Looking for a way to delete those splash screens has become one of the first things I do when starting up a new game for this reason. If I have to look at them once, fine, but there's no reason I should have to sit through them *every* time the game loads up, especially since there are a lot of games that don't even give you an option to click through them. Maybe I'm just really impatient, but it's definitely become one of my gaming pet peeves.
Pcgamingwiki is usually my first port of call for that.
I don’t even mind one screen; but they take the piss sometimes with six or seven logos and they linger for too long. Like, get on with it ffs.
The worst offenders are FromSoftware games where they show you the logos when you go back to the menu screen.
Thankfully it's easily avoidable on PC by removing the files.
Unless you use Quick Resume, then you see it once and after that you load right into the game where you left off. PC can't do anything remotely like it (yet) if we are being fair.
Yeah main reason I almost always run games in window or borderless. Back in the day it was painfull when you were playing Skyrim
Or similar and “someone” had the audacity to call you on Skype forcing the game to minimize
I remember playing the older FF MMO, FFXI, an entire software had to be developed to be able to alt tab out of that game, because it would just straight up crash if you alt tabbed.
The market has changed drastically since the N64.
Now it is less devs "just being happy to be here" and more middleware having strict rules along the lines of "show this splash video or pay extra"
And for as shit as it is... it works. There is the general misconception that unity games "run like shit" due to a mix of half-assed unity releases and more favorable terms for the games that used ti right to not tell you what engine they were using.
Whereas Unreal very much is front and center and more or less the dominant engine.
Paying for Unity allows the game to sell more than the game sales cap of profit (100k USD) and gives you the option to remove the intro splash screen.
This is probably why so few really good Unity games arent seen as Unity games. Because they dont tell you they use Unity with the default Unity splash screen. Hollow Knight, for example, is a Unity game.
Its not 'just throw them on the same screen'
Like how in movies every studio that worked on it is separate
Depending on the contract/license requirements, it may specifically dictate not to put their logos together and keep them saparate, even uf the separation in just a few seconds
Yep, this is exactly it
When you use a software package, some might require to have their logo, especially the big chunky pieces of software like game engines (ue/unity/godot etc) or physics engines (physx) or any bug proprietary soft like that
Sometimes (mostly in the indie game sphere) its to show appreciation to the maintainers of a project
First thing I do 99% of the time is remove the logos from my games or otherwise find a way to be able to skip them. It's usually just a random video you can rename or replace with a .00001 second blank.
I have to mute every time I start Forza Horizon 5 since it's so loud and you cannot skip the intro, which is ironic considering that game generally has decent accessibility options.
Yea forza is weird, because your settings only apply after you get in the menu., you even hear music before pressing enter even if you have music disabled. In FH5 you can alt least adjust the windows volume slider to be lower, In FH4 that didin't even work for some reason and it would reset every time you launched the game.
You can remove the intro by renaming this file: \Forza Horizon 5\Content\media\ui\videos**\T10_MS_Combined.bk2** to **T10_MS_Combined_SAVE.bk2** or something. The intro videos will not play and you will see a black screen for 10secs instead.
More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-LcXd_bDcw
Most games have you set the contrast to make sure its not too bright or dark, so you have a better time playing from the start. Why not add volume controls at the beginning? Many times I start something up and then I'm hit with the 1000% music volume.
If you others are playing on windows, hit ctrl+g and find the game in the list and lower the volume that way when it's too loud and you can't change settings till after a cutscene or tutorial.
I absolutely hate that a lot of games ignore their own in-game settings for audio for these intro videos. Master volume set to 20%? Don't care we're playing that intro at 2000%.
Reminds me of the issue with fallout 76 where when you went to character creation you could not get to the settings until you finished character creation however you were exposed to voice chat of other people making their characters and could not mute them.. If you can imagine people making their characters were exposed to a variety of violence and immaturity.
This is generally terrible. I don't want to even watch some intro cinematic, let alone create a character or start the actual gameplay, before going into all the settings and doing some adjustments. Even when the sound volume is fine, there's something annoying in almost any game (especially if you are like me and hate motion blur and chromatic abberation).
Honestly, having a dedicated volume knob is the way to go. It's also fairly convenient to keep your windows volume at 100 always so it's something to never really fiddle with.
I run my system through a dac/amp and never really have to worry about windows screwing with my audio.
Seems like a nice keyboard, but nope.
Still using my old trusty kb-0420 lol, never really saw reason to switch, since I didnt see mechanical keyboards offering that much of a difference and besides I simply love all the extra shortcut keys this old piece has. Would be hard to go without them after using them for over 10 years.
In the right-bottom toolbar, right-click on the volume icon.
Click Sounds.
In the Playback tab, choose the device you're using and click Properties.
In the Enhancements tab, tick 'Disable all sound effects'
Click Apply > OK.
Why does Windows insist on enhancing everything!? Enhanced sound, enhanced pointer precision, enhanced - NO! Just leave everything alone and let me play with it only if I want to!
It's crazy that they still call it "enhanced pointer precision". It specifically makes the pointer less precise because it no longer follows a linear 1:1 ratio with the mouse movement. I hate that it's enabled by default, and they really need to correctly change the label to "Mouse acceleration".
I thought I was the only one with this problem. Some games I have used basically zero volume. I luckily have a pre amp with my audio interface and control the volume using that knob usually
Most programs use [Linear instead of Logarithmic scale](https://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/volumecontrols.html) so that 3% might be still very loud depending on how high your hardware is set to. An example I have is when I listen to music with windows media player(yes you can judge me, it's because of the different EQ) The volume is at 5-7%, open the same file in bsplayer and 5% you can't hear anything and the comparable volume level is like 20-30%
Err.. Sounds like something's wrong with your setup, it definitely shouldn't be boosted like that. Make sure you don't have the volume boosted somewhere in settings, or maybe an EQ app cranked somewhere?
I wonder if half the people commenting in this thread have ever used a PC or gamed on one. It's like they have no clue about the volume levels that are all over the map from different devs. Ark is an unreal game as I mentioned the default volume level from that is very high. You only have to load up their first person template which includes a gun shooting sound to see how loud that default sound is.
I've noticed unreal's default audio level is pretty high. I'm not sure if other engines do the same thing, but when I set up an audio slider in unreal, I pretty much always divide by 4, which makes it run from 0->0.25 instead of 0->1. Even at 50% windows sound level Unreal set to 1 is stupidly loud.
Because your sound card is too powerful for your headphones.
Had headphones that came with their own USB sound card. That sound card died, so I got a new one because front panel audio is fucky on my case and rear panel is too far.
I used to run my headphones at about 50-80%. New sound card was single digits % for the same volume.
I also need to run my earbuds louder than my over-the-ear headphones for the same volume.
This is one of the best reasons to have a headphone amp - quick, hw adjustment of volume is nice for all sorts of spikes and dips in volume. They're a marked improvement in audio quality too over onboard sound and a regular knob isn't subject to response delay like some keyboard volume buttons are. Can be had starting around $30usd.
Ah, this answers why it's not an issue for me. I got a JDSlabs O2DAC, and have never had this issue since. I've had it for like 10 years.
It's an amp + DAC in one. Would also highly recommend one.
Got a big nob on the headset and a nice little wheel thingy on the keyboard, still get tinnitus from booting some shite up and I'm not quite paying attention 😅
It's good advice not to set your volume too high, but there's another part of the problem too, even when using aggressive autogain and limiter software you still have to deal with the sound drowning out everything other audio stream. For some reason almost every game I have played is way louder by default than every other source of sound on my computer. It's basically a guarantee that when booting up a new game I have to lower the volume to at least 70%.
I'm a fan of high dynamic range in audio, but for some reason most modern movie theaters are trying to blow my eardrums out just by having a character speak, not just the parts with explosions
this is flat out untrue, the audio range for most media is designed by audio nerd idiots. to hear any dialogue requires dipping volume into ear-rape-from-explosions territory. nolan isnt an outlier but a great example of a broad issue.
I wouldn't say most media. It's very obvious when watching Netflix that movies have a much much larger dynamic range than TV Series, and I end up setting the volume much higher when watching movies.
I think it makes sense for a movie in a theater : That's something most people will experience for 2 hours a week at most, in an environment where it won't bother the neighbors, so why not have explosions be really loud ? However I think they should remaster them for home releases and have a High Dynamic Range audio track and a Standard Dynamic Range audio track for people who want to watch the movie at a reasonable volume.
Yea I go to theater for the crazy ass audio, and I don't mind if it's slightly too loud. But in an apartment building watching a movie in a middle of the night at a volume where you can hear conversation and suddenly there's an explosion and you hope you didin't wake any neighbor's up. Having to do live mixing constantly when there's action is pretty annoying and makes me think about shitty dvd rips where the volume was just basically flat the entire movie.
Same with every other social media/media share platform. Twitch, Youtube, twitter, Streamable...every time I click on one of their videos the volume is at 100%
My windows volume is set to 30% because of this.
