PUBG Fix: Can’t Hear Sounds Directly Behind You In Battlegrounds? Try This

by Sameed Khan · December 12, 2017

Often credited with propelling the battle royale genre into the mainstream, and having won the Best Multiplayer Game category at this year’s Game Awards, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is undoubtedly one of the most popular online titles of 2017. The PC game has quite a player-base, with millions of players logging in daily in pursuit of that elusive “Chicken Dinner,” and that number is only going to grow with the Xbox One variant of the game entering its early access phase and the final build of the PC version preparing for its debut.

As is the case with all early access products, PUBG suffers from a vast variety of issues, the most notable being apparently random drops in framerate. With games such as these, it is hard to differentiate between issues that require a fix from the developers and those that can be fixed at your end. Recently, during a particularly gruelling solo match where I found myself surrounded by enemies, I noticed that sounds directly behind me were completely muted, regardless of their distance from me. I had never had such a problem with any other titles, so I assumed this would require a patch from the developers.

As it turns out, this fairly common problem is a product of the game’s current lack of support for spatial/surround sound and the way your system’s sound is set up, and you can resolve it all by yourself in just a few easy clicks.

If you too, during your time playing PUBG, have found sounds drowning out as soon as you turn your back to them, try the following.

1. Right-click the speaker icon in the system tray to the right of the Windows Taskbar.

2. Select Playback devices.

3. Find your playback device in the list that follows, right-click it and select Configure.

4. In the Configure dialogue, select the Stereo option and hit Next till the configuration is done.

Try running the game now. If you find this hasn’t fixed the issue, you might want to dig through the audio control software that came packaged with your motherboard, sound card, headphones, or sound system for a virtual surround sound option, then either switch said option off or switch to a stereo output. With the Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di Control Panel, for instance, having Speakers / Headphones Configuration set to surround sound while using a regular stereo headset might cause the problem.

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