Quake Champions with 3D spatial sound 🎧 (unknown FMOD HRTF audio)
7Use headphones only with any virtual surround features turned off. SPOILER ALERT: I got 4th place, but I chose this match anyway because it seemed like the most...typical QC experience.
Last on the checklist for Quake week is the latest and...not-so-greatest game, Quake Champions. I could go on and on about my opinions about this game, but honestly you could pick out any random negative Steam review and get the gist of it. So, I'll keep it real with you. The HRTF?
Short version: not so good.
I appreciate the gesture, I really do. People (well okay, just FlamesoFF in the Bethesda forums) bugged Saber Interactive to add in 3D positional audio so QC could compete with other "esport" titles like CSGO and Overwatch and they actually listened. The problem is, Quake Champions might have the worst HRTF I've ever heard. It makes my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro sound like dollar store earbuds. The whole point of HRTF is to widen the soundstage by making players hear sounds all around them. QC just makes sounds incredibly tinny and compressed like very bad virtual surround (think the Clive Barker's Jericho video). Even plain stereo has better directional accuracy in QC!
So what exactly makes the HRTF so bad compared to the other 4 Quake games? Well I'm not certain, but I do have a hunch: it's the audio mixing itself. Now there's no reason to believe that FMOD's 3D audio engine is any less capable than OpenAL's and from Unity demos, I know it's not the HRTF tables. Quake Champions seems to use extremely-heavy dynamic range compression on the audio output. I analyzed the audio waveforms in Audacity and QC's waveform resembled a brick wall compared to Quake 4's nice, even bumps. When the dynamic range is compressed, it becomes impossible to tell direction because there's no real attenuation. On the other hand, I've heard reports of dropped rear channel sounds so there might be yet another root to this problem.
HRTF grade:
D-
Settings:
Windows Control Panel: Stereo
Sound config: Stereo
HRTF: Enabled
FOV: "115"
Credits:
https://www.dafont.com/quake.font
(Use of this font falls under fair use laws.)
#3dsound #spatialaudio #binaural #3daudio #360audio #8daudio #hrtf #headphones #audiophile #gameaudio #quakechampions
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