In this guide, we’ll discuss how audio impacts gaming performance and experience. We’ll break down everything from hardware tech and in-game design to fit, focus, and reaction speed. So, whether you’re a competitive grinder or a casual weekend warrior, we hope that you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the most often-overlooked aspect of gaming: the Audio.
Gaming isn’t just about graphics anymore. If you want to be truly competitive—or be fully immersed in the single player campaign; audio quality plays a much bigger role than most people realize. And if you’re looking to understand exactly how audio quality can help improve your gaming experience, whether you’re doing competitive gaming or just enjoying single player campaigns, this post is exactly what you need.
From latency and spatial awareness to comfort and hearing fatigue—all the way to giving yourself a cinematic gaming experience, understanding what goes on in the science behind sound can help you unlock some of the best-kept secrets within gaming.
1. Why Audio Matters in Gaming
In a world where milliseconds matter, having great sound isn’t just for funsies so you can hear fake gun sounds better. They’re usually the difference between having a K/D ratio you’ll actually feel good about, and potentially ruining your friendships over who’s carrying who.
Whether it’s hearing an enemy reload behind a wall, catching the footsteps of your enemies around corners, or recognizing the hum of a vehicle’s engine approaching you guys from behind, trying to run you over—much like in real life, audio cues are often your first warning of imminent danger.
We’re literally wired, and have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, to recognize danger from sound and react to it as if our life depended on it. And when you’re able to harness those built-in instincts into gaming, it can give you an advantage so great it will almost feel like cheating!
Almost.
Look, all we’re saying is that if having better audio is cheating, then so is having a faster PC with a better graphics card.
And also a TV or monitor with a large resolution and crazy high refresh rate.
And a variable DPI mouse that’s finely-tuned to your motor skills.
High-speed internet…
Overclocking your PC…
Overclocking your console… (if that’s even possible)
Just saying—you get it, right?
Let’s break down exactly how sound can change the outcome of a match for you and your crew:
- FPS Games (like COD or Valorant): A well-defined soundscape can help you a lot in FPS games by giving you better situational awareness: the key word here is “soundstage”.
While normally referring to acoustic environments, a virtual soundscape in a game can help pinpoint footsteps, gunfire direction, or direct you to a teammate calling for help, all of these often being faster than visually scanning or looking through your mini-map.
- Battle Royale and Survival Games (like Fortnite or Escape from Tarkov): While FPS games place a greater emphasis on speed and reaction time, in Battle Royale and Survival Games, ambience matters a bit more more. These tend to have slower paces where long, drawn-out stretches of peace, quiet, and tension are the norm, and sudden bursts of chaos are rare but always exhilarating.
These are games enjoyed and won best through ambiance. You rely on every creak, distant explosion, or rustle in the environment to navigate threats and make informed choices—and hopefully, get a drop on your enemies before they do you.
- Single Player Games (like The Last of Us or God of War): In these games where no one is out to kill you (no one human at least, on the other end of another KBM or controller), these gaming experiences offer a more cinematic approach.
Immersion is the name of the game here, where the sound quality and comfort take the lead. This isn’t to say that other features like spatial audio aren’t important either—those definitely come in clutch when you’re navigating a huge open world (
or get hoarded by a mob). But single player experiences are all about you, how best can you make it for yourself?
Audio as a Competitive Tool
Professional gamers and streamers don’t use high-end audio gear for nothing. For a lot of them, it’s a standard part of their toolkit—their utility belt, if you will. From features such as low latency in wireless equipment, to literal game changers such as accurate spatial positioning, having these audio features on your side becomes a great way to shave some reaction time off your baseline, and help even out the odds (or tip them to your favor entirely).
Okay, maybe 20-30% is a broad generalization. But it’s also found that having better audio quality is linked to longer gaming sessions due to the reduced fatigue, which helps you stay fresh and focused for longer. And that’s usually the difference between farming some good K/D’s or constantly watching the respawn screen.