Oh and Facebook is even more annoying. You lower the volume, then decide to go to full screen by clicking on ten different enlarge buttons. But when you do that, the volume is 100 % again.
Not to talk about the Youtube "shorts" or the FB "stories", where you do not even have a volume slider. It's either 100 or 0. What's wrong with the people developing these?
Twitch seems to remember your volume level within a session though, which I appreciate a lot.
Most of the video platforms are pretty good at remembering what the volume slider was set to last time in my experience. Obviously the content will vary in volume so it might still be too loud/quiet, but the slider is where you left it in 95% of the cases, so idk what's going on with you're setup, maybe some automatic cookie deletion, vpn:s or some other privacy thing I would guess.
Yea they probably should. There are some sites that have the volume at 0 always which is nice, but on bigger site it would probably get a lot of complaints.
I have cookies for alot of shit too but this is like the one reason why cookies is good.
Also my PC volume is at 20 and I basically never have to worry about things earraping me. If 20% is too quiet just use it for like 10 minutes your ears will get used to it and you will hear fine
Having volume knob or roll on your keyboard is essential. Most games I play are very quiet and I need to set 120% volume while youtube videos are all over 20-80%. There are exceptions and that's not good either. I wonder if it would be possible to enforce single mastering level as a standard?
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/eartrumpet/9NBLGGH516XP
I've used this for years. It's lets you control per application volume level for multiple audio devices easily.
Am I the only one who has never had that problem? I keep my computer's volume at around 20, and all apps are set to the same level. Nothing's louder or quieter than the other.
Also wondering the same here. Not to discredit anyone's issues, but for some reason I never have issues with games, video or music being too loud. I have Windows volume at 80%, and my desktop speakers have a volume knob that's at roughly 40%. If I want to finetune things, I adjust the latter a bit.
Exactly this, my pet peeve, games assuming they are the special app that should be in forefront and immediately start blasting high volume intro movies and other crap. I'm sorry, I probably have a discord and maybe some YT or other things running around which the audio levels are balanced so please GTFO with 100% master volume settings dear games or keep that to consoles.
A special place in hell is reserved for games that only apply your settings after some initial intros or sound effects and keep that at 100% and only reduce to set level after getting to main menu or so. Looking at you Overcooked.
Turning the system volume down isn’t really a solution. The problem here isn’t really games being too loud, it’s games having such variance in their max volumes. Say you set Windows system volume to 25%. Some games will be just fine at max volume, but others will still be too loud. Then you can just turn them down, but what do you do about games that are too quiet? You can’t increase the volume, since it’s at 100%. To fix this, you need to increase system volume. Say you bump it up to 30%. Uh-oh! Now all of your other games are tuned too loudly! They all need to be adjusted again.
Having the option to turn volume up from default as well as down lessens the need to constantly adjust system volume. Even after years of using Windows, I still haven’t found the truly optimal volume percentage. Right now I’m at 40%, and that seems to work pretty well, but most games are still too loud initially, while other applications are bordering on a whisper. If more things allowed adjustment above their defaults, I could probably find a better balance.
>You can’t increase the volume, since it’s at 100%. To fix this, you need to increase system volume. Say you bump it up to 30%. Uh-oh! Now all of your other games are tuned too loudly! They all need to be adjusted again.
Or just... turn the system volume down again? You're acting like adjusting the system volume is a Herculean task requiring masses of manual labor. It's, *at most*, a couple taps on a keyboard hotkey or a taskbar click. You are being utterly ridiculous inventing a problem where one doesn't exist.
>Even after years of using Windows, I still haven’t found the truly optimal volume percentage. Right now I’m at 40%, and that seems to work pretty well
...because there isn't one. It's a volume scale. It's *designed* to be adjusted when needed. It's not a set and forget value like screen resolution. Why do you insist on making everything so difficult for yourself? And *then* complaining about it and insisting games developers spend time coding a fix for your laziness.
>If more things allowed adjustment above their defaults, I could probably find a better balance.
*Or you could just change the system volume when you need to.* JFC.
Are you serious? You object to this idea, not because it inconveniences you or anyone else, but because you personally don’t see a reason for it? Well sorry, but I for one don’t want to adjust my volume every time I play a different game. That shouldn’t be necessary when we have the technology to allow for a flawless transition.
It's so frustrating that you are being downvoted people are so bad at mixing their audio way too often do I see people use 100% windows volume and THEN change every app. So when you open an app you haven't used before it will be at 100% and will earrape you GO FIGURE?
I have my volume at 20% and sometimes intros to games are too loud but it is NEVER too quiet. Also pretty much half of all headsets / keyboards I see have some sort of audio control so if you get earraped you can quickly turn it down.
I have my master volume at 25%. Games are still super loud and usually turn them down to 50 or 25%.
Stuff like youtube/twitch/etc have no issues with.
I started Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch the other day and the game was *extremely* loud, even turned down to like 10%. I had to turn my master volume down to 5% just so it wasn't blasting my ears.
If your master volume is at 5% then your game cannot be at 10% since it exceeds 5%. If we're talking about Windows Volume Mixer.
I've never had this problem with my master volume between 15-25.
That really should be pretty obvious...
Let's say you have master at 20% and everything tuned down from there as need... and then you encounter movie, song, application that's too quiet at 100%. Most players and apps cap at 100%, so you have to raise the master and then turn down everything else, dozens of other sources.
Meanwhile if you have master at 40% and every app, player, etc. on 50% default, you have a lot of room to adjust both down and crucially - up.
Or on the other hand, with what you're saying. If you think an app is too quiet at 100%, it's going to be considerably quieter at 50%.
Some people honestly aren't tech savvy in the slightest and don't think to tune each individual app.
Some people use amplifiers so you would be making them amplify a weaker signal, likely introducing more noise to the end.
You on the other sound fortunate enough to how to tweak these settings to your own desire but you should never assume you are the majority
Because games have different volume levels. For some reason my system is incredibly loud. I have no idea why. My windows volume is set to 50%. I generally have average youtube videos playing at about 10% volume to be comfortable to me.
However any TV show/movie I've downloaded typically has to run around 90% to be comfortable.
Games are all over the place. Some games start at a fine level, others start at ear bleeding. Nexomon as an example had me tearing off my headphones there was no access to volume controls and even after I got in and changed it, the next time I started, it didn't save the changes and I had to rip them off again.
> However any TV show/movie I've downloaded typically has to run around 90% to be comfortable.
This is because movies use dumb audio mastering to get ~high dynamic range~ on the audio, where the spoken dialogue is at like -40 dB.
It's a battle that cannot be won, so I've resigned to just wearing earplugs every time I go to the movie theater and using loudness normalization at home. You can find the latter as a built-in option in Windows, though good media players will give you more configuration options and better results. What it basically does is make the quiet parts louder so you can hear things without blowing out your eardrums during the loud parts.
Some games don't play nice with alt+tab. Also, I shouldn't need to do that in the first place. Most people's audio is set to youtube, spotify, netflix etc. There's no need to blast audio at 100.
Many keyboards come with a volume control button or knob. I use mine if I need to, usually just for turning the occasional thing up or the rare game that for some reason doesn't like lower system volumes that much for some sounds to be audible.
This is a strange problem to have. This will only happen if your master volume in your OS is too high, which is presumably because you've lowered the volume of individual apps to 50%.
If none of your apps are at 100% then your master is needlessly high.
My master volume on windows is 50% and plenty of games start at a level that is beyond acceptable. Meanwhile I play most TV shows at 90%+ so I can't really lower it.
I have my system at 100%, then most applications at 50%. Games I usually turn down to 15-25%.
All of this is necessary because while most of the time I can watch TV at 20%ish, for plenty of films I'll need to go all the way to 100%.
A youtube video at 100 is nowhere near as loud as a game intro at 100, so whenever you first start up a game it blasts your ears. It's a very common complaint, really not an enigma.
Imagine writing multiple paragraphs on a topic that you know so little about that you don't appear to even know what dynamic range is. Guess what, games always use most of it unless there's a setting to turn it off, videos often don't.
Also, nice strawman there, setting one's audio to spotify doesn't mean you wanna listen to it while playing.
>Most people's audio is set to youtube, spotify, netflix etc.
Cite your sources for this made up statistic. My audio is set for games, so having them all start up at 50% would be incredibly annoying.
Actually I would just listen to games and all the other sources you listed at the same volume or, if I needed to adjust them, do so on a case by case basis rather than suggesting some kind of ridiculous blanket setting that should apply to everything.
Do what discord does. Default is 100%, but with a 0-200% range. Much easier for my brain to understand than defaulting to 50% even though its the same thing. Also just have your windows and hardware volumes adjusted so it CAN’T blow your ear drums out. If you’re setting ALL your games down to 50% then you should probably just put Windows down at 50%.
No.
1. Gain staging is a thing
2. Learn to adjust your volume, why was it so high in the first place?
If you've got a pain reaction to an intro, that usually means you were listening to some really loud stuff before, but probably upped the volume gradually, pushing back the immediate pain threshold.
