A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.
2024-11-11
What a dumbass click bait headline.
Has less to do with video games, and more to do with how loudly people are listening to them.
I was in middle school when earbuds came out in the early 2000s and I remember the exact same idiot bait news headlines about ipods, I'm sure there's a 70's equivalent for headphones. It seems like journalists think the concept of volume is totally alien to humanity, regardless of time period.
Turn your volume down, bros.
I SAID TURN THE VOLUME DOWN.
I would if you would stop making that non-stop ringing sound.
(I didn't realize I had tinnitus until I learned that not everyone hears a high pitch whine 24/7. My brain will tune it out naturally unless it's really quiet or someone mentions it. Like, now.)
I've had a minor tinnitus since I was a kid, which I tend to be able to ignore most of the time because I'm preoccupied with other stuff, but the talks about tinnitus in the Escape From Tarkov community reminded me of the phenomenon, and I've been aware of my own tinnitus ever since.
Same as you now - won't hear it unless I remember about it and can't turn my mind to something else.
If you don't notice it every time it's not tininitus just the normal background noise of the ears functioning.
That's a fun way of thinking about it but nope. It's Tinnitus.
Tinnitus sucks ass.... seriously take care of your hearing.
Can confirm. Like.. guys.. it's bad. You can definitely end up having dark thoughts. Don't fuck around. Use ear protection where needed, and check your volume settings!
I've had tinnitus for decades, and it SUCKS. I've always been careful for my hearing, but after a concussion it arrived and never went away.
I play games with most sounds off. I can't use headphones, wearing them gives me a migraine no matter the volume.
I've had hearing tests, seen a specialist. I have no hearing loss, but I do have misaphonia and tinnitus. The combination is pure hell, there is no respite.
I can't distinguish voices in chats well enough to follow what's being said if more than one person is talking. It's even worse online when I can't lip read to decode what's being said.
Project your earholes.
Every time I open a new game, the volume is set to the absolute max, which is orders of magnitude louder than any other sound on my computer. When I go to change the sound settings, I usually have to put the slider comically low before it gets to an acceptable volume range. At that point fine tuning it becomes kind of difficult.
Seriously, why can’t most games get volume right?
Just laziness or ignorance, I made a game and set the volume to 30% by default (it was a bit quiet for my setup), there were no loud splash screens, just some music on the menu - why that is so difficult for developers to do, I don't understand.
It's also an extra crime when they force an unskippable cutscene on you or start a tutorial before you can even access the options screen. The very first screen you should get, should be the fucking options.
GeminiTay streamed Stardew Valley and this was one of her main complaints. The menu never lets you adjust the sound and the game starts with an unskippable scene.
Yup its stupid af. I can adjust my game volume on the fly with the setup I have, so it's always nice to turn that shit down or mute it when I start up a game, but the fact I have to is insane.
You could prep volume mixer too, and tab out when the game launches to turn it down. Or developers could just not put loud splash/logo screens at max volume.
Agreed. The funny thing is some games go the other way around but still kind of get it wrong: Games where the options are a part of a launcher, so you don't actually get to experience your changes as you make them. I guess that's still better than just throwing you into a loud cutscene on startup though.
But seriously. When the game loads, I want the sound to be set to as low as possible, then just give me a slider that plays a sample sound that I can increase until it's right.
Best game ever for sounds (in this context), imho, is dysmantle. People have described the sound track as “hikers listening to birds”. Music only happens in specific places, it’s mostly very relaxing/peaceful, and other than that it’s just listening to occasional zombies/turrets, environmental sounds, audio recordings, and breaking stuff.
I always turn the music and sfx way down (voice stays pretty high, sfx about 20% lower, and music very low) so I legit didn’t notice the lack of music for 22 hours of actual play time (out of the about 100 I put into it). But I didn’t change the sound settings at all for it, it was perfect.
Most games get it right, didbyou try lowering the global system volume down? Mines only at 20%.
Weird, I don't have this problem. Probably some bullshit manufacturers "gaming mode elite" software package setting.
Some games I play I do find I have to crank dialog up and effects/music down.
Often they are just terribly mixed for headphones too.
Especially shooters where the sfx of the guns are just way too loud for how often they are repeated and in comparison to everything else.