2. Key Elements of Gaming Audio
When it comes to online multiplayer gaming, audio isn’t there just so you can enjoy the atmosphere or sound design. When you have good audio, it becomes part of your toolkit—on the same level as having a good monitor and graphics processing. Without these two, you can’t properly process that virtual world you’re in (and win the matches—which is the most important part!)
But, yes. When it comes to the singleplayer experience—it IS mostly about atmosphere and immersion when we’re talking audio..
Let’s break down the core elements that define how audio in gaming—mainly competitive multiplayer—affects your ability to compete, react, and stay one step ahead.
Directional Sound / Positional Audio
When we talk about directional sound, we’re referring to your ability to perceive where a sound is coming from—left, right, above, below, far or near, upper-left-right-11-o’clock-below-the-rafters.
And contrary to what you might think, directional sound as a technology isn’t anything new. As far back as the late 1990s to early 2000’s, PC and console games from that era were already capable of synthesizing directional audio dynamically.
It’s just that different audio technologies handle providing that experience in different ways:
- Stereo: The most basic form—stereo splits audio between left and right channels, allowing you to listen to sound from each side independently. These can offer a general sense of direction, but offer limited depth—this is the standard that most music and video come with.
- 3D Audio: Simulates sound coming from multiple directions in a 3D space (especially above and behind). 3D Audio actually goes as far back as the 1940’s, when Disney experimented with six audio tracks for the movie “Fantasia”. And while the term “3D Audio” did officially start to exist in the 1980’s, hardware limitations prevented the widespread use and adoption of 3D Audio until a few decades later.
- Surround Sound (5.1/7.1): Uses multiple speakers and channels to replicate a real-world soundstage. This is more immersive compared to 3D Audio, but is often more associated with home theater setups, or the virtual versions found in headsets and earbuds.
- Spatial Audio (e.g., Dolby Atmos, Tempest 3D): This is where we’re at right now: Spatial Audio uses advanced algorithms to model sound in a full 360° environment, dynamically adjusting as you move or rotate your character’s view. It does this through the manipulation of sound frequencies to simulate depth and direction.
Why It Matters: In competitive gaming, knowing exactly where sound is coming from—whether that’s an enemy reloading around the corner or footsteps above, or below you—these can give you some serious tactical edge in spotting your enemies first, much like in real life.
Positional accuracy isn’t just some fad or marketing gimmick. When it boils down to split-second advantages, being able to detect enemies well before they know you’re even there can make a world of difference.
Sound Design in Games
Contrary to what most people think, game developers don’t just throw in some movement and attack sounds, and call it a day. A lot of thought goes into a game’s sound design, from the mixing of the various audio elements to the deliberate sound direction choices that most of us don’t even notice until some YouTuber makes a 2-hour long deep-dive into a very specific mp3 file used in some obscure console game from the 2000’s.
Certain games are especially known for leveraging audio as a tactical tool:
- CS:GO (and the OG Counter-Strike games): While Counter-Strike wasn’t the first to have this feature, they’re arguably the IP that put footstep and tactical gameplay together. Listening to footsteps and other movement markers became staples in identifying where your enemies are, allowing you to effectively “peek” behind corners and anticipate when they’ll start actually peeking out of theirs’, so you can pop ‘em before they do you.
- Valorant: If you don’t know Valorant yet, it’s essentially CS:GO but as a hero shooter, so your character can have hero abilities that your team can utilize to help gain you guys the advantage. Every ability has a signature sound, helping players identify what’s coming—even behind corners. And with some abilities blocking or masking areas and hallways, being able to echolocate via footsteps can come in clutch.
- Warzone (and all other Call of Duty games): As the free-to-play mix-of-everything from Battle Royales to limited-time modes like localized team deathmatches within the huge main map, spatial or directional audio cues can help in spotting revives, respawning enemies who are parachuting, or locating loadout drops that you, or your enemies, call-in. They can also help you quickly dodge enemies who will be trying to run you over with trucks and ATV’s, or talk smack through the proximity chat long enough that you’ll be able to locate and flank them where they’re hiding from.