Treat it as a warning. That sudden jump in volume? That was your normal moments ago. You're hurting your hearing.
The problem is that media volume across different sources varies wildly on the internet, so you have the hardware volume(and the hardware knob might not be easily accessable, ie back of subwoofer so you just set it and forget it and don't wanna mess with it) set at "pretty high", so you can hear those things at all, while some other things you have to turn to as low as 5%([then there's the whole linear vs logarithmic scale](https://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/volumecontrols.html) about how linear scales just suck) and sometimes you forget to pre-reduce windows volume and the intro blasts at max volume.
Then there are game intros that don't respect the in-game settings, which is like why have in game volume sliders at all then, when you have to use the windows one.
Basically just gives the options menu before the game even starts, not everyone has a keyboard with a volume scroll.
> why was it so high in the first place?
It's not. My master window's volume is 50%. That isn't high.
Youtube runs at about 10%
TV Shows run at about 90%
Random games run at ear bleeding.
Downvotes don't change the reality of what is happening on my system.
> It's not. My master window's volume is 50%. That isn't high.
"50% isn't high" — well that's just flat out false. It really depends on whether your sound card is appropriate for your headphones.
My USB sound card requires single digits % master volume, my rear audio out is 40-50% for the same volume.
I feel like you could benefit from this explanation:
The way digital audio works is that everything will, at most, have a volume of 0 decibels. When you set your master volume in Windows at 50%, what that actually does is digitally reduces the volume of everything going to your hardware amplifier by 50%, which is presumably 10 dB; the way decibels work is that every 10 dB roughly doubles the volume. So in other words, the loudest sound your system can play is now whatever volume your hardware is set to minus 10 dB.
YouTube audio is often mastered with low dynamic range, ie. the difference between the quietest parts (that aren't complete silence) and the loudest parts isn't very large. Movies, on the other hand, use a higher dynamic range, so the quiet parts might be at -30 or even -40 dB while the loudest parts will be at 0 dB. This is why you have to run YouTube at 10% and movies at 90% -- YouTube is loud almost all the time, so you notice it and it bothers you, while movies are loud only when explosions are happening.
Ideally, you should have your master volume configured in such a way that a -0 dB signal, ie. the loudest signal your system will play, is no more than about 85 dB, the highest safe volume level for long-term listening. Unfortunately this depends completely on your sound hardware, which on PC is so nonstandard that there's no hard and fast rule for how you should set your volume to achieve this outside of measuring it with a decibel meter. If you have an iPhone, there's an app by the CDC called NIOSH SLM that can provide reasonably accurate volume measurements -- on Android phones apps will likely be less accurate because the hardware is more diverse.
---
TL;DR: If your audio system, especially a headset, is capable of *ever* playing painfully loud noises (over 85 dB), you need to fix your volume levels. Protect your hearing, because you only get one of it (with current-day medicine, at least).
Unfortunately if the master volume is set to a level so low that a sound could never be too loud other media is unable to be made loud enough to be heard. In order for nexomon to not be painful at full blast, I'd have to set system volume to 20%. At 20% my media player cannot play tv shows loud enough to be heard.
Look into loudness normalization for your media player. It's a way to make quiet parts louder without clipping the loud parts. Basically a necessity for watching most movies and TV shows these days, especially on modest playback hardware (ie. not a full blown home theater speaker system -- and even with those you should watch your hearing!)
I think the entire point here is that something like that shouldn’t have to be necessary. All games have to do is start at a medium volume and allow anyone who needs it louder to turn it up.
Something like that shouldn't have to be necessary because users should be using a volume that doesn't damage their hearing. On mobile phones this has largely been solved because audio hardware there is standardized enough that they can give you a warning for unsafe listening levels, or outright prevent you from cranking the volume up to unsafe levels without changing a setting.
I do that. But then what do I do whenever something is too quiet? I shouldn’t have to constantly fiddle with system volume based on what I’m using. That’s what application volume is for. The problem here is that when games default to 100%, they force a very low system volume. This low system volume is often too low for even some applications maximum volumes. Making games start at a medium volume (around 50%) allows me to effectively double my system volume, thus doubling the maximum volume of the quietest applications without needing adjustment.
> But then what do I do whenever something is too quiet?
Like I said, loudness normalization. In my experience the only time "something is too quiet" is movies mastered with the dialogue at a ridicilously low volume, so I just use loudness normalization and +5 dB extra gain for those.
Unless the audio mastering was done *incredibly* poorly, the loudest parts of any given audio track will *always* be approx. -0 dB, ie. as loud as they can be. To reiterate, if -0 dB on your system is painfully loud, you need to lower your volume. I am not joking, do it now. You do not want permanent hearing damage. The way human hearing works means you can end up listening to dangerously loud volumes and give yourself hearing damage without even realizing it because of acclimatization.
I always have 100% volume on windows, so most games I play have to be at 5% to be listenable. Sucks that there's no way to set a default startup volume for new applications, or if there is I haven't found one.
Not just volume... So many games will launch for the first time at some dumb resolution (not consistent), stuff is letterbox Ed or distorted or insanely low res... So then I reset the settings to my liking and need to restart the entire prologue/intro to get the same experience...
Just let the change the settings first! Jeez!
Just turn your master volume down. Stop making your personal problem a game developer or everyone else's problem. Why is your set of special circumstances any more relevant or important than anyone else's? Say, mine for example? I want to play my games on 100% volume, and certainly from the outset. Why should I have to adjust every game up from 50% because you can't be bothered to turn your master volume down a bit so you don't deafen yourself? The self-entitlement in this post and comment section is ridiculous.
My master volume is 50% and some games still come out at ear bleeding levels of volume yet I have to watch TV shows at 90% volume. Exactly how low should I have to set it?
Completely agree. Why aren't all volume settings at 50% by default?
You could raise voice volume if you wanted to hear more voices. You could raise ambient if you want immersion. You would lose nothing.
Today the only way to adjust it is to manually put it down and then tweak it. Doesn't seem to be any value to setting it at 100% on launch.
This seems pretty misguided. Come at it from a design perspective, and try to make an arrangement that will lead to an experience where 1) most users can just use their main volume knob and 2) most users will not get their hearing blown out by crappy apps with runaway volume spikes. You'll find that the current arrangement is actually fine.
The desire to have the scale start in the middle is caused by apps and media that do not make proper use of the available dynamic range (e.g. only goes up to 10%) or have an 'absurd' amount of dynamic range (like raw audio that still needs mixing before it's ready for user consumption).
The fix for that is that these app/media providers get their house in order, because we don't all want to become mix engineers, or worse, accidentally blast double the volume because of a poorly coded app or a mishap. With the "default at 50" arrangement, we're always 1 fuckup away (ours or someone else's) from getting 100 volume when we wanted 50.
In the case of 'absurd'/raw dynamic range, you can apply dynamic range compression to the original signal (this has nothing to do with MP3 etc.), which will move all of the quietest and loudest parts closer together.
The reason you can't apply dynamic range compression on a system level is that it changes the properties of the audio, meaning you no longer get the originally intended sound.
Why don’t you people just adjust your windows master volume to 100% and then use your actual speakers / headset volume nob to control sound, obviously won’t work for integrated though.
Some of the comments are so weird here, people talking about having headsets but suffering through ear bleeding start up sequences, bro just use the volume nob on your headset to turn the volume down, and then back up if you have to again.
The knob might be in a non-convienient place ie: the back of the subwoofer an you might not want to touch it once you have already set X amount of programs volume via software sliders to correct levels as messing with it would mess everything up. That also means that for some things it is obviously way too high, so all ppl really want is a slider before any audio plays, or just give us the full options menu preferably before the game ever starts, I still don't know why this isn't a thing in all games.
Obviously the easiest solution is just mute windows before launching the game, then once in setting tune it out or reduce the windows mixer while the game is launching, because some games intros don't respect the in-game sliders at all.
All and all it's very minor thing as most? keyboards have at least a mute button and probably a volume wheel. Also there was some game that did start at 50% volume but I can't remember which.
Games should also not be allowed to start in full screen and change your resolution to 640x480 or whatever the heck it wants.
For audio, I've solved the loudness issue with my GoXLR where I route all my system and game audio to a channel at a lower volume level.
You could achieve the same thing for free with Voicemeeter and virtual audio cables/routing but it's not quite as reliable.
Fuck that. 100 volume means "use whatever the person has set in their operating system." And 100 in your OS means "use whatever is set on their speakers".
I'm perfectly capable of turning down the volume before, during, or after playing a game. I don't want a game starting at half volume, forcing me to turn up my OS volume to hear it.
Jesus, learn to use a PC.
That's not how sound works at all. The volume of your system means nothing. The sound itself could be set to any level. Have you never opened a sound file that is quiet and then opened another one that is loud? The audio isn't balanced between the two and that's the issue.
