The battle audio buff increased the range at which people can hear combat related audio by 25%. As a result it has made certain things easier to hear. Hanzo shots for one can be detected much easier. However, things that previusly easy to hear like Reaperâs footfalls become more difficult due to the increase overall noise.
The update was back in June.
I legit just posted a similar issue, except you at least got the notification in chat, for me it was a Genji who was very upset I didnât heal him. I got no audio cue and no notification in the chat box, and he was standing behind me while I was focusing my heals on the 5 others that were in front of me.
For months now I havenât been able to hear Reaper walking around. Also itâs hit or miss with Pharah as well Iâd say only like 40-50% of the time I can hear her jets when she is right next to me.
I reckon this is easily another one they will purposely refuse to acknowledge for months/ years to come.
I usually give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, but considering how theyâve ignored all the player complaints about this major issue over the past months, and how theyâve once again moved this thread back into the bug forums to die and locked my original post so I canât move it back to General Discussion to get more eyes on the problem, well at this point Iâm leaning towards this being a cover-up. It looks like they donât want people talking about this or spreading awareness of such a major issue affecting the playerbase.
I and many players have been talking about the âno footsteps audioâ issue, particularly with regards to Reaper. Iâve personally experienced it against McCree, Mei, Brigitte and other characters. Itâs insanely problematic to have an extremely dangerous CQC character get right next to you and not know it until itâs already too late, it doesnât give players a chance at counterplay.
Itâs just as bad with Pharah cause suddenly you get justice rained on you from behind by a flanking Pharah. Iâm coming from 1,500+ hours in Team Fortress 2 because of Spies Iâm always paranoid and listening/looking for flankers. But this audio bug is just letting enemies walk/fly behind me without a sound.
Flankers have a really easy time flanking when they have zero footstep sounds. =p
But Iâve also been flanked by reinhardts with no sound effects so eh.
Some voicelines in Lootbox donât work, reaper has 0 footsteps sound, healthpacks donât make the noise when you take them. Bumping this thread so we can get an answer
Thanks for sharing your experience! Hopefully we can keep up the momentum and get Blizzard to look into this soon.
Missing audio on ultimate voice lines is very prominent for me. Last time I played, my only indication that our hanzo cast a spawn dragon was when it passed right through me on my way back from spawn. LOL
I havenât heard Reaperâs footsteps at all in ages, and sometimes (but not all that often) ult voicelines seem to go missing. The missing footsteps are a huge and consistent problem because a Reaper can just run up behind me and shoot me in the head and I wonât hear a thingâŠ
Also a new sound bug has appeared quite recently where Iâll say a voice line in spawn and itâll sometimes sound like itâs someone else saying it a thousand miles away, itâs so muted and distant sounding.
Exactly, itâs like the enemies who are the most dangerous at close quarters are also the hardest to hear, which makes absolutely no sense. I find it strange that I can hear a Widowmaker walking down say a Petra corridor and not have any difficulty reacting at all, but if a McCree emerges from the same direction I have no idea until heâs already within flashbang killing range. Itâs a major issue thatâs happening way too often in the game nowadays.
That new sound bug sounds strange, I havenât encountered it myself but I have heard of people having issues where theyâll suddenly hear enemy commâs (e.g. theyâll hear a Hanzo request healing when there isnât a Hanzo on their team, but the enemy has one). Some people were also saying that some spawn voice interactions werenât playing properly, specifically between Pharah and Mercy, I wonder if it might be related? 
Thatâs been happening to me too, weird things with certain ult announcements whether itâs on your team or the enemyâs. The last few times it happened my capture storage was full and I couldnât clip it, but if it happens again anytime soon Iâll try to get it onto this thread.
This issue has had an official Blizzard response from Tom Powers, Community Manager, and is being worked on:
Itâs nice to know theyâre somewhat conscious of the issue, but they donât realize just how widespread and problematic the issue is. This isnât happening on just âsome machinesâ, this is happening to many players across platforms. If the PS4 (which Iâm playing on when experiencing these issues) is too underpowered to handle the âintensive fightsâ that cause the memory losses that result in these audio drops, then that holds true for every other PS4 player in the world. 
And this is known to be happening to players on laptops and on PCs as well, which also presents a huge segment of the playing population.
And he posted about this a month ago, as a random thread comment, itâs not currently listed as a known issue. Either they didnât list it because theyâre still looking at it on the side, or they erroneously believe theyâve already addressed/fixed the issue when the problem still persists. They also seem to be under the impression itâs related to a specific patch contemporaneous to that comments posting, when in reality people have been experiencing these bizarre sound issues for months. That much is evinced from the compiled list of threads raising this issue in my second comment in this thread, some stretch back as far as March (with some players commenting theyâve been experiencing this issue even earlier, as far back as Christmas).
This issue needs to be raised to a much higher priority, pronto, before it really gets out of hand. If theyâre under the mistaken impression that the issue is resolved, they need to know that itâs still there and causing major problems, as corroborated by the many players in this thread alone.
Games so buggy lately. With these audio bugs and getting thrown through the map geometry 10x a game itâs feeling REALLY stupid
As of yesterday I have no audio whatsoever on Overwatch PC. Itâs like its not detecting my usb razer headset anymore yet whenever i use the PTR i hear audio just fine. The game is truly unplayable because i have NO audio