- Fortnite: Build sounds, reloads, and pickaxe swings are all loud for a reason. With a map as huge as Fortnite’s, you can’t be looking at all the things all the time. While the game doesn’t exactly go for realism, and instead for a more cartoony direction, audio cues can help all players, skilled or casual, track opponents with ease.
Why it matters: You can argue split-second reaction times all you want. But if you’re able to detect and hone-in on your enemies before they do, or a lot sooner than if you were relying on reaction-time alone, wouldn’t you take that kind of advantage? Sure, we aren’t cats or dogs with super powerful hearing, but we have evolved to rely on our hearing enough to hunt—why not use it for gaming?
Dynamic Range & Loudness
Dynamic range refers to the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds in a game. The balance here, as well as the overall separation of audio you can get, is crucial to both performance, and enjoying your gaming audio experience.
Think of it this way:
- Gunshots: Should feel sharp and attention-grabbing. They’re not a naturally-occuring sound, so they should contrast and feel separate to the background/ambient audio.
- Dialogue or team chats: Need to be clear and distinct, without getting buried by all the noise and battle chaos.
- Ambient cues (doors creaking, footsteps, distant gunfire): Must be audible and distinct, without overwhelming all the other key sounds. Think real life: footsteps aren’t competing with the music that’s coming from your phone or the TV in the living room, right?
When and where it goes wrong: Most of the time, audio gets compressed too much. When it comes to games, that usually doesn’t happen on the software level. But audio profiles get compressed more on the hardware level: stock speakers, subpar audio systems, stereo-only headphones and earbuds—these compress everything, flattening out all the important contrasts and nuances that are effectively datapoints that our brains keep track of.
Not exactly a big issue when you’re just listening to music. But when you are gaming and interfacing with everything in a virtual world, losing those audio points can be huge. This means you won’t be able to tell if the footsteps are nearby or far, as well as any other subtle indicators. That’s of course, if you’ll even hear these in the first place.
Why it matters: A well-mixed, well-balanced, and well-laid-out soundscape can help your brain prioritize what to pay attention to, and where to hone-in fast—this is how this type of audio advantage works. Over-compressed or poorly mixed audio can also cause fatigue over time (which, let’s face it, nobody plays for just one match, right?); ultimately this added fatigue can compound into losing you a bit more of your reaction time.
It’s a lose-lose scenario for you, right?
3. Hardware Tech That Makes a Difference
Behind every win or perfect flank is your audio hardware doing its thankless, often unseen, job—which we here at GamingEarbuds.com want to change. Our audio hardware is arguably the most unsung and least appreciated hero that helps us enjoy our gaming, more than even top-tier graphics, we’d argue.
Don’t believe us? Just try unplugging all of your audio hardware, or put them on mute, before you start gaming.
We could spend an entire set of blog posts discussing all audio hardware from speakers to full-on home theater sound systems. But for now, we’ll be focusing on earbuds and over-the-ear headsets.
So let’s break down these mystical earbuds and headsets, and try to understand the factors that can genuinely influence performance—not just make our games and music sound cool on paper.
Drivers & Frequency Response
When people talk about “driver size,” they often assume bigger = better. That’s… actually true. But it’s also not that simple.
- Driver size (e.g., 6mm vs. 10mm) does affect how much air is moved and vibrated (you know, to produce the desired sound), and the size does impact bass response (i.e. how much bass you have) and overall loudness. However, we believe that…
- Tuning and frequency response matters more. These days anyone can make earbuds or headsets that give off exceptionally high levels of bass. But if you truly want enjoyable experiences with your earbuds or headsets that balance highs (footsteps), mids (dialogue), and lows (explosions) without one overpowering the others, tuning and frequency response is how you get there.
What to look for:
- A base frequency range of ~20Hz–20kHz is standard, but flat, well-tuned sound signatures are key.
- Gaming-focused earbuds often boost mids and highs to enhance your perception of spatial and tactical cues.