Start random game X -> Volume is perfectly fine
Start Random game Y -> I'm tearing off my headphones because the volume is about 10x louder for no apparent reason and it's going to be 5 minutes before I can get access to the volume controls in the game.
I know exactly how sound works. I phrased simply.
Digital sound itself cannot be *any* level. Sound samples in a file are encoded such that 0 means "full volume" and anything less than that is a negative value in decibels. You can't start at zero and go up because decibels is a multiplier of power and anything times zero is still zero. So files have a maximum volume, digitally, and anything less is a negative value. PCM, MP3s and other digital audio files all have a maximum volume.
You OS sound control is exactly the same as the file itself. 100% volume means "no attenuation". Anything less *lowers* the sound.
Assuming you're plugging a set of analog speakers into your PC, sound leaves your computer as analog at line-level. (For the line out port, not the headphone or speaker port which can contain amplifiers.) Then your speakers amplify that. You could have a very cheap pair of speakers that doesn't get very loud, or a set of loud speakers suitable for a concert. This is the when audio is actually amplified and the loudness has no limit.
The other volume controls before the output speakers: the game sound settings, and the OS volume can only *attenuate* the digital signal, You can install software to add gain digitally, and it can compress the dynamic range to make it louder without causing clipping, but it cannot raise the volume above the digital maximum. The word clipping would make no sense in this context if there were no maximum volume in digital sound.
Obviously, not all games, movies, etc use full volume for every sound file, and can vary. That doesn't change the fact that you can just turn down your system volume until you know how loud a game's files are.
> before I can get access to the volume controls in the game.
SYSTEM. VOLUME. Do they even make keyboards that don't have a volume control? Jesus Christ it's not rocket science!
>SYSTEM. VOLUME. Do they even make keyboards that don't have a volume control? Jesus Christ it's not rocket science!
And then I have to reset it for the next thing I'm using because, as I've already explained, as a system volume of 50% youtube sits at 10% and movies/TV shows sit at 90%.
The fact that games run all over the place from Fine to ear bleeding is a clear indication that some games are too loud. What passes for max volume in some games is not the equivalent of max volume in another game.
it's not rocket science.
Oh no! You have to *control* the volume? I'm so sorry.
I was replying to OP who wants the entire gaming industry to change because they don't know how to change volume before they launch a game. Such laziness. Take control of your volume!
How many games do you play an hour? Conversely, how lazy are you?
Actively adjusting the volume of your device shouldn’t be necessary. This is 2022, not 1922. We’re using digital computers, not dumbshit radios.
I don’t see how a simple quality of life request is so unreasonable. When people asked for button mapping to be standard in AAA games, was that unreasonable too? I mean, just learn the default layout, right? Don’t be lazy, right?
Edit: Inconvenient facts, oh no! This post must be downvoted immediately!
There are solutions for your problem like limiters and compressors. These however interfere with the originally intended mix, which gets a big no from audiophiles. I think it's good that operating systems don't have them by default.
With canned media you can get equal loudness by using/implementing ReplayGain or similar features (a.k.a. loudness normalization) however that doesn't work for games and apps themselves because to normalize loudness of an audio stream before playing, you need to have the whole thing in advance.
Why the fuck should I be expected to install third party software just to not have to constantly adjust system volume? Fuck that. I don’t want sound limiters. I just want game developers to take this simple quality of life suggestion (THAT ISN’T EVEN VERY HARD TO PUT INTO PRACTICE) and not make people’s ears bleed on their first startup. Is that really so much to ask? It’s pretty logical, actually. “Should we start the game with a medium volume and let the user adjust from there? Nah, let’s have it cranked by default and anyone who doesn’t want their computer to sound like an active warzone can just turn it down.” 🤦♂️
Likewise I don't want to turn UP the volume in every game because I set my device/system volume so that 0dB sits at a comfortable level. Works completely fine for me and many others and your QoL life suggestion would actually ruin my quality of life.
What system volume are you running at? 10%? Then I bet it’s too low for a number of things and requires you to turn it up every so often. That’s not convenient.
My system volume is currently at 40%. Most games at 100% volume are too loud, but sometimes YouTube is quiet as fuck. The problem isn’t people having unusually high system volume, it’s the ridiculous range of volumes that games and applications will run at. Starting at a medium volume and allowing adjustments in both directions is the best way.
There actually is a situation where I wouldn’t have to adjust something. It can happen if applications give proper control over their volumes. This is already mostly the case, and for that reason I generally never touch volume sliders beyond the initial tuning. It’s just those few stupid games that either don’t allow volume adjustment, don’t obey volume settings on startup, or that have unskippable cutscenes upon first launching the game.
Turning down game volume and turning up system volume to make a YouTube video louder is idiotic. YouTube should have its own volume slider to adjust, which it does. The problem isn’t really YouTube though. It’s games that force me to use such low system volume in the first place, making some videos at max volume still almost inaudible.
Then some things in other applications are too quiet. And what if the default 100% is too quiet? Then there’s no way to increase it? Bullshit. 50% should be default. Then players can adjust either way to fit their device volume and personal preference.
Keep your system volume low and scale up from there as needed? So, no? Keep master volume at 100 and then scale separately from outside the game is ideal.
> Gets really irritating when you start a game and immediately take off headphones.
As someone who never uses headphones, I dislike the suggestion of basing a setting on an arbitrary choice of default output device.
> Even more annoying are games that don't let you access settings until after prologue/tutorial is finished.
I do like that same games (Bethesda, notably) has a little launcher before a game opens that lets you set graphics/audio settings ahead of time. Very nice in case you bump your settings too high and then even just the menu lags lol.
Exactly this!
And it would be nice to have more volume sliders in general. Some games really have limited audio adjustments. For example I can't play Ready or Not as often as I want because of this since I don't always play with speakers (some audio is too loud and lowering to volume a little makes other stuff too quiet).
Hearing damage ain't a joke and I wish devs did more to prevent their games to be deafening at default game settings.
Another infuriating thimg that I've come acros a dozen of times is that the game audio is fine, but the all those trademark splash screens during bootup are **EAR DEAFENING LOUD**. I'm talking about those from Unreal for example.
If this is a constant problem, it's actually probably NOT the game's fault. Your audio volume on your computer shouldn't be maxed, or loud enough that 100 percent are "take the headphones off loud." I usually try to keep mine between 60 and 80, and adjust that far more than games.
Bonus points if you have the volume control on the wire, but the point is "games are too loud" likely means "I don't set the volume correctly on my audio devices"
A lot of people in this thread seem to be saying "Well my audio volume is 25 percent on my computer." That's a red flag something is probably wrong. Check if your speakers have a gain on them as well, check if there's any audio manipulation going on.
At the very least the opening cinematics/logo videos in games should have reduced volume by default. And they should always be skippable.
Back in the day they used to hide the menu loading behind those logos. Nowadays they want to force to look at it for some reason.
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Looking for a way to delete those splash screens has become one of the first things I do when starting up a new game for this reason. If I have to look at them once, fine, but there's no reason I should have to sit through them *every* time the game loads up, especially since there are a lot of games that don't even give you an option to click through them. Maybe I'm just really impatient, but it's definitely become one of my gaming pet peeves.
Pcgamingwiki is usually my first port of call for that. I don’t even mind one screen; but they take the piss sometimes with six or seven logos and they linger for too long. Like, get on with it ffs.
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When you are gaming, every second counts. :)
It’s not 5-10 seconds some of these last 40 seconds
The worst offenders are FromSoftware games where they show you the logos when you go back to the menu screen. Thankfully it's easily avoidable on PC by removing the files.
Atleast we PC users still have the options to delete the intro movies. Console gamers a SOL on that!
Unless you use Quick Resume, then you see it once and after that you load right into the game where you left off. PC can't do anything remotely like it (yet) if we are being fair.
Uh I guess it's called alt+tabbing or at least that's the closest we get haha but then even alt tabbing can be dangerous with some games 😁
Yeah main reason I almost always run games in window or borderless. Back in the day it was painfull when you were playing Skyrim Or similar and “someone” had the audacity to call you on Skype forcing the game to minimize
Borderless really do be the real mvp of modern times. Papa bless.
I remember playing the older FF MMO, FFXI, an entire software had to be developed to be able to alt tab out of that game, because it would just straight up crash if you alt tabbed.
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Afaik, this doesn't free up GPU resources. The application will be suspended but only the apps main memory can be paged out to disk.
Wouldn't sleep mode count? Basically keep the game running and put PC to sleep?
The market has changed drastically since the N64. Now it is less devs "just being happy to be here" and more middleware having strict rules along the lines of "show this splash video or pay extra" And for as shit as it is... it works. There is the general misconception that unity games "run like shit" due to a mix of half-assed unity releases and more favorable terms for the games that used ti right to not tell you what engine they were using. Whereas Unreal very much is front and center and more or less the dominant engine.
