This is completely unexpected, but there's this graphics setting called "High Fidelity Objects Amount" that weirdly enough seems to impact quality of the sounds you're hearing. I changed it to Ultra and immediately noticed an improvement in the directionality of the sound and the loudness of the footsteps.
If any of you have similar issues could you try this and post it here if this works for you?
Edit: Still not sure if this was just a placebo.
I am using external SoundBlasterx G6 and turned on its Scout Mode which makes me hear everything clearly such as enemy foot steps, changing clips, vehicles coming etc. In game I use the War Tapes.
The problem is that it's not a hardware issue. There are other games, even previous Battlefield titles that have footsteps sound that I can easily and precisely track in terms of position, distance, directionality, verticality, etc.
I didn't mean to suggest that you should crank up the volume to ear damaging levels, but if you're going to listen to something that has a high dynamic range, then you do need to have enough volume to perceive the loud, but also the quiet sounds.
When it comes to IEMs I've noticed that they require you to be much more careful with the volume. Because the sound source is inside your ear channel, so there's no room for it to dissipate, before it reaches the ear drums. So the chances of you accidentally getting hearing damage is greater than if you were using headphones or speakers at comparable volume levels.
There are some people that do mention that they hear footsteps quite loudly. One thing they seem to have in common is that they often use third party applications to modify the sound output.
Scout mode is specifically designed to modify sound in a way that amplifies footsteps and other sounds that could give you a competitive advantage.
I've also heard some of these people mention that they use a Steelseries headset, so presumably they are also using its Sonar Virtual Surround.
That shouldn't be necessary though. If this game had proper sound design, even regular stereo sound would be more than plenty to accurately perceive sounds in a 3D space.