Having dynamic dynamic drivers can let you cover a wider frequency range. However, some of these drivers can end up underperforming in certain frequency ranges causing sound distortion, for example.
Latency
We all know what latency is from gaming, and it’s the same thing when it comes to audio. It’s the delay between what happens on-screen (or your music player) and when you hear it. Even a slight lag can ruin your enjoyment by disrupting immersion, which can compound even more and mess up your timing.
- Wired earbuds: Offer virtually zero latency. Still the gold standard for competitive gaming. However in day-to-day use, the wires can get in the way of your movement, whether they’re too long or too short.
- Bluetooth: Varies wildly. Standard SBC codecs can be unplayable for fast-paced games. However, newer versions such as those from Bluetooth 5 and up, aptX Adaptive, LC3, etc. tend to be comparable to wired options.
- 2.4GHz Wireless (via USB dongle): Currently the most stable low-latency option for wireless setups. It’s also plug-and-play, needing you only to turn on your device and plug in your dongle via USB—which also, doesn’t need to be USB 3.0. Any USB connection will work well; just don’t use it on a cheap USB hub to be safe.
Why it matters: A delay of even 100ms can make your movements late and out of sync, This will throw off your ability not just to be properly reflexive, and react accordingly, but also enjoy your gaming. Even if you’re training.
Noise Cancellation (ANC vs. ENC vs. Passive)
For some people, noise cancellation might not be a big deal. But there are two main benefits with having good noise cancellation when it comes to gaming: immersion, and cutting out distractions.
- ANC (Active Noise Cancellation): Uses microphones to cancel out ambient noise around you. How this works is that it takes the recording of the ambient noise and inverts the sound frequency, theoretically cancelling out the soundwaves, and effectively turning down the affected “noise” to 0 dB. Will it completely make the outside noise silent? No. Does it turn a lot of that noise down? Yes. And it will depend on your headset or earbud’s ANC quality.
- ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation): Working the same way as ANC, Environmental Noise Cancellation improves the mic signal by canceling background noise specifically during voice chat.
- Passive Isolation: The noise cancellation that we’re most familiar with, this is the physical seal on your ear canal if you’re using earbuds, or around your ears if you’re using headsets. When it comes to headsets, this will be highly dependent on the design and engineering of your device, and the padding. However with earbuds, having great ear tips can do wonders here, and aftermarket ear tips are also widely available—some even having advanced memory phone and medical-grade silicone hybrid tips.
Why it matters:
- Blocking out outside noise and distractions (keyboard noises, fan hums, outside noise) isn’t just to help you become more immersed. Dealing with less unnecessary noise can help you zone in better by freeing up more of your “brain RAM”—which we believe is the correct medical term (don’t quote us on that!).
- Clear voice input means better callouts and coordination, means better team performance overall. This is the same in gaming and the military, where the modern soldier has a lot of advanced communication equipment that actually incorporates a lot of the audio tech we use in gaming—just in a more rugged, explosions-resistant package.
Mic Arrays, Beamforming, and Team Comms
When you’re playing mostly singleplayer, this isn’t a thing you should be worried about. But when you’re playing team-based multiplayer games, mic quality is a make-or-break point not just for your matches, but also your friendships (potentially).
- Mic arrays: Multiple mics work together to isolate your voice and reduce noise. Remember how ANC and ENC works in the previous section? Most modern earbuds or headsets (and even video calling apps like Zoom) have software that actively works with mics to isolate your voice and give some really clear output.
- Beamforming: Focuses the mic’s pickup pattern on your mouth while ignoring background chatter or game audio bleed. This is a more hardware-forward approach, more common among higher-end mics and headsets/earbuds.
- DSP (Digital Signal Processing): Is a very broad term in the audio tech world, but for this article we’ll be focusing on how it works, which is by enhancing clarity and volume consistency in real time. It’s essentially the same as audio normalization, where the peaks and lows are compensated by either increasing or decreasing lows and peaks, respectively, (hence the term normalizing). But while normalization is more commonly used in post-processing, DSP is all live when it comes to gaming headsets and earbuds.