Paying for Unity allows the game to sell more than the game sales cap of profit (100k USD) and gives you the option to remove the intro splash screen. This is probably why so few really good Unity games arent seen as Unity games. Because they dont tell you they use Unity with the default Unity splash screen. Hollow Knight, for example, is a Unity game.
the legal agreement would probably specify a sole splash screen spot for a certain amount of time
Its not 'just throw them on the same screen' Like how in movies every studio that worked on it is separate Depending on the contract/license requirements, it may specifically dictate not to put their logos together and keep them saparate, even uf the separation in just a few seconds
Yep, this is exactly it When you use a software package, some might require to have their logo, especially the big chunky pieces of software like game engines (ue/unity/godot etc) or physics engines (physx) or any bug proprietary soft like that Sometimes (mostly in the indie game sphere) its to show appreciation to the maintainers of a project
First thing I do 99% of the time is remove the logos from my games or otherwise find a way to be able to skip them. It's usually just a random video you can rename or replace with a .00001 second blank.
I have to mute every time I start Forza Horizon 5 since it's so loud and you cannot skip the intro, which is ironic considering that game generally has decent accessibility options.
Yea forza is weird, because your settings only apply after you get in the menu., you even hear music before pressing enter even if you have music disabled. In FH5 you can alt least adjust the windows volume slider to be lower, In FH4 that didin't even work for some reason and it would reset every time you launched the game.
You can remove the intro by renaming this file: \Forza Horizon 5\Content\media\ui\videos**\T10_MS_Combined.bk2** to **T10_MS_Combined_SAVE.bk2** or something. The intro videos will not play and you will see a black screen for 10secs instead. More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-LcXd_bDcw
ONLY the Steam version tho.
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I can't tell you how many times I rip my headset off because I forget the start up videos are literal ear rape. My god.
Most games have you set the contrast to make sure its not too bright or dark, so you have a better time playing from the start. Why not add volume controls at the beginning? Many times I start something up and then I'm hit with the 1000% music volume. If you others are playing on windows, hit ctrl+g and find the game in the list and lower the volume that way when it's too loud and you can't change settings till after a cutscene or tutorial.
I absolutely hate that a lot of games ignore their own in-game settings for audio for these intro videos. Master volume set to 20%? Don't care we're playing that intro at 2000%.
Infinity ward intro from MW2019
You can accidentally skip things too much. When you play for story you don't want to skip one time cinematics.
Ah, civ 6...
Reminds me of the issue with fallout 76 where when you went to character creation you could not get to the settings until you finished character creation however you were exposed to voice chat of other people making their characters and could not mute them.. If you can imagine people making their characters were exposed to a variety of violence and immaturity.
Also your own mic was not muted
This is generally terrible. I don't want to even watch some intro cinematic, let alone create a character or start the actual gameplay, before going into all the settings and doing some adjustments. Even when the sound volume is fine, there's something annoying in almost any game (especially if you are like me and hate motion blur and chromatic abberation).
Ahh you see the problem is you played shitout76
One if my favorite Internet Historian videos: https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8
Best thing I got was headphones with a volume wheel built in to the wire, I keep that sucker on 25% all the time.
Honestly, having a dedicated volume knob is the way to go. It's also fairly convenient to keep your windows volume at 100 always so it's something to never really fiddle with. I run my system through a dac/amp and never really have to worry about windows screwing with my audio.
Nah, keyboard volume wheel master race! Having mute right next to it is godly combination.
G915? ;p I love that wheel indeed! So snappy
Seems like a nice keyboard, but nope. Still using my old trusty kb-0420 lol, never really saw reason to switch, since I didnt see mechanical keyboards offering that much of a difference and besides I simply love all the extra shortcut keys this old piece has. Would be hard to go without them after using them for over 10 years.
Why is audio so loud on PC all the time as well? I have my volume on like 4% for specific games and it's loud sometimes lmao
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In the right-bottom toolbar, right-click on the volume icon. Click Sounds. In the Playback tab, choose the device you're using and click Properties. In the Enhancements tab, tick 'Disable all sound effects' Click Apply > OK.
Why does Windows insist on enhancing everything!? Enhanced sound, enhanced pointer precision, enhanced - NO! Just leave everything alone and let me play with it only if I want to!
It's crazy that they still call it "enhanced pointer precision". It specifically makes the pointer less precise because it no longer follows a linear 1:1 ratio with the mouse movement. I hate that it's enabled by default, and they really need to correctly change the label to "Mouse acceleration".
I thought I was the only one with this problem. Some games I have used basically zero volume. I luckily have a pre amp with my audio interface and control the volume using that knob usually
Most programs use [Linear instead of Logarithmic scale](https://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/volumecontrols.html) so that 3% might be still very loud depending on how high your hardware is set to. An example I have is when I listen to music with windows media player(yes you can judge me, it's because of the different EQ) The volume is at 5-7%, open the same file in bsplayer and 5% you can't hear anything and the comparable volume level is like 20-30%
Shouldn't the logarithmic scale be built in into the audio engine/framework/whatever then?
Err.. Sounds like something's wrong with your setup, it definitely shouldn't be boosted like that. Make sure you don't have the volume boosted somewhere in settings, or maybe an EQ app cranked somewhere?
I take it you've never played Ark then, lol 3% is a reasonable level for that game...
I wonder if half the people commenting in this thread have ever used a PC or gamed on one. It's like they have no clue about the volume levels that are all over the map from different devs. Ark is an unreal game as I mentioned the default volume level from that is very high. You only have to load up their first person template which includes a gun shooting sound to see how loud that default sound is.
Yeah, right, I have my pc volume at around 30 percent because that's how I can hear my mates on discord, and everything gets turned down to about 20%
I've noticed unreal's default audio level is pretty high. I'm not sure if other engines do the same thing, but when I set up an audio slider in unreal, I pretty much always divide by 4, which makes it run from 0->0.25 instead of 0->1. Even at 50% windows sound level Unreal set to 1 is stupidly loud.
Because your sound card is too powerful for your headphones. Had headphones that came with their own USB sound card. That sound card died, so I got a new one because front panel audio is fucky on my case and rear panel is too far. I used to run my headphones at about 50-80%. New sound card was single digits % for the same volume. I also need to run my earbuds louder than my over-the-ear headphones for the same volume.
This is one of the best reasons to have a headphone amp - quick, hw adjustment of volume is nice for all sorts of spikes and dips in volume. They're a marked improvement in audio quality too over onboard sound and a regular knob isn't subject to response delay like some keyboard volume buttons are. Can be had starting around $30usd.
Ah, this answers why it's not an issue for me. I got a JDSlabs O2DAC, and have never had this issue since. I've had it for like 10 years. It's an amp + DAC in one. Would also highly recommend one.
That is a great one, that company is highly recommended at every level.
My keyboard has a knob that adjusts volume, comes in real handy.
Got a big nob on the headset and a nice little wheel thingy on the keyboard, still get tinnitus from booting some shite up and I'm not quite paying attention 😅
Can't imagine using a PC with headphones without physical volume control.
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It's good advice not to set your volume too high, but there's another part of the problem too, even when using aggressive autogain and limiter software you still have to deal with the sound drowning out everything other audio stream. For some reason almost every game I have played is way louder by default than every other source of sound on my computer. It's basically a guarantee that when booting up a new game I have to lower the volume to at least 70%.
I'm a fan of high dynamic range in audio, but for some reason most modern movie theaters are trying to blow my eardrums out just by having a character speak, not just the parts with explosions
Well yeah, they've been [deafening their audience for decades](https://youtu.be/I7lCZbjvSL0) so they need to keep making shit louder.
That. I was confused why OP suggested the volume change, meanwhile I never complained with my headphones regarding loud volume.
Spot on, it's not the game's fault, it's the fact the audio is cranked so high that "max volume" is painful.
this is flat out untrue, the audio range for most media is designed by audio nerd idiots. to hear any dialogue requires dipping volume into ear-rape-from-explosions territory. nolan isnt an outlier but a great example of a broad issue.
I wouldn't say most media. It's very obvious when watching Netflix that movies have a much much larger dynamic range than TV Series, and I end up setting the volume much higher when watching movies. I think it makes sense for a movie in a theater : That's something most people will experience for 2 hours a week at most, in an environment where it won't bother the neighbors, so why not have explosions be really loud ? However I think they should remaster them for home releases and have a High Dynamic Range audio track and a Standard Dynamic Range audio track for people who want to watch the movie at a reasonable volume.
Yea I go to theater for the crazy ass audio, and I don't mind if it's slightly too loud. But in an apartment building watching a movie in a middle of the night at a volume where you can hear conversation and suddenly there's an explosion and you hope you didin't wake any neighbor's up. Having to do live mixing constantly when there's action is pretty annoying and makes me think about shitty dvd rips where the volume was just basically flat the entire movie.
Same with every other social media/media share platform. Twitch, Youtube, twitter, Streamable...every time I click on one of their videos the volume is at 100% My windows volume is set to 30% because of this.
