Note: I’m re-posting this because I tried to edit my previous copy and it got deleted for some reason. So if this appears twice, I apologize!!
Respectfully to the folks that say, “The footsteps are fine,” I say: I’m pretty sure you don’t realize that you’re missing what you’re missing. Simply because you’re not hearing it. Ultimately I do NOT believe the audio issue with Battlefield V is a “volume” thing. I think it’s a “priority” thing. I wish I could discuss this with the audio engineers at Dice, but I realize the chances of that are basically zilch. Either way, I don’t believe that having them adjust the footstep volume is the correct thing to do. Instead, I think they need to look at how sounds are prioritized before they’re sent to your DSP. Let me 'splain.
Ultimately, we can’t hear everything in the game. If we did, we’d have an audio mush coming through the drivers in our headphones pretty much from the word “Go” in the game. It would be deafeningly loud and completely incomprehensible to our brains. Therefore, devs need to prioritize what sounds get put on the wire and what sounds don’t. The sounds that don’t are “ducked”.
Imagine a DJ on your favorite radio station (you still listen to the RADIO? I don’t…) just as a song is ending. He decides to ruin the end of the song by talking over it, and to make sure you hear it, he “ducks” the song. In other words: he turns it down a little, or the station’s computer automatically does it for him. That’s audio ducking, in a very basic nutshell. One sound (his voice) is being prioritized over another sound (the end of the song).
What I feel is going on here is that the wrong sounds are being ducked in favor of other sounds that we might not need to hear as clearly at a given time. That screaming Stucka you hear overhead? Pretty cool, huh? Oh, wait a second: it’s not actually right overhead, it’s overhead on the other side of the map. Why are you hearing that? You’re hearing that because it’s cool. But it’s also causing the other sounds that are a lot closer to you to be ducked. Like, say: footsteps! Or tank engines.
What I think we need is for the Dice devs to go back and figure out what’s being prioritized within the “head” of each soldier as far as sounds he or she should hear, and what they shouldn’t hear. Or what they should hear loudly vs what they should probably hear with less intensity. Ultimately, I think that’s the fix. Not diddling with “footstep volume” across the board. To me, that adjustment is almost akin to the December, “Hey, we’re going to fix the TTD by putting a .85 damage multiplier on all the gunz, yo!” It’s too much of a wet-blanket approach, and I think some more careful work needs to be done there.
For the sake of any Dice dev that may be reading this (I know: fat chance!) - here’s what I’m using for audio equipment:
- My ears! For some reason, at the “ripe old” age of 45, I can still hear very high frequencies. Ones I shouldn’t be able to hear any longer. So if it can be heard, I can hear it. If I can’t be heard… I might be able to hear it.
- Sound Blaster ZxR discrete audio card. I’m connecting the RCA stereo line out to my:
- Mackie DL32R mixer … I also have the mixer connected directly to the PC via USB. Doing this provides my PC with 16 additional stereo sound cards. I’ll get to that in a moment.
- Sennheiser HDV820 headphone amp
- Sennheiser HD820 headphones
- PC is running Windows 10