SOUND RADAR
Headphones on: footsteps and shots pan around you. Click the direction, and tune your headset for it.
A footstep or gunshot sound plays somewhere around you. N is straight ahead. Stereo panning gives you left vs right; volume gives you near vs far; and (the key convention) sounds coming from behind are muffled (low-pass filtered), because stereo alone cannot separate front from back. Duller sound = behind you. 12 rounds: click the sector you heard, inner ring for near, outer ring for far.
Community starting points, not gospel: trust your ears over any preset.
Pick your headset to see suggested settings.
Disable virtual 7.1 / spatial surround for competitive FPS and play in stereo.
Virtual surround processing manipulates phase and adds artificial reverb that smears left/right positional cues (and can add latency on some wireless chains). Competitive games are mixed for stereo localization: the raw stereo signal gives more reliable directional cues. It is the standard among pros.
Modern games already spatialize sound natively: do not re-process their mix.
Game audio engines build the stereo mix from the real positions of objects in the game, more precisely than a virtual surround DSP that upscales a stereo feed without knowing the game. Adding virtual surround on top degrades positional accuracy.
To hear footsteps better, slightly boost 2-6 kHz (upper mids) and cut 150-400 Hz.
Footsteps and info cues (reloads, surface noises) live in the upper mids; cutting the low-mid mud (150-400 Hz) reduces masking from explosions and bass. Small boosts only: too much gain distorts and fatigues your ears.
Start from a flat EQ and make small tweaks: do not stack bass boost presets.
A flat profile preserves the balance the game mix intends; bass-heavy presets crush exactly the frequencies footsteps live in. Then adjust in small touches for your headset and your hearing.