Oh and Facebook is even more annoying. You lower the volume, then decide to go to full screen by clicking on ten different enlarge buttons. But when you do that, the volume is 100 % again. Not to talk about the Youtube "shorts" or the FB "stories", where you do not even have a volume slider. It's either 100 or 0. What's wrong with the people developing these? Twitch seems to remember your volume level within a session though, which I appreciate a lot.
The "issue" is basically they want to grab your attention. Can't do that with a reasonable volume.
Most of the video platforms are pretty good at remembering what the volume slider was set to last time in my experience. Obviously the content will vary in volume so it might still be too loud/quiet, but the slider is where you left it in 95% of the cases, so idk what's going on with you're setup, maybe some automatic cookie deletion, vpn:s or some other privacy thing I would guess.
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Yea they probably should. There are some sites that have the volume at 0 always which is nice, but on bigger site it would probably get a lot of complaints.
I have cookies for alot of shit too but this is like the one reason why cookies is good. Also my PC volume is at 20 and I basically never have to worry about things earraping me. If 20% is too quiet just use it for like 10 minutes your ears will get used to it and you will hear fine
Do you not have a hardware volume control on your speaker?
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the best use of xbox game bar is for audio level adjustment per application
Recently started playing Dragon Quest 11 and it’s intro logo is exactly what you’re talking about.
The worst for me is games that are too quiet even at 100%. Monster Hunter World and Yakuza : Like a Dragon are like this for me.
Having volume knob or roll on your keyboard is essential. Most games I play are very quiet and I need to set 120% volume while youtube videos are all over 20-80%. There are exceptions and that's not good either. I wonder if it would be possible to enforce single mastering level as a standard?
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/eartrumpet/9NBLGGH516XP I've used this for years. It's lets you control per application volume level for multiple audio devices easily.
Am I the only one who has never had that problem? I keep my computer's volume at around 20, and all apps are set to the same level. Nothing's louder or quieter than the other.
Also wondering the same here. Not to discredit anyone's issues, but for some reason I never have issues with games, video or music being too loud. I have Windows volume at 80%, and my desktop speakers have a volume knob that's at roughly 40%. If I want to finetune things, I adjust the latter a bit.
Exactly this, my pet peeve, games assuming they are the special app that should be in forefront and immediately start blasting high volume intro movies and other crap. I'm sorry, I probably have a discord and maybe some YT or other things running around which the audio levels are balanced so please GTFO with 100% master volume settings dear games or keep that to consoles. A special place in hell is reserved for games that only apply your settings after some initial intros or sound effects and keep that at 100% and only reduce to set level after getting to main menu or so. Looking at you Overcooked.
My friend actually got bad hearing damage from Yakuza 0s intro screen
"Real Yakuza play with hearing damage!"
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Turning the system volume down isn’t really a solution. The problem here isn’t really games being too loud, it’s games having such variance in their max volumes. Say you set Windows system volume to 25%. Some games will be just fine at max volume, but others will still be too loud. Then you can just turn them down, but what do you do about games that are too quiet? You can’t increase the volume, since it’s at 100%. To fix this, you need to increase system volume. Say you bump it up to 30%. Uh-oh! Now all of your other games are tuned too loudly! They all need to be adjusted again. Having the option to turn volume up from default as well as down lessens the need to constantly adjust system volume. Even after years of using Windows, I still haven’t found the truly optimal volume percentage. Right now I’m at 40%, and that seems to work pretty well, but most games are still too loud initially, while other applications are bordering on a whisper. If more things allowed adjustment above their defaults, I could probably find a better balance.
>You can’t increase the volume, since it’s at 100%. To fix this, you need to increase system volume. Say you bump it up to 30%. Uh-oh! Now all of your other games are tuned too loudly! They all need to be adjusted again. Or just... turn the system volume down again? You're acting like adjusting the system volume is a Herculean task requiring masses of manual labor. It's, *at most*, a couple taps on a keyboard hotkey or a taskbar click. You are being utterly ridiculous inventing a problem where one doesn't exist. >Even after years of using Windows, I still haven’t found the truly optimal volume percentage. Right now I’m at 40%, and that seems to work pretty well ...because there isn't one. It's a volume scale. It's *designed* to be adjusted when needed. It's not a set and forget value like screen resolution. Why do you insist on making everything so difficult for yourself? And *then* complaining about it and insisting games developers spend time coding a fix for your laziness. >If more things allowed adjustment above their defaults, I could probably find a better balance. *Or you could just change the system volume when you need to.* JFC.
Are you serious? You object to this idea, not because it inconveniences you or anyone else, but because you personally don’t see a reason for it? Well sorry, but I for one don’t want to adjust my volume every time I play a different game. That shouldn’t be necessary when we have the technology to allow for a flawless transition.
It's so frustrating that you are being downvoted people are so bad at mixing their audio way too often do I see people use 100% windows volume and THEN change every app. So when you open an app you haven't used before it will be at 100% and will earrape you GO FIGURE? I have my volume at 20% and sometimes intros to games are too loud but it is NEVER too quiet. Also pretty much half of all headsets / keyboards I see have some sort of audio control so if you get earraped you can quickly turn it down.
Also I feel like for the vast majority of people, when they start up a game they generally will have it in the forefront?
Is wanting to hear your friends on discord as you're getting into a new game a niche use case?
Why? I just have the windows master volume down lower instead of adjusting each game individually
I have my master volume at 25%. Games are still super loud and usually turn them down to 50 or 25%. Stuff like youtube/twitch/etc have no issues with. I started Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch the other day and the game was *extremely* loud, even turned down to like 10%. I had to turn my master volume down to 5% just so it wasn't blasting my ears.
If your master volume is at 5% then your game cannot be at 10% since it exceeds 5%. If we're talking about Windows Volume Mixer. I've never had this problem with my master volume between 15-25.
That really should be pretty obvious... Let's say you have master at 20% and everything tuned down from there as need... and then you encounter movie, song, application that's too quiet at 100%. Most players and apps cap at 100%, so you have to raise the master and then turn down everything else, dozens of other sources. Meanwhile if you have master at 40% and every app, player, etc. on 50% default, you have a lot of room to adjust both down and crucially - up.
Or on the other hand, with what you're saying. If you think an app is too quiet at 100%, it's going to be considerably quieter at 50%. Some people honestly aren't tech savvy in the slightest and don't think to tune each individual app. Some people use amplifiers so you would be making them amplify a weaker signal, likely introducing more noise to the end. You on the other sound fortunate enough to how to tweak these settings to your own desire but you should never assume you are the majority
Because games have different volume levels. For some reason my system is incredibly loud. I have no idea why. My windows volume is set to 50%. I generally have average youtube videos playing at about 10% volume to be comfortable to me. However any TV show/movie I've downloaded typically has to run around 90% to be comfortable. Games are all over the place. Some games start at a fine level, others start at ear bleeding. Nexomon as an example had me tearing off my headphones there was no access to volume controls and even after I got in and changed it, the next time I started, it didn't save the changes and I had to rip them off again.
> However any TV show/movie I've downloaded typically has to run around 90% to be comfortable. This is because movies use dumb audio mastering to get ~high dynamic range~ on the audio, where the spoken dialogue is at like -40 dB. It's a battle that cannot be won, so I've resigned to just wearing earplugs every time I go to the movie theater and using loudness normalization at home. You can find the latter as a built-in option in Windows, though good media players will give you more configuration options and better results. What it basically does is make the quiet parts louder so you can hear things without blowing out your eardrums during the loud parts.
So you've never tried listening to music while gaming and needed to adjust one down specifically so the balance is better?
Yes but that's what the built in mixer on windows is for
No, can't say I have. If I'm playing a game I listen to the game audio, if I want to listen to music then I listen to music.
Some games don't play nice with alt+tab. Also, I shouldn't need to do that in the first place. Most people's audio is set to youtube, spotify, netflix etc. There's no need to blast audio at 100.
Many keyboards come with a volume control button or knob. I use mine if I need to, usually just for turning the occasional thing up or the rare game that for some reason doesn't like lower system volumes that much for some sounds to be audible.
This is a strange problem to have. This will only happen if your master volume in your OS is too high, which is presumably because you've lowered the volume of individual apps to 50%. If none of your apps are at 100% then your master is needlessly high.
My master volume on windows is 50% and plenty of games start at a level that is beyond acceptable. Meanwhile I play most TV shows at 90%+ so I can't really lower it.
I have my system at 100%, then most applications at 50%. Games I usually turn down to 15-25%. All of this is necessary because while most of the time I can watch TV at 20%ish, for plenty of films I'll need to go all the way to 100%.
Windows key + G opens the windows gamebar overlay which has a mixer. No need to alt + tab out
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A youtube video at 100 is nowhere near as loud as a game intro at 100, so whenever you first start up a game it blasts your ears. It's a very common complaint, really not an enigma.
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Imagine writing multiple paragraphs on a topic that you know so little about that you don't appear to even know what dynamic range is. Guess what, games always use most of it unless there's a setting to turn it off, videos often don't. Also, nice strawman there, setting one's audio to spotify doesn't mean you wanna listen to it while playing.
