You are in the final circle of a tight match. Your teammate calls out a warning, but you do not hear it. A split second later, you are out of the match. Does this sound familiar?
Audio problems with video games are frustrating, and solutions are sometimes quite easy and free. When you have trouble with the sound effects on a video game, it’s time to first check your equipment, not the software.
Step 1: Check Your Cables and Connections
Before you go down the rabbit hole of software options, let the physical aspects of your system go first. A loose wire is one of the easiest cures for an soundtrack abruptly cutting out or playing out of one speaker. A clean connect is essential to having a clean sound.
Quickly go through the following physical check:
- Disconnect and then reconnect the headset cable to the controller or computer.
- The volume wheel should then be located on the cord/ear cup and turned all the way up.
- Locate the physical mute button and flip it if it is indicating that it is muted by being red. This is a fairly common issue causing voice chat to not work in a game.
Still no sound? Finally, to check the hardware, connect your headset to another device such as your phone. If sound is coming through there, your headset is working properly, and the issue lies elsewhere.
Step 2: Align Your Software Settings
In this step
Once you’ve determined that you’ve got the right hardware, you’ve got to let your PC or console know where you’d like it to send that audio. Your PC might be presented with a few options, such as speakers connected to your monitor, a TV, and your headset, and it might pick the wrong one. This is what you’ve got to select as your Audio Output Device.
For a computer, you would select your headset via a speaker icon located at the bottom of your screen. For a PlayStation and Xbox, you would do this through your dashboard settings. This is important to make sure your audio is heard through your ears and not your empty room.
In-game, the sound menu allows you to control it better. If you have trouble distinguishing conversations amidst all the explosions, you can lower the Music and SFX sliders and increase the Dialogue slider instead. This little adjustment will help you understand very important moments in the story and communications between characters.
Finally, you should search for an “Audio Output” option in the game and set it to correspond with the device you chose in the system settings. Getting these two factors in sync is crucial in avoiding any conflicts with other applications such as Discord.
Step 3: Update Drivers to Fix Crackling Sounds, Stuttering, Lag,
Even if you have a simple environment and are still experiencing problems such as crackling sounds and cutting out audio, it’s possible that the problem exists with your audio drivers, especially if you are using a computer. An audio driver essentially serves as an interpreter between your computer and headset. This is also an easy solution to fix any stuttering or random pops in PC gameplay audio. PC gamers, to solve this problem, you must update your drivers. You are to search “Device Manager” in your windows search bar, then look for your audio device in “Sound, video and game controllers,” and right click it to choose “Update driver.” This is to make sure that your system to headset communication is clear.
Your Game Audio Trouleshooting Check List
You now have a repeatable plan for troubleshooting game sound: check your hardware, then your settings, then your drivers. This simple order empowers you to fix audio problems yourself and get back to an immersive and competitive experience.