

I'm a sound engineer by profession, and any headphones that don't offer multi-channel compatibility are de-facto not professional headphones. If you actually paid $400 to $500 for those, you got scammed.

@WingmannedbroI would never spend that much on headphones and I don't buy "gaming" headsets either. And yet again I suffer no sound issues playing BFV or need to use a "workaround. Imagine that

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@GRiPSViGiL wrote:

@WingmannedbroI would never spend that much on headphones and I don't buy "gaming" headsets either. And yet again I suffer no sound issues playing BFV or need to use a "workaround. Imagine that

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Then your headphones are not nearly as good as you thought they were. Studio headphones are not sold anywhere under $350,- 

@GRiPSViGiL 

Dude, Blueberry literally explained what the cause of this is in this post.

And sorry but no, you cannot expect to use any hardware, even very bad stuff, and expect that to work flawlessly with a game. That's just not reasonable.

You can't complain your screen resolution isn't HD when you're using a 1999 CRT monitor.

If your headphones are bad, your headphones are bad.

People complained their ears off about the sound before they introduced multichannel output, they add in more advanced audio to abate these problems, and more whining because not everybody's output hardware supports it.

Talk about OTHER games all you want, doesn't change a thing.

This is one of those damned if you do damned if you don't situations.

@Wingmannedbro  i hear you man, but you gotta admit that the  in game audio isn't as clear as other BR's. 

Yes better headsets will help if you're willing to spend the extra cash on them...but i could play PUBG on the same standard of headset i'm using now and still distinguish player locations by footstep with relative ease. Hell i've been playing the COD beta this weekend and even on that i was able to clearly pinpoint enemies by footstep.

On apex its just a blur of hundred different sounds. 

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@MandatoryIDtag wrote:

@Wingmannedbro  i hear you man, but you gotta admit that the  in game audio isn't as clear as other BR's. 

Yes better headsets will help if you're willing to spend the extra cash on them...but i could play PUBG on the same standard of headset i'm using now and still distinguish player locations by footstep with relative ease. Hell i've been playing the COD beta this weekend and even on that i was able to clearly pinpoint enemies by footstep.

On apex its just a blur of hundred different sounds. 

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I'm not having issue at all tbh.

It's not hard to tell where they are, if it's in your left ear, turn left untill you get stereo, jobs done.

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@Wingmannedbro wrote:

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@MandatoryIDtag wrote:

@Wingmannedbro  i hear you man, but you gotta admit that the  in game audio isn't as clear as other BR's. 

Yes better headsets will help if you're willing to spend the extra cash on them...but i could play PUBG on the same standard of headset i'm using now and still distinguish player locations by footstep with relative ease. Hell i've been playing the COD beta this weekend and even on that i was able to clearly pinpoint enemies by footstep.

On apex its just a blur of hundred different sounds. 

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I'm not having issue at all tbh.

It's not hard to tell where they are, if it's in your left ear, turn left untill you get stereo, jobs done.

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But you're playing on PS4, aren't you? It could be different there... I'm on PC and find it difficult to locate enemies too, mostly for above/below sounds.

@Fr3dY2  I'm on PS4 with Astro 40s using optical out and I've had these footstep audio issues in the past.

Not played for a while now but been hammering the MW beta and the directional sound in that game is great (although they do still have an audio issue with enemy footsteps volume, but they are aware and working on it). Direction is bang on.