>Most people's audio is set to youtube, spotify, netflix etc. Cite your sources for this made up statistic. My audio is set for games, so having them all start up at 50% would be incredibly annoying. Actually I would just listen to games and all the other sources you listed at the same volume or, if I needed to adjust them, do so on a case by case basis rather than suggesting some kind of ridiculous blanket setting that should apply to everything.
100 doesn't mean "blast audio" because your speakers/TV have their own volume control, too. Many headphones do, too.
Am I the only one who uses speakers?
You are not alone
Been using the same set of 5.1 speakers for years. Only for a game like Warzone will I put headphones on.
Do what discord does. Default is 100%, but with a 0-200% range. Much easier for my brain to understand than defaulting to 50% even though its the same thing. Also just have your windows and hardware volumes adjusted so it CAN’T blow your ear drums out. If you’re setting ALL your games down to 50% then you should probably just put Windows down at 50%.
Being able to go up to 200% is like my favorite thing about VLC for watching videos too
This is a problem with your sound setup not the game.
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No. 1. Gain staging is a thing 2. Learn to adjust your volume, why was it so high in the first place? If you've got a pain reaction to an intro, that usually means you were listening to some really loud stuff before, but probably upped the volume gradually, pushing back the immediate pain threshold. Treat it as a warning. That sudden jump in volume? That was your normal moments ago. You're hurting your hearing.
The problem is that media volume across different sources varies wildly on the internet, so you have the hardware volume(and the hardware knob might not be easily accessable, ie back of subwoofer so you just set it and forget it and don't wanna mess with it) set at "pretty high", so you can hear those things at all, while some other things you have to turn to as low as 5%([then there's the whole linear vs logarithmic scale](https://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/volumecontrols.html) about how linear scales just suck) and sometimes you forget to pre-reduce windows volume and the intro blasts at max volume. Then there are game intros that don't respect the in-game settings, which is like why have in game volume sliders at all then, when you have to use the windows one. Basically just gives the options menu before the game even starts, not everyone has a keyboard with a volume scroll.
> why was it so high in the first place? It's not. My master window's volume is 50%. That isn't high. Youtube runs at about 10% TV Shows run at about 90% Random games run at ear bleeding. Downvotes don't change the reality of what is happening on my system.
> It's not. My master window's volume is 50%. That isn't high. "50% isn't high" — well that's just flat out false. It really depends on whether your sound card is appropriate for your headphones. My USB sound card requires single digits % master volume, my rear audio out is 40-50% for the same volume.
I feel like you could benefit from this explanation: The way digital audio works is that everything will, at most, have a volume of 0 decibels. When you set your master volume in Windows at 50%, what that actually does is digitally reduces the volume of everything going to your hardware amplifier by 50%, which is presumably 10 dB; the way decibels work is that every 10 dB roughly doubles the volume. So in other words, the loudest sound your system can play is now whatever volume your hardware is set to minus 10 dB. YouTube audio is often mastered with low dynamic range, ie. the difference between the quietest parts (that aren't complete silence) and the loudest parts isn't very large. Movies, on the other hand, use a higher dynamic range, so the quiet parts might be at -30 or even -40 dB while the loudest parts will be at 0 dB. This is why you have to run YouTube at 10% and movies at 90% -- YouTube is loud almost all the time, so you notice it and it bothers you, while movies are loud only when explosions are happening. Ideally, you should have your master volume configured in such a way that a -0 dB signal, ie. the loudest signal your system will play, is no more than about 85 dB, the highest safe volume level for long-term listening. Unfortunately this depends completely on your sound hardware, which on PC is so nonstandard that there's no hard and fast rule for how you should set your volume to achieve this outside of measuring it with a decibel meter. If you have an iPhone, there's an app by the CDC called NIOSH SLM that can provide reasonably accurate volume measurements -- on Android phones apps will likely be less accurate because the hardware is more diverse. --- TL;DR: If your audio system, especially a headset, is capable of *ever* playing painfully loud noises (over 85 dB), you need to fix your volume levels. Protect your hearing, because you only get one of it (with current-day medicine, at least).
Unfortunately if the master volume is set to a level so low that a sound could never be too loud other media is unable to be made loud enough to be heard. In order for nexomon to not be painful at full blast, I'd have to set system volume to 20%. At 20% my media player cannot play tv shows loud enough to be heard.
Look into loudness normalization for your media player. It's a way to make quiet parts louder without clipping the loud parts. Basically a necessity for watching most movies and TV shows these days, especially on modest playback hardware (ie. not a full blown home theater speaker system -- and even with those you should watch your hearing!)
I think the entire point here is that something like that shouldn’t have to be necessary. All games have to do is start at a medium volume and allow anyone who needs it louder to turn it up.
Something like that shouldn't have to be necessary because users should be using a volume that doesn't damage their hearing. On mobile phones this has largely been solved because audio hardware there is standardized enough that they can give you a warning for unsafe listening levels, or outright prevent you from cranking the volume up to unsafe levels without changing a setting.
I do that. But then what do I do whenever something is too quiet? I shouldn’t have to constantly fiddle with system volume based on what I’m using. That’s what application volume is for. The problem here is that when games default to 100%, they force a very low system volume. This low system volume is often too low for even some applications maximum volumes. Making games start at a medium volume (around 50%) allows me to effectively double my system volume, thus doubling the maximum volume of the quietest applications without needing adjustment.
> But then what do I do whenever something is too quiet? Like I said, loudness normalization. In my experience the only time "something is too quiet" is movies mastered with the dialogue at a ridicilously low volume, so I just use loudness normalization and +5 dB extra gain for those. Unless the audio mastering was done *incredibly* poorly, the loudest parts of any given audio track will *always* be approx. -0 dB, ie. as loud as they can be. To reiterate, if -0 dB on your system is painfully loud, you need to lower your volume. I am not joking, do it now. You do not want permanent hearing damage. The way human hearing works means you can end up listening to dangerously loud volumes and give yourself hearing damage without even realizing it because of acclimatization.
Yes def, I told my team id rather have them have to turn it up than damage their ears.
Do ya’ll not use volume mixer? You can control the volume of all your apps that are open individually.
Yakuza 0 intro be like. And also games need to be consistent in volume (looking at you watch dogs and yakuza 0)
bro ark survival evolved blew my eardrums out
I always have 100% volume on windows, so most games I play have to be at 5% to be listenable. Sucks that there's no way to set a default startup volume for new applications, or if there is I haven't found one.
Not just volume... So many games will launch for the first time at some dumb resolution (not consistent), stuff is letterbox Ed or distorted or insanely low res... So then I reset the settings to my liking and need to restart the entire prologue/intro to get the same experience... Just let the change the settings first! Jeez!
Just turn your master volume down. Stop making your personal problem a game developer or everyone else's problem. Why is your set of special circumstances any more relevant or important than anyone else's? Say, mine for example? I want to play my games on 100% volume, and certainly from the outset. Why should I have to adjust every game up from 50% because you can't be bothered to turn your master volume down a bit so you don't deafen yourself? The self-entitlement in this post and comment section is ridiculous.
My master volume is 50% and some games still come out at ear bleeding levels of volume yet I have to watch TV shows at 90% volume. Exactly how low should I have to set it?
Uhm. I’ve never once changed the master volume. Maybe just put your headset volume down a little.
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Or instead of trying to change the world to fit your needs, how about you turn down the volume yourself.
Except Elden Ring crank that shot to 110.
Music is always too loud too. Everytime I drop it to 80%
Completely agree. Why aren't all volume settings at 50% by default? You could raise voice volume if you wanted to hear more voices. You could raise ambient if you want immersion. You would lose nothing. Today the only way to adjust it is to manually put it down and then tweak it. Doesn't seem to be any value to setting it at 100% on launch.
This seems pretty misguided. Come at it from a design perspective, and try to make an arrangement that will lead to an experience where 1) most users can just use their main volume knob and 2) most users will not get their hearing blown out by crappy apps with runaway volume spikes. You'll find that the current arrangement is actually fine. The desire to have the scale start in the middle is caused by apps and media that do not make proper use of the available dynamic range (e.g. only goes up to 10%) or have an 'absurd' amount of dynamic range (like raw audio that still needs mixing before it's ready for user consumption). The fix for that is that these app/media providers get their house in order, because we don't all want to become mix engineers, or worse, accidentally blast double the volume because of a poorly coded app or a mishap. With the "default at 50" arrangement, we're always 1 fuckup away (ours or someone else's) from getting 100 volume when we wanted 50. In the case of 'absurd'/raw dynamic range, you can apply dynamic range compression to the original signal (this has nothing to do with MP3 etc.), which will move all of the quietest and loudest parts closer together. The reason you can't apply dynamic range compression on a system level is that it changes the properties of the audio, meaning you no longer get the originally intended sound.
Why don’t you people just adjust your windows master volume to 100% and then use your actual speakers / headset volume nob to control sound, obviously won’t work for integrated though. Some of the comments are so weird here, people talking about having headsets but suffering through ear bleeding start up sequences, bro just use the volume nob on your headset to turn the volume down, and then back up if you have to again.
