Sound damaging hearing.

The sound in this game is amazing but if you want to be able to hear footsteps you have to turn it up to damaging levels. I tried setting volume to 50.0 and I really couldn't hear footsteps anymore. Looks like 70.0 is as low as I can go and still hear them a little bit.

Is there a way to balance this in a way that doesn't damage our hearing? Let us turn the volume down some but make the footsteps sounds scale to it. Like even though the sound is down the footsteps wouldn't become audible any sooner than they would if it was up.

I'm not saying let us turn it all the way down except for steps but there has to be a way to keep it fair without requiring everyone to damage their hearing.

Also, when I turn it down it seems to turn incoming voice down which is a problem also. Anyone have any suggestions for this?

last edited by MLB7

huh ? just how far you expect to hear them from ? I'm hearing close-by footsteps just fine (whenever someone hasn't just emptied a mg belt right next to me) and I don't think I've got to volume up to dangerously high levels.

And of course the game volume level alone tells very little when we don't know what the main volume level on your system is, what sound interface and possible separate amplifier you have and how sensitive your headphones are. The only real way to tell the actual volume is to measure the signal level and compare it with the headphone sensitivity (or put a db-meter between the headphones, but multimeters are more common and cheaper)

Go to Windows Speaker Setup and uncheck the "Full-range" setting of speakers.

Maybe you can ask the devs for a "night mode" setting. Be sure to enable loudness equalization to set quiet noises and loud noises to be within a certain range so they are both audible and don't damage your hearing.

Sometimes certain brands of headsets aren't good for playing these kinds of games on. I tried using Razor headphones on the first insurgency and even on the lowest volume setting it was too loud. The easiest solution would be to just use speakers and apply soundproof foam on your walls.

I wish you luck in finding a solution to your problem.

@mashiara I'm not wanting to hear footsteps super far away. I'm wanting to be able to turn the volume down and still be able to hear them like I could if it was up. We shouldn't have to have the sound up to dangerous levels to hear steps.

Now, this could totally be my set up. I'm not an expert by any means. I have corsair HS 70's and I have them set low and when i try to lower the game audio settings the footstep sounds disappear. I don't get why the footsteps wouldn't just scale down along with the explosions but still be heard. You can test this by walking through the grass since it sounds like someone is following you.

I appreciate the feedback and I will try the suggestions here. I just don't want to lose the directional. Thanks for the posts.

As @Action83 said, unchecking the full range might give you compression on the dynamic range that you are looking for. And to be fair explosions and machine guns on my audio settings are loud but I'm pretty sure nothing is loud enough to be actually dangerous. I've got windows main volume quite low and a bit of attenuation on the headset cable pot as well (I can't use too much of that or the control will become very on/off).

Beyer Dynamics headset, asus Xonar (the smaller one) for DAC.