What have you done to the Audio Blizzard?

Technical Support
1

Whatever you’ve done to the audio recently it’s screwing up my perception of where enemies are, I can’t hear what’s behind me, and only if I’m facing in that general direction of where the sounds are coming from.

Whenever there are sounds behind me it sounds like it’s in the far off distance when they’re infact right next to me only a few feet away. Turning on or off the Dolby Atmos does nothing. It’s not a driver issue, so before you go “Have you tried this?”, it doesn’t do anything. Another issue relating to the Dolby Atmos surround sound setting is that it will cause the audio to crackle with headsets. The headset I have is Logitech G633 which supports Dolby DTS 7.1 audio, toggling this on or off doesn’t change how the audio sounds in-game.

Dolby DTS -> OFF -> Dolby Atmos -> ON = crackling audio
Dolby DTS + Dolby Atmos -> ON = crackling audio, fixes spacial audio a little
Dolby DTS -> ON -> Dolby Atmos -> OFF = spacial audio issues
Dolby DTS -> OFF -> Dolby Atmos -> OFF = spacial audio issues

Audio sample rate by headset supports 16-bit 44.1 Hz / 16-bit 48 Hz up to 16-bit 98 Hz. All audio special effects disabled.

1 Like
2

Have you swapped the headset yet? Even if you have to plug in a pair of earbuds, that may help isolate on whether this is happening specifically with that piece of hardware or its drivers. I know you listed out what is toggled on and off between the DTS and the Atmos, but I still think this might be involving specifically the headset.

3

I had some audio issues with Heroes of the Storm, kinda similar to what you’ve described, also tearings in the sound.
What helped me, is changing the Sound Settings ->Device Properties ->Special -> Default Format (in Windows) back to 24bit, 48000 Hz, and the issues were gone.
Might worth a try if you’ve modified that as well.

1 Like
4

My headset doesn’t support 24-bit samples, only 16-bit samples, and I don’t have any tabs on the sound settings for Special.

I have tried yes, but still same thing.

5

You can also try to play around with PreferXAudio2 = x in the settings text file located in your overwatch user’s folder.

  • PreferXAudio2 = 0 //WASAPI
  • PreferXAudio2 = 1 //Probably XAudio2. I’m not sure for this one
  • PreferXAudio2 = 2 //DirectSound
6

I have done all of the suggested. It really seems like Overwatch is outputting surround sound, but I only have 2.1 speakers. All of my sound settings are set to stereo in windows, and Overwatch is the only game this happens in. It started only recently.

Turning on Atmos in the settings makes it so that I can hear sounds behind me, so I’m pretty sure Overwatch is the issue. Unfortunately Atmos makes everything sound awful.