Forum Discussion

ArtemisTynblade

5 years ago

ME1 audio issue - dialog & sfx in surrounds instead of center

Mass Effect 1 dialog and sfx audio is coming from the rear/surround speakers instead of the center channel,

meaning that conversations, weapons fire etc are all coming from behind the player instead of in front.

Happens regardless of LPCM, DTS or Dolby output settings or speaker config (5.1 or 7.1)

Mass Effect 2 & 3 are not affected by this problem.

** update v1.03 does not fix the problem **

**PSN store refunded my purchase on June 11th, 2021**

After lodging a refund request with the Sony PSN store 9 days ago, they now have refunded the full purchase price.

If anyone else wishes to do likewise, the process I used was requesting a refund under the store's "faulty item" policy.
PSN Support staff will ask you to follow a number of troubleshooting steps to confirm that the issue is with the game and not your console.

You may be asked to provide video of the problem.

Please note that the PS4/5's Share function *does not* capture the problem, as it internally downmixes from 5.1 surround to 2.0 channel stereo.

If you have an HDMI-based video capture that also captures 5.1 audio, then consider using this instead.

In my case , my only option was to video the problem using my phone's camera,

panning between the front and surround speakers to show where the sound was incorrectly coming from.

I also included video of a normally functioning game for comparison.

It's also worth advising them that this problem also occurrs on the PC version, due to an outdated OpenAL32.dll file.

While this file can be replaced manually by PC users, PlayStation users are dependent on EA/Bioware to fix the problem, which lies in the game's audio engine code.

The details for the PC fix are here :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2487160511

@EA_David , as your team have failed to address or even acknowledge this problem,

Sony Support have, in this case, seen fit to classify this game in it's current state, as a faulty product, and as such, have issued a full refund.

Perhaps you might now seriously consider fixing this issue, before other players have their purchases refunded as well.

me legendary edition

163 Replies

gilbertmonion
4 years ago
June 26 fu(klng 2022.
Just purchased the game and I have the issue
Voice from back speaker only and gun sounds way too loud.
So sad that basic 5.1 can't be implemented correct nor fixed more than a year after the release
MikeTulett47
4 years ago
Any plans to fix or acknowledge this issue? Playing on ps5 now it's come to ps plus and only a few minutes in all dialogue coming from rear speakers. Can't believe this is acceptable?
alejandrogp1991
2 years ago
I'm reviving this thread after years without a solution.
I don't know why this problem occurs and I can understand that it's not easy to fix (the first Mass Effect is very old, there's no surround sound by default on PC either, I don't know about Xbox...), but, if it's really that hard to fix, could you update to disable surround sound in the first Mass Effect?
Right now it's really annoying and the only solution is to manually enable 2.0 sound on the AVR or PlayStation, but then we have to re-enable surround sound for other games (including ME2 and ME3). It's not a very comfortable solution. However, if you enable 2.0 sound in the game itself, you save us from having to do this kind of "fixing" every time we want to play the first Mass Effect.
I know it doesn't happen to everyone, but in my case it's an accessibility issue. The problem of the volume difference in the SFX and the dialogues coming from the surround speakers gives me a slight headache after playing for a session. If the fault cannot be solved, I prefer to have a good Stereo than a defective 5.1 and disabling is the most comfortable option for everyone. As developers it only takes a few minutes and we, as users, do not have to change the configuration of our AVR/PS continuously.
Greetings.