Stereo audio ambience volume change too high/abrupt

maboleth · October 2022

When your character turns around the speaking NPC or in the room, you can hear it on the left or right speaker, depending on your position.
That's all neat and good.

But the amount of volume change depending on your position is too extreme. I can go from barely hearing a NPC to 100% volume with just a half a turn or less. This change shouldn't be so abrupt. I literally have to position myself nicely to hear them talking.

maboleth · October 2022

Forgot to add - sometimes when I'm doing quests and facing NPCs I can barely hear them or not at all, because I face them from behind.

maboleth · October 2022

There's definitely a problem to hear your companions when they are behind from you.

A gentle fade out is nowhere to be heard, the audio volume abruptly changes.

katanagirl1 · October 2022

I spent about 30 minutes at the Elden Root wayshrine listening to the tour guide talking over and over and making small volume adjustments to each speaker in my sound system to try to even out the sound from various directions. This was way before companions came out. I was marginally successful. I suppose if you are on PC and don’t run your sound through a stereo receiver you won’t have this option. Dolby DTS 5.1 surround FTW!

Iselin · October 2022

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I spent about 30 minutes at the Elden Root wayshrine listening to the tour guide talking over and over and making small volume adjustments to each speaker in my sound system to try to even out the sound from various directions. This was way before companions came out. I was marginally successful. I suppose if you are on PC and don’t run your sound through a stereo receiver you won’t have this option. Dolby DTS 5.1 surround FTW!

Dolby or DTS? They're two different things

Anyway... Dolby for headphones works just fine for me on PC with good positional audio and volume leveling if you turn that on too.

maboleth wrote: »

When your character turns around the speaking NPC or in the room, you can hear it on the left or right speaker, depending on your position.
That's all neat and good.

But the amount of volume change depending on your position is too extreme. I can go from barely hearing a NPC to 100% volume with just a half a turn or less. This change shouldn't be so abrupt. I literally have to position myself nicely to hear them talking.

If you're on Windows 11 try turning on "Audio Enhancements" under Sound > speaker properties. Among other things, it does a pretty good job of equalizing loudness, especially at low volumes.

maboleth · October 2022

Iselin wrote: »

I spent about 30 minutes at the Elden Root wayshrine listening to
If you're on Windows 11 try turning on "Audio Enhancements" under Sound > speaker properties. Among other things, it does a pretty good job of equalizing loudness, especially at low volumes.

It's already turned on on what it says "Device default effects".

The music in the game is fine. The sound is fine, effects, atmospherics, dialogue, everything - all good. Crisp and nice.

This affects only when your companions (or NPCs in the quest) talk to each other or to you, in the environment. You literally need to face them eye-to-eye to hear what they say. Otherwise their voicover will sound like they are far, faraway, if not entirely muted. Even though they stand just few meters away.

This also happens when you enter the house and NPCs interact on the other floor or in separate room - you see the dialogue text, but don't hear anything, even remotely. It's a complete silence.

As for hardware spec: PC EU, Windows 11, Realtek chip with latest drivers. Stereo speakers. Sound effects, equalizer, all off or None.

maboleth · October 2022

I did some more testing and apparently, turning off "Audio Enchantments" under Sound > speaker properties in W11 System helped.

Actually it made the volume throughout the game very low. Turning the volume up for the PC improved stereo dialogue of NPCs as now everything is sort of evened out. The change is no longer abrupt and they can be heard even from behind.

However, I'm still not sure if this isn't game-related. It's almost like NPC dialogue isn't affected when "Audio Enchantments" is turned on. Its stereo performance is very low and abrupt, even though all other audio sources are boosted by Audio Enchantments. Either that or Realtek default settings are no good and should be turned off.

maboleth · October 2022

Another update.

Apparently, this issue is caused by Main Volume in Realtek settings -> default 48000Hz 24Bits. This makes NPC voices in the environment strangely distant. Changing this setting to 44100Hz or 96000Hz both 24bits, fixes this.

katanagirl1 · October 2022

Well we don’t have options like you describe on console. I just noticed that the dialog volume for the tour lady at Elden Root wayshrine volume varies quite a lot depending on whether her voice comes out of the front center channel, front side speakers, or back speakers so I adjusted each one so that it was mostly comparable as I rotated the camera around as she was speaking.

maboleth · October 2022

^ That's why I think this problem is game related after all. There shouldn't be any difference between 44, 48 or 96k for this, nor should this matter.

Before I found this fix, wherever NPC started talking in the background I panicked, trying to locate the guy asap, so that I could hear him/her.

linuxhell · February 3

In Windows 11 the same thing happens here and I couldn't solve it
I had to go back to Windows 10 and everything goes back to normal, the funny thing is that no different settings are made regarding the sound on both systems
I don't know if it's a Windows 11 bug with Realtek in the game or if it's a bug in the game with Realtek on Windows 11, I just know that the solution is to stay on Windows 10

ZOS_Icy · February 3

Greetings,

We have gone ahead and closed this thread down since it is rather old. Please keep in mind that sometimes it is better to create a new topic, instead of replying in one that was posted a while ago.

Thanks for your understanding.