Dialogue audio bug

[RaptorBricks]

I stepped away from the game for a few months and came back to a weird audio bug.

All general sound effects (enviromental, guns, hiss chanting etc) are playing seemingly as usual but dialogue is weirdly broken.

All of Jesse's chatter to herself, along with any internal monologues in cutscenes are completely silent. Regular dialogue in cutscenes is still present, but muffled as if there's a wall between you and the characters.

Other than that, theres also a weird emptiness to the audio in general, like a layer of the ambience is missing.

Subtitles are working as usual, but relying on them is less than ideal.

Occurs on both the DX11 and DX12 versions

Any ideas for any fixes?

[The Dutchess]

Interestingly I just ran into the same issue today as I wanted to start a new replay. When starting a new campaign, the intro dialogue from Jesse is completely silent, though the subtitles do show up. Some other sounds are also missing, such as the door in the lobby bathroom being silent when opening, where it did used to make a sound.

I did check the volume levels for dialogue in the menu and that seems to be normal

[RaptorBricks]

Originally posted by The Dutchess:

Interestingly I just ran into the same issue today as I wanted to start a new replay. When starting a new campaign, the intro dialogue from Jesse is completely silent, though the subtitles do show up. Some other sounds are also missing, such as the door in the lobby bathroom being silent when opening, where it did used to make a sound.

I did check the volume levels for dialogue in the menu and that seems to be normal

I don't know if it helps, but I did find a solution to my situation.

I use SteelSeries Headphones (Arctis 5) and managed to fix it by uninstalling the SteelSeries GG/Engine software and drivers, then reinstalling, but without installing the headphone drivers it wanted to install after.

Perhaps try the same on the equivalent software for your headset if possible.

[The Dutchess]

It's a software problem, but not necessarily driver related. Your solution prompted me to check whether I can actually hear the voices on my headphones, and indeed, they are there.

The difference is then in the fact that my headphones are of a 6.1 surround type, which means that the side and back channels have their own drivers within the ear cups.

My desk sound bar is only a 2.1, however.

It turns out that the voice is played back on the side channels, and not on the 2 front channels, So my sound bar won't play them, as they're not actually sent to the sound bar to begin with.

The game doesn't allow for a way to downmix sounds to a 2.1 format itself, so i have to force downmixing myself by setting that up in .asoundrc.

But that does explain why the sounds went missing: the game thinks I have 6 channels, while I can only listen to 2. It's a software problem, just not one the game has control over.

[The Dutchess]

For anyone else who has this issue, make sure that if you have a 2.1 sound system of some kind, the front center channel is connected to both left and right. That way you get the voices and missing effects sounding correct

[s1oth.kun]

Had the same issue but I have the game on epic.. the audio works when u use ur headphone's direct output (in my case I use a razer headphones with 7.1 surround audio software) When I switch to my direct headphones output (speakers barracuda x) insead of redirecting to the 7.1 software its working properly