Fix Quiet Guns and Unbalanced Audio - Restoring the Retail Audio Mix

Audio sound unbalanced? Guns too quiet? Here is a guide to restoring the original audio mix in Bioshock 2. Fully compatible with DLC!

Introduction

Patch 1.4 for Bioshock 2 made some weird changes to the audio mix. Many things were altered, but most noticeable was a big cut to the players gun volume.

The following fix restores the original retail sound mix while keeping compatibility with Minerva's Den and the Protector Trials DLC.

This video compares between the current 1.5.0.019 patch and the original retail release.
https://youtu.be/ZVqD5K1X_cs

Disclaimer

This is a safe tweak, and should contain absolutely nothing to cause a crash. Seriously. If you are having crashes it's likely from another source. DirectX 10 is the largest culprit in Windows 7, 8, and 10 - try disabling it using step 1 of this guide. Or, if you really want to use DX10 and are on Windows 7, try this guide.

Having said all that, I hold no responsibility for anything going wrong because of this fix etc etc.

This tweak does not fix issues such as missing audio or sounds suddenly cutting out.

Instructions

Download the fix from one of the following mirrors:

• Mirror 1[gdurl.com]
  
• Mirror 2[www.dropbox.com]
  
• Mirror 3[mega.nz]

Installing the mod is easy. Simply extract the downloaded file into “Bioshock 2\SP\Content\System” *, and you're all done!

Your System folder structure should now look like the following:



To uninstall, simply delete SoundMixStates.ini.

* If you cannot find your Bioshock 2 installation directory, use the following steps. Right-click the game in your Steam Library and choose ‘Properties’. In the new window choose the ‘Local Files’ tab, then click the topmost button titled ‘Browse Local Files’. The location of Bioshock 2 will now open.

Notes

People found you could restore the original mix by replacing ConfigINI.IBF with the original retail version. This worked to an extent, but as the replacement file was pre-DLC it didn't work very well with Minerva's Den and the Protector Trials.

ConfigINI.IBF contains a bunch of packed .ini files, but the only relevant to this is SoundMixStates.ini. We do some tomfoolery to extract a retail version and a latest version (1.5.0.019), compare the two to find DLC entries, then add them back into to the retail version.

There looks to be potential here to improve the mix, things like increasing the volume of certain guns. It would require much experimentation & investigation to discover unlisted object names, and would need plenty of time tweaking numbers just to get a start (the mix maxes out at 0.0db, so before you can make particular entries louder you'd have to change all the other numerous entries to be softer). But I welcome anyone to have a go!

It's interesting to note that SoundMixStates.ini went completely untouched until patch 1.4, and then the mix was suddenly modified. If anyone knows the internal reasoning, I'd be very intrigued to know why it was changed. As the 360 version went unchanged and hence doesn't have these bugs, I imagine someone porting the DLC to PC simply chose the wrong codebase on accident.

Further Mods

For anyone interested, here is a zip containing all the untouched .ini files extracted from ConfigINI.IBF. These can be used to change a lot of the variables for the game, including damage and loot tables. Difficulty mods have previously been made for Bioshock 1 using these methods.

• Mirror 1[www.dropbox.com]
  
• Mirror 2[mega.nz]

Thanks

Thanks go to:

• Slightly Dead for finding the original fix (link)
  
• thebiomage for narrowing down ConfigINI.IBF and providing a copy of the retail version (link)
  
• psikoticsilver for extracting ConfigINI.IBF and showing the resulting file structure (link)[forums.2k.com]
  
• Relight for posting an archive of all the extracted ini’s prior to Steamworks (link)[forums.2k.com]
  
• frostdiamond for pointing out a simpler way of installing the fix. Cheers!

And thank YOU for using this tweak! Any feedback, testing, or expansion upon is appreciated and welcomed.

[praetor_]

The audio fix is working for me (Bioshock 2 Remastered) with the file in \ContentBaked\pc\System, as others have reported.

The weapon sounds are fixed, but on my system the ambient sound (a humming or whirring depending on level) was distracting and overpowering. I fiddled with SoundMixStates.ini and managed to fix this by locating the [master_main] section and setting the VolumeB value for /Ambiences to -20. With this the game sounds like I'd expect but I'll need to play it for a bit to see if anything else needs to be adjusted.

[Gobb]

This doesn't seem to work anymore

[Thobio]

@CatGPT Are you sure this isn't malware? It feels kind of sketchy downloading it from that website, especially with the disclaimer before the download saying they aren't responsible for anything that happens, and you download it at your own risk... but damn the drill sounds of the above fix are loud.

[Focaccia]

Playing on the remastered version

This works for me but the audio levels aren't fully balanced yet, some sounds are too loud while others are soft in comparison

I followed BartCloni's advice in the comments and used the "Bioshock 2 Audio Balance Fix" by Noenko on PCGamingWiki

It's based on this fix but Noenko updated it to address the louder sounds, made it a lot more playable for me

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2783-bioshock-2-audio-balance-fix/

I installed the files to \steamapps\common\BioShock 2 Remastered\ContentBaked\pc\System
There's a separate folder for minerva's den in the mod but I haven't tested it out yet. if it's actually needed or not but for now the main files work

I hope this helps anyone who's reading this

[BartCloni]

This one DID work for me: "Bioshock 2 Audio Balance Fix" (by Noenko on PCGamingWiki)

[BartCloni]

Doesn't work for me either. I play the original version on Windows 11

[Eadmond]

It doesn't seems to work.
I am using windows 10.
Even with this mod, it's especially bad in the minerva's den. Audio mixing, audio missing, audio delay, choppy all over the place

[Eyal.A]

Doesn't work for me.

[Gouvea]

For those confused about the conflicting information in the comments, regarding if it works or not in the Remastered version:

It works normally and you can put the file either in "\steamapps\common\BioShock 2 Remastered\ContentBaked\pc\System" or in "\steamapps\common\BioShock 2 Remastered\Build\Final" where the .exe is located.

At first, I was sure only one of the paths would be correct and some people were probably experiencing some kind of placebo, but no. After some testing it was clear that it works in any of these two folders (I edited the .ini and removed some obvious sfx to make sure).

[Vertutame]

sadly, no use for remaster version as the file is missing