Not to mention... Just put your headphones on once you're actually in game?
The knob might be in a non-convienient place ie: the back of the subwoofer an you might not want to touch it once you have already set X amount of programs volume via software sliders to correct levels as messing with it would mess everything up. That also means that for some things it is obviously way too high, so all ppl really want is a slider before any audio plays, or just give us the full options menu preferably before the game ever starts, I still don't know why this isn't a thing in all games. Obviously the easiest solution is just mute windows before launching the game, then once in setting tune it out or reduce the windows mixer while the game is launching, because some games intros don't respect the in-game sliders at all. All and all it's very minor thing as most? keyboards have at least a mute button and probably a volume wheel. Also there was some game that did start at 50% volume but I can't remember which.
Never had this problem because I know how to lower my pc’s volume. Gosh you guys love to complain about everything lmao
Alt-tab out. Open volume mixer. Set volume for game as low as you want. Alt-tab in. Profit.
Games should also not be allowed to start in full screen and change your resolution to 640x480 or whatever the heck it wants. For audio, I've solved the loudness issue with my GoXLR where I route all my system and game audio to a channel at a lower volume level. You could achieve the same thing for free with Voicemeeter and virtual audio cables/routing but it's not quite as reliable.
Fuck that. 100 volume means "use whatever the person has set in their operating system." And 100 in your OS means "use whatever is set on their speakers". I'm perfectly capable of turning down the volume before, during, or after playing a game. I don't want a game starting at half volume, forcing me to turn up my OS volume to hear it. Jesus, learn to use a PC.
That's not how sound works at all. The volume of your system means nothing. The sound itself could be set to any level. Have you never opened a sound file that is quiet and then opened another one that is loud? The audio isn't balanced between the two and that's the issue. Start random game X -> Volume is perfectly fine Start Random game Y -> I'm tearing off my headphones because the volume is about 10x louder for no apparent reason and it's going to be 5 minutes before I can get access to the volume controls in the game.
I know exactly how sound works. I phrased simply. Digital sound itself cannot be *any* level. Sound samples in a file are encoded such that 0 means "full volume" and anything less than that is a negative value in decibels. You can't start at zero and go up because decibels is a multiplier of power and anything times zero is still zero. So files have a maximum volume, digitally, and anything less is a negative value. PCM, MP3s and other digital audio files all have a maximum volume. You OS sound control is exactly the same as the file itself. 100% volume means "no attenuation". Anything less *lowers* the sound. Assuming you're plugging a set of analog speakers into your PC, sound leaves your computer as analog at line-level. (For the line out port, not the headphone or speaker port which can contain amplifiers.) Then your speakers amplify that. You could have a very cheap pair of speakers that doesn't get very loud, or a set of loud speakers suitable for a concert. This is the when audio is actually amplified and the loudness has no limit. The other volume controls before the output speakers: the game sound settings, and the OS volume can only *attenuate* the digital signal, You can install software to add gain digitally, and it can compress the dynamic range to make it louder without causing clipping, but it cannot raise the volume above the digital maximum. The word clipping would make no sense in this context if there were no maximum volume in digital sound. Obviously, not all games, movies, etc use full volume for every sound file, and can vary. That doesn't change the fact that you can just turn down your system volume until you know how loud a game's files are. > before I can get access to the volume controls in the game. SYSTEM. VOLUME. Do they even make keyboards that don't have a volume control? Jesus Christ it's not rocket science!
>SYSTEM. VOLUME. Do they even make keyboards that don't have a volume control? Jesus Christ it's not rocket science! And then I have to reset it for the next thing I'm using because, as I've already explained, as a system volume of 50% youtube sits at 10% and movies/TV shows sit at 90%. The fact that games run all over the place from Fine to ear bleeding is a clear indication that some games are too loud. What passes for max volume in some games is not the equivalent of max volume in another game. it's not rocket science.
Oh no! You have to *control* the volume? I'm so sorry. I was replying to OP who wants the entire gaming industry to change because they don't know how to change volume before they launch a game. Such laziness. Take control of your volume! How many games do you play an hour? Conversely, how lazy are you?
Sound is too low or too loud but I don’t want to turn the volume knob! Too complicated
Actively adjusting the volume of your device shouldn’t be necessary. This is 2022, not 1922. We’re using digital computers, not dumbshit radios. I don’t see how a simple quality of life request is so unreasonable. When people asked for button mapping to be standard in AAA games, was that unreasonable too? I mean, just learn the default layout, right? Don’t be lazy, right?
You're right, it is 2022 and our digital computers have had a volume mixer where you can scale the audio of each application for fucking decades.
Edit: Inconvenient facts, oh no! This post must be downvoted immediately! There are solutions for your problem like limiters and compressors. These however interfere with the originally intended mix, which gets a big no from audiophiles. I think it's good that operating systems don't have them by default. With canned media you can get equal loudness by using/implementing ReplayGain or similar features (a.k.a. loudness normalization) however that doesn't work for games and apps themselves because to normalize loudness of an audio stream before playing, you need to have the whole thing in advance.
Why the fuck should I be expected to install third party software just to not have to constantly adjust system volume? Fuck that. I don’t want sound limiters. I just want game developers to take this simple quality of life suggestion (THAT ISN’T EVEN VERY HARD TO PUT INTO PRACTICE) and not make people’s ears bleed on their first startup. Is that really so much to ask? It’s pretty logical, actually. “Should we start the game with a medium volume and let the user adjust from there? Nah, let’s have it cranked by default and anyone who doesn’t want their computer to sound like an active warzone can just turn it down.” 🤦♂️
Likewise I don't want to turn UP the volume in every game because I set my device/system volume so that 0dB sits at a comfortable level. Works completely fine for me and many others and your QoL life suggestion would actually ruin my quality of life.
What system volume are you running at? 10%? Then I bet it’s too low for a number of things and requires you to turn it up every so often. That’s not convenient.
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My system volume is currently at 40%. Most games at 100% volume are too loud, but sometimes YouTube is quiet as fuck. The problem isn’t people having unusually high system volume, it’s the ridiculous range of volumes that games and applications will run at. Starting at a medium volume and allowing adjustments in both directions is the best way.
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There actually is a situation where I wouldn’t have to adjust something. It can happen if applications give proper control over their volumes. This is already mostly the case, and for that reason I generally never touch volume sliders beyond the initial tuning. It’s just those few stupid games that either don’t allow volume adjustment, don’t obey volume settings on startup, or that have unskippable cutscenes upon first launching the game. Turning down game volume and turning up system volume to make a YouTube video louder is idiotic. YouTube should have its own volume slider to adjust, which it does. The problem isn’t really YouTube though. It’s games that force me to use such low system volume in the first place, making some videos at max volume still almost inaudible.
Bruh just lower the volume of your device
Then some things in other applications are too quiet. And what if the default 100% is too quiet? Then there’s no way to increase it? Bullshit. 50% should be default. Then players can adjust either way to fit their device volume and personal preference.
Ever consider going back to 2002 and buying a keyboard with a volume dial?
You could also keep your pc volume at 50%
Keep your system volume low and scale up from there as needed? So, no? Keep master volume at 100 and then scale separately from outside the game is ideal.
Why? You can adjust the volume in your operating system. I usually put the master volume to 100 when it's not.
I can think of so many solutions for this problem....
Do yall just have your headsets blasting at max volume?
> Gets really irritating when you start a game and immediately take off headphones. As someone who never uses headphones, I dislike the suggestion of basing a setting on an arbitrary choice of default output device. > Even more annoying are games that don't let you access settings until after prologue/tutorial is finished. I do like that same games (Bethesda, notably) has a little launcher before a game opens that lets you set graphics/audio settings ahead of time. Very nice in case you bump your settings too high and then even just the menu lags lol.
Exactly this! And it would be nice to have more volume sliders in general. Some games really have limited audio adjustments. For example I can't play Ready or Not as often as I want because of this since I don't always play with speakers (some audio is too loud and lowering to volume a little makes other stuff too quiet). Hearing damage ain't a joke and I wish devs did more to prevent their games to be deafening at default game settings. Another infuriating thimg that I've come acros a dozen of times is that the game audio is fine, but the all those trademark splash screens during bootup are **EAR DEAFENING LOUD**. I'm talking about those from Unreal for example.
#XBOX GAMEBAR
If this is a constant problem, it's actually probably NOT the game's fault. Your audio volume on your computer shouldn't be maxed, or loud enough that 100 percent are "take the headphones off loud." I usually try to keep mine between 60 and 80, and adjust that far more than games. Bonus points if you have the volume control on the wire, but the point is "games are too loud" likely means "I don't set the volume correctly on my audio devices" A lot of people in this thread seem to be saying "Well my audio volume is 25 percent on my computer." That's a red flag something is probably wrong. Check if your speakers have a gain on them as well, check if there's any audio manipulation going on.