Why it matters: Clear comms improve your performance through better coordination, provide better clarity while reducing misunderstandings, and keep everyone dialed in. If your mic is cutting out, distorting, or even going full static, you’re not just annoying teammates—you’re literally holding back your squad.
And more importantly: you’re gassing up that person in your team who’s gonna end up carrying everyone, and you’re not gonna hear the end of it for a while. You don’t want that, right?
4. Software, Processing & Customization
As much as you’ll shell out trying to get the best headsets or earbuds, hardware is just half the story. The real secret sauce lies in how your audio is shaped after it’s captured or produced—which isn’t necessarily just limited to the music industry; gaming does this too but it’s all rendered in real-time through the game engine.
Here are the factors and elements that come into the software processing of audio.
EQ Tuning
EQ (Equalization) is all about adjusting the balance between frequencies. When it comes to gaming, most of us can only toggle the volume levels of the Effects, Music, Voice Chat, and Master volumes; and we can’t really finetune anything else beyond that.
That said, here’s an overview of what actually comes into play:
- Footsteps in FPS games like CS:GO or Warzone: In the upper mids region (2k–5k Hz).
- Explosions, gunshots, crashes: In the sub-bass region (20–80 Hz).
- Either boost or drop the levels within these frequencies to highlight or mute certain sound frequencies. So if you want to hear footsteps and other audio cues better, bump the upper mids and lower the bass slightly to hear this range better.
Why are we telling you this?
Yes, in-game you can’t really fine-tune these things like you would graphics settings. However, you can get an EQ app and program different presets that can work well with certain games AND your audio device (each game, and each audio device is different, remember? They gotta match if you want the best outcomes)
Many gaming earbuds or companion apps come with gaming-specific EQ profiles. Test them, then tweak to your preference. Presets are a great starting point, but manual tuning (and fine-tuning) will give you that “just a little bit more” competitive edge if you know what to tweak …which we’ve just shared.
DSPs, DACs & Amps
Let’s break it down quick:
- DSP (Digital Signal Processor): Similar to what we talked about in mics—just in a different application. DSP here alters the sound in real time such as enhancing footsteps or reducing sibilance (i.e. the super high pitched hissing sounds that are annoying for 99.99% of people).
- DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter): Converts digital sound into analog signals that your earbuds can use. The better the DAC you have, the clearer, and more game-accurate your audio will be (i.e., the less compression you will face, so the sound quality will retain a lot of the natural spacing between them)
- Amp (Amplifier): Boosts the power of the audio signal. This is a lot more important for high-impedance headphones and less crucial for most earbuds—headphones need more power since they have larger hardware that needs more electricity to run. But having good amps regardless of the type of device you have can still make a good difference in clarity and punch because your headset or earbud won’t have to work as hard.
Why it matters:
- Mobile users: Often limited by poor onboard DACs. Speakers just aren’t the priority of most phone manufacturers when designing and making phones. So external dongles or gaming earbuds with built-in DACs can help a lot.
- PC gamers: May already have decent onboard processing—usually embedded within the motherboard itself—but adding a DSP or DAC can help upgrade clarity and positional accuracy.
Console gamers: Need compatibility with your TV’s built-in sound systems, or through USB wireless dongles.
Spatial Audio (Tempest 3D, Dolby Atmos, Windows Sonic)
Spatial audio creates a 360-degree sound field around your head—think of it like a portable personal surround sound system you can carry in the palm of your hand (for earbud users), or carrying it around in your bag or around your neck (for headset users).
The best thing about spatial audio is that you can hear not just where a sound came from, but how far and in what direction. This is a big difference.
- Tempest 3D (PlayStation): Sony’s own proprietary system. It is deeply integrated with games like Horizon: Forbidden West and Returnal.
- Dolby Atmos: Works across Xbox, PC, and even mobile devices. Provides nuanced height and distance cues.