I'd almost like to see a shooter game where everyone has silencers on just for the improved acoustics and not destroying ears without messing with settings (and you don't want to lower footstep sfx even if you want to lower gunshot sfx and they are rarely separate sliders).
Glad there's attention on this.
Another area that would probably be wise to study is increased resistance in haptics and possible arthritis or repeated strain injuries long term.
Huh, What?!
-Artillery men, Rock/Metal bands
I played video games for 22 years: no hearing loss
Practiced bagpipes indoor, big room, a few times: like 30dB hearing loss.
Idk
bagpipes are the loudest thing I've ever experienced, those things are a silent killer
Now think of the damage you could’ve caused the rest of us!
We’re saved!
I have Windows volume mixer open all the time. I have developed a habit of pulling the volume down to 10-15% on every new window/app that I open because I hate sudden unstoppable loudness.
Check an app called ear trumpet. It gives you way finer control over the volume of everything
Airpod type devices should be looked at as well, lots of people are gonna have fucked ears for a long time.
You mean earbuds?
WHAT!?
BOOM HEADSHOT.
Ohh fuckin hacks mate.
It would be nice if there was a pre-game audio slider like some games have brightness sliders.
CounterStrike and all it's variations was always nuts with this to me, 'I have the voltume up to hear the footsteps bro' -KACHOW- "BUT THE HOUSE IS SHAKING" 'yeah this noob has an AWP, so of course I also have an mmhph' -THE AUDIENCE IS NOW DEEEF-
No worries for me, I've had tinnitus for over 40 years, pretty sure it's neurological for me, not hearing related.
HUH, WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Jokes on them! I don't even need to worry about video games doing it to me. I've already got some minor hearing loss in one ear from a history of childhood ear infections. That, and my other ear is probably gonna end up with hearing loss from how loud I listen to music. Games ain't got nothing on my music listening habit!
Volume sliders never sound linear to me. I also keep them fairly low. This means that each individual step is surprisingly large in volume difference. I don't get people who go to max volume-- doesn't it hurt your ears? My laptop stays on 10-20% and some applications are turned down from that even further (TF2 is comically low).
Volume sliders never sound linear to me
Ironically that is because (with very few exceptions) every application from OS-s to streaming service webapps to games to mediaplayers uses linear volume slider. Human hearing is logarithmic.
The way typical volume slider works is multiplying the audio sample values with a coefficient that is ≤1. Ie, if you set volume to 50% the input is multiplied by 0.5 and as a result the signal voltage level on the analog output to your headphone or loudspeaker drivers is halved. The kicker—halving the voltage is just 6 dB less volume. This is why if you have sensitive headphones (or big, powerful speakers) you find that you have to keep the volume slider in your OS at 10% or even lower to not blast your ears off. And why the upper half of volume sliders is completely useless.
I have an unconventional speaker setup that makes classical analog volume control completely impractical. Since said setup has the maximum sound pressure level output of around 110 dB at full scale digital input, I have to keep the OS volume slider at 30% and in-app volume sliders at around 20%, resulting the total multiplier of 0.06 (or about -26dB full scale) to have comfortable volume levels. Only exception is Elite: Dangerous; with sound set to full dynamic range I can keep the main volume slider at maximum and enjoy glorious dynamics. Youtube is also surprisingly reasonable, probably because they normalize to -14dB LUTS or something similar.
Are you using Bluetooth headphones?
If so, you might want to look into turning off bluetooth absolute volume. It's supposed to keep volume syncronised between your bluetooth device and your phone/laptop/etc, but some headphones don't seem to support it, wich can end up with them setting their internal volume to max.
computer sounds are way too loud
i have my pc volume set to 50% and still consistently need to turn the master volume for every new game i buy down to 50%, or at least 75%, just so it stops causing physical pain in my ears
Yeah there's a lot of variables for audio depending on peoples setups, but having the volume default to 100% is not the correct thing for applications to do, ever.
I've had tinnitus since my earliest memories. Will I get tinnitus on my tinnitus? Tinnitus squared?
It might alloy into bronzitus if you're not careful.
Shit man I've been suffering from hearing loss for like 20 years (partially due to infections and the rest is listening to music with headphones at high volumes), and tinnitus for at least 12.
I'm ahead of the curve. 😎