Music volume going up and down during combat ?

[Joraan Adenard.2061]

During a boss fight, the music's volume is always going up and down, seemingly randomly. It's getting seriously annoying. I thought it might be linked to dialogues because it's especially noticeable during Soo-Won's fight (which is dialogue-heavy) but now I have dialogues and effet almost all the way down and music all the way up, and there are still moments when I can barely hear the music and others where it's loud and clear.

 

Any solution ?

[Blur.3465]

You are not the only one, my friend.
I started noticing this as well. I wanna enjoy the music during boss fights, but effects and dialogue literally chokes it.
I LOVE Drakkar theme so I turn up the volume on my speakers big time just to vibe with it -- sadly, despite lowering effects and dialogue, I can barely hear music now and it's on MAX.

[Blur.3465]

I wonder if this will get attention?

Because some effects in game are also over the top -- waterfalls for example are beyond loud.

Still, I'd love to get my proper volume of music back 😧

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Do check that your OS audio settings and in-game audio settings all match your physical audio set-up.  Re-install/update your audio drivers. 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Check if your sound driver settings has any options like "compression" "loudness" "normalization" or "midnight listening mode" and disable them.

 

Options like these dynamically adjust volume to make loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder. But as side affect it may lead to music volume bouncing up and down. You will generally find these settings in the sound control panel of your sound chip/sound card settings.

[Blur.3465]

The issue I am experiencing is that the music stays of same lower volume; it looks like dialogue and effects are generally upped and music is somewhat quieter than before.

Audio drivers are constantly updated with new gcard drivers and I play on fairly powerful speakers. For example, in WoW I don't have this issue. It only recently became a thing in GW2.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Tried a -repair of the client, in case of corrupted files? 

[Blur.3465]

I may give that a go and see what happens.
It's a shame because music in GW2 is a gem to listen to and relax with. When fighting bosses it gets really choked :(  

[Blur.3465]

Actually found this topic when Googling. Seems it's a thing since a while and it hasn't been addressed at all.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

It's the game, not something in the operating system. I run it on Linux and it does the same thing.

 

Its a result of them mastering all the music and sound effects at different volume levels during every era of the game. For example End of Dragons music was designed specifically not to have any clipping or compression and sound very natural (as were some older orchestral themes like Dry Top), so its extremely quiet compared to the Core music which was heavily compressed, likely for the official soundtrack releases on CD.

 

As a result, the EoD music plays at about half the volume, causing sound effects to drown it out whenever they're playing. This is also very alarming when combat music switches between Core, HoT, PoF, and EoD eras. The Path of Fire music especially was mastered to be very intense and loud (due to the God of War theme).

 

The mastering process itself isn't the problem, but that in the last few years they've started heavily mixing in music from past eras with modern tracks, presumably to save on costs. The new map is especially very heavy on Core music despite also introducing several new tracks of its own.

 

They need to implement something like ReplayGain in the game itself.

 

Enabling compression, loudness, etc. in the operating system would actually reduce the problem, not worsen it, as the perceptual volume levels would be brought closer to each other. For this reason I use PulseEffects (now called EasyEffects), on Linux to accomplish the same task.

Edited March 19, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134