Spatial Audio Still Partially Bugged

Bug Report
1

Update 1: Also apparently new to Season 12 or very recently, ally death sounds have become warped as well. I’m talking about the very distinctive and unique bleep alert notification that plays when an ally dies, not the dying character voices. It’s either now changing volume depending on spatial location, or simply not playing accurately with every death. Either way, I now lost another audio info provider and no longer know with reliable accuracy if most of my team is dead just from the sounds alone.

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I have laptop 2.5 speakers system (stereo speakers plus subwoofer). I have a software sound enhancer that comes with my laptop and is manufacturer locked to my laptop speakers (Sound Blaster Cinema 2). I’ve used in game Sound settings as “Television” which was called something slightly different before, but regardless haven’t changed my settings, hardware or software on anything for at least a year (except for Windows 10 system updates).

Spatial sounds like enemy footsteps, abilities and ultimate worked perfectly fine before the Juno trial weekend last season. I played her many times during the entire weekend, and noticed her voice lines were abnormally loud, much more than other heroes at the time. Then, shortly after the trial weekend ended, I noticed that game sounds in game started becoming bugged. Many sounds were very muted, it was impossible to tell whether an enemy was above or below and flanking, the positional audio would be either murky or indicate a very different location from where they were, especially when they were above and to the side the level of where I was. Worse yet, anything behind me was entirely silent, even Ultimate sounds (these were either silent or so quiet they were softer than a friendly ult sound in front of me). I consistently have issues where I can’t hear and don’t know someone is behind me until they start landing shots and I take damage. This has caused me quite a few deaths since the Juno weekend.

Since that weekend, I’ve noticed that the muted, murky general sounds (ie all sounds, everything) has gotten better after a few mini patches since then, but positional audio accuracy for enemy sounds that are on a different level from me is still problematic. The worst issue: no footsteps for any enemy behind me is also still present in the latest season, as of time of this post. I can hear gun sounds of enemies behind me if they’re really close and firing now, but footsteps are still silent. I’ve yet to verify ultimate sounds volume.

Also I’d like to point out that after just doing a quick search in the forum for posts with the word “audio” in title, I’ve already found these posts from other people who described the same issues that I’ve experienced, occurring within the last 2 months or less:
Here,

Here (note the number of likes from people who have the same issues)

And here (not sure if the Rein Shatter voice line issue still exists currently for me)

5 Likes
2

I use headphone, dolby atmos for headphones.
As OP pointed out it better, but Audio is still weird. I have a very similar experience.
In the current patch it’s hard to determine what is off, because Juno is loud and easily overwhelms other sounds.

One thing that I noticed: Low health sound starts far too late and needs to be updated to be at a higher health
Still the initial gasp is too quiet and the subsequent heavy breathing is not noticeable and gets easily drowned out

3

Same with ps5 version.

4

I’ve had the same problem since juno went live. It’s been driving me crazy, I even bought 2 new headphones to see if the problem was coming from me. Especially spacial sounds not working at all. It’s to the point that the game is practically unplayable.

One more thing is I feel like all the sounds are mashed together. As if I was in a concert live. I get tired quickly (after about 1 hour of playing) and need to stop for my ears to rest. And if I turn the volume down then I don"t hear anything.

I hope they will go back on whatever they changed with juno because I cannot see myself playing like that for too long.

5

Same audio problems since new season started, PS4 and headset. Made two posts about it (bug+tech support). Ticket to blizzard that got an auto response and closed immediately. Reset everything, double checked everything, nothing works, it’s definitely the update. Game is unplayable for me at this point

6

Another example of no footsteps behind:
Replay code: M8VA6N
From 11:11~11:17
An entire flank’s worth of complete silence from Reaper. Not a single footstep or sound of any kind, up until the first “Die”. Even if his wraith form is silent, which I recall is NOT, he should still have had footsteps before that as he walked all the way around. And yet, nothing. You can even hear the silence in the replay.

And he wasn’t even crouched. The only way for me to hear any footsteps from him was to go into his perspective and really listen hard.

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And just to reiterate, these issues are STILL present within the audio.

  1. No footstep sounds from behind. “Behind” seem to be defined by the game as any time the enemy character is more than 180 degrees angle to your character’s facing.
  2. Spatial location for all audio is ambiguous at best for enemies on different elevations from you. Particularly bad for people higher than you. Example: Had one game with McCree standing on a rooftop along the main road of Rio. He started a Deadeye, and was standing directly above and a little to my left (practically right on top of my head). All I could hear from the location was he was to my left, but it did not clearly indicate the height difference. I wasn’t the only one having issue as other teammates who also heard it and was communicating on team voice also couldn’t tell he was above until he fired and we saw it on kill cam.
  3. The distinctive ally death sound alert (not death voice, but the sound effect notification) now appears to be affected by the same spatial audio issues, and won’t always play reliably. Or it plays but is so quiet it’s easily missed in the chaos of other fight sounds.