- Windows Sonic: Built into Windows 10/11, free, and solid for entry-level spatial positioning.
Pros for competitive play:
- Makes it easier to locate enemies above/below or behind walls, doors, and hallways.
- Enhances immersion in fast-paced shooters or in open-world/singleplayer games.
Cons:
- Can sometimes muddy directional cues if poorly implemented or used with low-end equipment.
- Some players prefer flat stereo for precision in esports-style shooters.
One thing to note when it comes to spatial or 3D audio is that there is a difference between spatial on a software and hardware level. Ideally you’d want both of these with you since whatever the software is churning out, you know the hardware will be capable of sending that spatial sound accurately through to your ears.
However if a headset or earbud is really incapable of 3D or spatial audio, there will be no such thing as spatial; you’re essentially just hearing sound panning from left to right in a stereo system.
5. Human Factors
When it comes to gaming audio, the tech is important—but your own personal experience is just as crucial, if not, even more. After all, we’re not cyborgs who need to worry about specific ports connection ports and driver compatibilities to enjoy our gear right?
At the end of the day, everything is subjective when it comes to your enjoyment. And these human factors play a big role in making sure you’re both comfortable and protecting your hearing in the long run, while aiming for peak performance.
Ear Fit & Comfort
Let’s face it: nothing ruins an immersive gaming experience faster than any kind of ear discomfort. Comfort can mean a lot of things and can even come from the sound waves themselves. But usually, comfort means having the right fit on your ears.
Everyone’s ears are like fingerprints: no two ears are alike. So if your earbuds or headsets don’t fit right, you’re simply not getting the best audio experience you can.
- Poor seal = poor soundstage: A loose fit doesn’t just mean that outside noise can come in. The bass response and spatial accuracy can also get compromised. Having a good seal is critical for those who rely on directional cues with pinpoint accuracy.
- Comfort over long sessions: If your earbuds or headsets don’t sit well on your ears, it could drastically hurt your performance after a few hours of gaming. When you’re uncomfortable, your focus gets split up and you will literally not be “100% in the game”. That split in your focus can ultimately cost you some bad K/D results in competitive play, or even that high rank you worked hard to get.
- It’s simply annoying: Imagine constantly fixing your earbud or headset’s position. That’s gonna ruin not just gaming, but listening to music, watching movies, or even doing a bit of work or studies. The better your earbuds or headsets fit your ear, the less you’ll have to worry about, and the more you can truly dial yourself in—it’s that simple.
Pro tip: Look for gaming earbuds with adjustable or multiple ear tip sizes to ensure a good seal and comfortable fit. A proper fit also improves sound isolation, which helps improve game audio clarity.
Plus, if you can’t get earbuds with multiple ear tip sizes, you can get those too from sites like Amazon or AliExpress—they’re super cheap and they’re nice to have around in your house in case you need them. But then again, why would you want to buy these separately when you get earbuds that come with multiple ear tips?
Hearing Fatigue
Ever played gamed hard for hours and noticed your ears start to feel heavy and “weighed down”, like you’re wearing ear plugs that are tied to literal dumbbells or kettlebells. Or your brain ends up all fuzzy and it feels like you’re kinda tipsy but you haven’t drunk anything at all?
This is what’s generally called hearing fatigue, and it’s caused by a combination of factors like using earbuds/headsets for long periods of time, harsh treble, and poor audio tuning.
- Harsh treble and high frequencies can strain your ears and brain, leading to tiredness and eventually, your inability to focus. This is why nails scratching a blackboard, or cutlery being dragged over dinner plates have been such meme annoying sounds for as long as they have been.
- Poorly balanced audio where certain frequencies overpower others can also make it harder to concentrate when gaming, or process audio in general. Usually, when we’re given control over an equalizer, we have a tendency to max out that slider and go HAM on the bass, mids, and/or treble frequencies—that’s not a good thing to do. Instead, when customizing your EQ’s, pick a preset and then tweak the sliders slightly.
