Sounds have no reverb or spatial audio

[Pixel]

All sounds feel flat and lifeless, lacking any reverb or spatial depth.


Distant sirens no longer retain their spatial depth; instead, they emit a flat, raw tone.

A "traffic ambience" track with reverb still plays, but actual NPC vehicle sounds no longer fade into the distance as they once did.

Areas where echoes should naturally occur—such as parking garages, tunnels, and underpasses—now fail to produce any reverberation when honking or revving an engine.

The LS Customs mechanic now sounds as if he's speaking directly into your head, with no echo to suggest he's in a garage.


I've been searching for fixes and testing different solutions, but nothing has worked so far. Is anyone else experiencing this issue, or has anyone found a fix?

[XOLiD]

This issue has been talked about since day 1 of enhanced on PC, it's caused by forced dolby atmos which conflicts with other software.

[Jackie Pei]

Same. Still no fix yet and I think it's an issue with game engine, which cannot be solved by configuring audio settings on Windows.

BTW, do you have music output sounds like mono? You can check this by comparing in-game radio with legacy version.

[Jackie Pei]

Originally posted by XOLiD:

This issue has been talked about since day 1 of enhanced on PC, it's caused by forced dolby atmos which conflicts with other software.

I cannot agree with that because I have Dolby Atmos installed and it is activated during gameplay. Still no sound effects or stereo music. They need to fix the broken game engine.

[macatak]

Originally posted by Jackie Pei:

Originally posted by XOLiD:

This issue has been talked about since day 1 of enhanced on PC, it's caused by forced dolby atmos which conflicts with other software.

I cannot agree with that because I have Dolby Atmos installed and it is activated during gameplay. Still no sound effects or stereo music. They need to fix the broken game engine.

Have you deactivated Sound Effect in your Sound Cards software

[Pixel]

Originally posted by Jackie Pei:

Same. Still no fix yet and I think it's an issue with game engine, which cannot be solved by configuring audio settings on Windows.

BTW, do you have music output sounds like mono? You can check this by comparing in-game radio with legacy version.

I dont think the Music is mono, its just the loudness cranked up to max.

EDIT: I checked again and it is Mono, both channels recive the same Data.

Enhanced Audio Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnERafWLki4

Legacy Audio Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hztUUhWPtMs

[globefish23]

Disabling "Audio Enhancements" in your sound device's advanced settings seems to help.
https://gtaforums.com/uploads/monthly_2025_03/image.png.f975bb26932640fdad16951d7c49169b.png

[Pixel]

Originally posted by globefish23:

Disabling "Audio Enhancements" in your sound device's advanced settings seems to help.
https://gtaforums.com/uploads/monthly_2025_03/image.png.f975bb26932640fdad16951d7c49169b.png

nope it dosent, never had it active in the first place

[underd0g]

Yup, this is a disgrace. If the audio in GTA 6 is going to be this flat it might be a pass for me.

[Jackie Pei]

Originally posted by macatak:

Originally posted by Jackie Pei:

I cannot agree with that because I have Dolby Atmos installed and it is activated during gameplay. Still no sound effects or stereo music. They need to fix the broken game engine.

Have you deactivated Sound Effect in your Sound Cards software

I'm using an audio interface without any sound effect or virtual mixing console.

Just to be clear, when I said 'no sound effect,' I didn't mean that Dolby Atmos isn't working. It actually shaped the spatial sound and provided more ambiance. However, it doesn't bring back the reverberation like it was in the legacy version.

[NightmanCometh96]

Entering the command “-disableSpatialAudioClient” (without the quotes) in the game’s launch options seems to restore the reverb effects (although I only did some brief testing of this in LS Customs, where the mechanic and vehicle sounds have echo applied once again. I’m not sure if it helps with things such as sirens in the distance): https://youtu.be/kSGZn9Ote9c?si=Lw0XGiywC-QGl1oF

However, the command also causes frequent panning issues. The main menu music and a lot of sound effects only play in the left speaker, while others can only be heard in the right speaker. The radio still seems to play in mono, sadly (even lossless files added to Self Radio, so it’s clearly a problem with how the game plays back audio rather than the files themselves being encoded in mono).

As nice as the reverb is to have back, the panning issues are a dealbreaker in their own right. We’ll just have to see if R* ever bothers to fix the audio in future patches. But the fact that the 9th Gen console versions have been stuck like this for three years (e.g. the in-game speaker setup menu from the Legacy versions is entirely removed) leads me to believe that changes and forcing of each platform’s respective Spatial Audio implementations were deliberate design choices and, as such, R* may not even see the need to “fix” anything.

[Jackie Pei]

Originally posted by NightmanCometh96:

Entering the command “-disableSpatialAudioClient” (without the quotes) in the game’s launch options seems to restore the reverb effects (although I only did some brief testing of this in LS Customs, where the mechanic and vehicle sounds have echo applied once again. I’m not sure if it helps with things such as sirens in the distance): https://youtu.be/kSGZn9Ote9c?si=Lw0XGiywC-QGl1oF

However, the command also causes frequent panning issues. The main menu music and a lot of sound effects only play in the left speaker, while others can only be heard in the right speaker. The radio still seems to play in mono, sadly (even lossless files added to Self Radio, so it’s clearly a problem with how the game plays back audio rather than the files themselves being encoded in mono).

As nice as the reverb is to have back, the panning issues are a dealbreaker in their own right. We’ll just have to see if R* ever bothers to fix the audio in future patches. But the fact that the 9th Gen console versions have been stuck like this for three years (e.g. the in-game speaker setup menu from the Legacy versions is entirely removed) leads me to believe that changes and forcing of each platform’s respective Spatial Audio implementations were deliberate design choices and, as such, R* may not even see the need to “fix” anything.

That's very helpful, thanks for sharing!

It could be that the spatial audio client discard "Sound Effect" channel and it's not mixed into the audio output.

PS: As you said, they didn't encode the audio in mono. Using OpenIV to check the game files, i found that they replace the original PCM format audio with MP3 (probably for saving space), but still in stereo.