- Long-term fatigue is a real concern, especially in marathon gaming sessions. The problem here is that “marathon” is subjective. What counts as “marathon” to non-gamers and ear doctors can just be an average, or even quick, gaming session for regular gamers. Take off your earbuds or headsets at regular intervals and let your ears relax every now and then.
Pro tip: Look for earbuds that offer customizable EQ settings—usually through a companion app, or through a desktop app on your PC—to reduce harshness and boost clarity at certain frequency ranges. Finetuning these can let you play for longer, without wearing yourself out.
Hearing Safety
Gaming for long hours can take a huge toll on your hearing. Prolonged exposure to poor-quality sound can lead to damage in the long run. That loud explosion from gunshots or grenade explosions in-game may sound awesome, but constant exposure to those sounds can contribute to long-term hearing loss—much like the real thing.
Here are some ways on how you can mitigate that:
- Volume levels: Always have your volume levels at just enough. Playing sound too loud will damage the delicate instrumentations in your ear, which will cause permanent hearing loss over time. However…
- Poor audio quality can also mask important in-game sounds and audio cues, requiring you to crank up the volume to catch subtle cues.
Pro tip: Use the 60/60 rule—keep the volume at 60% of the maximum and take 60-minute breaks to rest your ears (have a break every 60 minutes). Also, ensure your earbuds offer clear, clean audio to avoid unnecessary volume increases.
Remember, you’re blasting your eardrums with direct soundwaves—regardless if you’re using earbuds or headphones. Use just enough to have an enjoyable listening experience. And fortunately, with the noise cancellation tech we’ve got these days—whether they’re active or passive—most of the outside noise gets filtered or blocked out anyways, making the need for high volumes a lot less than what it used to be.
6. Pro Tips & Optimization
Now that we’ve covered the science behind gaming audio and how it impacts your performance, it’s time to get practical. Here are the little tweaks you can make at the end of everything that can help squeeze a bit more optimization that can give you that 1% more competitive edge that you’d need.
Audio Settings to Tweak In-Game
Once you’ve got your gear set up from the right hardware to the extra software, the next step is optimizing your in-game audio settings. While not every game has its own set of audio controls, and not every game will give you as much control over your audio settings as they do for the graphics, here are some tweaks you can make in case they are available..
- Lower down or turn off background music: This one is fairly universal. Music can often mask important sound cues or just drown out a lot of crucial audio cues. Having this up can give a more cinematic experience—which is great when playing singleplayer, but not that essential in competitive online gaming. Plus, it’s another thing that will compete with other more important things like voice chat, especially in games with team coordination.
- Adjust dynamic range: Some games offer a “Dynamic Range” setting. Reducing this can help compress the volume levels down so you don’t have to adjust your volume constantly. This can definitely help manage fatigue as we’ve laid out above, while keeping your hands free to focus on getting your kills up, and your deaths down.
- Footsteps and gunfire: Some newer games like Call of Duty Black Ops 6 do allow you to adjust specific sound elements outside of the usual master-sound-music-dialogue slider options. However most of these advanced features are kept behind a paywall, so we’re generally still at the mercy of what controls game devs decide to give us. Fine-tuning these higher frequencies if your earbuds or headsets are lacking can help you squeeze out that extra bit of competitive edge by enhancing these critical sounds.
- Test and experiment: Getting the right audio balance is a combination game. Every ear, player, room, headset, earbud, and even sound mixer is different. Don’t be afraid to tweak settings and test out which exact combination of settings and gear feels right for you, and keep track of how it feels during a match. Save these settings under different profiles, if possible.
Pro tip: In ultra-competitive shooters, consider prioritizing the footstep and environmental sounds over some extra bass, background music, or non-essential noises. This allows for better spatial awareness and quicker reaction times—just layer these in after-the-fact, mostly to improve your comfort.
TL;DR: Our Recommended Features for Full Send Competitive Advantage
Let’s boil everything down to the core essentials. If you’re shopping for new gaming earbuds, these are the top features we believe can make all the difference especially in competitive gaming.
- Low latency: A low-latency connection (wired or 2.4GHz wireless) will minimize delay between action and sound, ensuring your audio matches up with what’s happening in the game. The way we see it, wired IS the gold standard in latency so if you’re looking for wireless earbuds or headsets, you should be looking for latency that’s as close to that 5ms to 10ms range. Fortunately, we’re in the 2020’s and we have wireless options for earbuds and headsets that can come extremely close to that at latencies of about 20ms or less via Bluetooth or 2.4GHz wireless.
- Good fit: A proper fit will improve sound isolation, which will help ensure that you don’t miss those subtle kill-or-be-killed audio cues like hearing enemy footsteps or them reloading. When going for earbuds, having customizable ear tips are a must. But if you’re going for headsets, while a good fit and seal over the ears is usually covered by most models, it’s the weight of the unit that you’ll need to worry about more—especially as neck strains from the weight compounds over time, which can happen during longer gaming sessions.
- Tuned mids and highs: You want clear mid-range frequencies to hear voice chat and environmental cues, and crisp highs for sharp sounds like gunfire. Again, you’ll need third-party EQ apps for these if you can’t get these clear mid-range frequencies naturally from your earbuds or headsets. Having some amazing bass is great for listening to music or watching movies with. But when you’re gaming competitively and you need to coordinate with your team, gaming priorities just do be different.
- Noise isolation and cancellation: Both ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) and ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation) help block out distractions and unnecessary background noises by a lot. In our view, having good passive noise cancellation (such as from good ear tips for earbuds or having a good seal for headsets) will do 80% to 90% of the work, having these features in place will get you the rest of the way there.
Pro tip: Look for gaming earbuds with a detachable mic for better voice clarity, or better yet: get a separate mic entirely. Let’s face it: if you want the best of both worlds, you’re better off buying great earbuds or headsets, and a great mic, separately. A mic that reduces ambient noise can make communication in team-based games much clearer, and much like how having dedicated drivers in earbuds can produce great sound, you’re simply better off having dedicated hardware for your mic too.
There’s a reason why most streamers use dedicated mics in their setups—and no, it isn’t so that they can look more “pro gamer”. Plus, you’ll be able to lean in and out of the mic for comedic effect when voice chatting with your team. We’ll be covering mics and streamer setups in the future—watch out for those!
Examples from Pro Setups
Let’s take a look at what pro gamers use in their setups. They know that gaming gear isn’t just about looks or comfort. At the end of the day it’s all about performance.
- Ninja’s Setup (Fortnite): Ninja uses a high-end headset with a directional microphone, prioritizing sound isolation and clear communication for his stream.
- Shroud’s Setup (FPS Games): Shroud opts for earbuds with extremely low latency and customizable EQ settings, giving him clear soundscapes with pinpoint directional accuracy.
These players look for low latency, comfortable fit, and audio clarity above all else to maintain their competitive advantage—and if these are your goals, you should too.
Conclusion: Don’t Just Plug & Play. Optimize It For You
At the end of the day, having great gaming audio isn’t just for flexing. It’s a part of your toolkit that can help see you and your team through to your wins.
Whether you’re navigating a battlefield with lots of explosions and gunfire going off, communicating with your teammates to flank enemies that are talking sh*t over proximity chat, or immersing yourself in your favorite single player game world, having an enjoyable sound quality that works for you directly influences your performance, and the quality of experience you’ll get out of your $60 game investment.
What Now?
Now that you understand the science behind gaming audio more than you used to, audit your own setup.
- Are your earbuds or headsets giving you the clarity and positional awareness you need?
- Are your settings optimized for the game you’re playing?
- Do you need to install third-party EQ’s and other software to help optimize your gaming audio?
By applying these principles, you’ll be able to level up your gaming and gain that extra competitive edge most people overlook.
Plus, by applying these new knowledge immediately, you’ll be able to retain more of these a lot sooner, and become your own expert when it comes to audio.
Stay safe out there, and happy gaming.
