In-game sound for TF2 randomly gets very quiet.

TwistedJester

Basically what the title says. For whatever reason, sometimes the in game sound effects (such as gunfire, cloak and dagger decloaks, sentry beeps, etc) get REALLY quiet. I can still hear them but just barely, and certainly not loud enough to tell when important things (like mentioned above) are happening. All the other sound effects (domination, revenge, time left announcements, etc) are fine though. Anyone have any idea what could possibly cause this?

FightTest

If you're running Windows 7:

Start
Control Panel
Hardware and Sound
Sound
Communications tab
Do Nothing

BoomShake

When this happens, see if anyone's 'talking'. By 'talking' i mean, 'has their voice communication button pressed' and their name showing up on the right. When people use the voice com, the game automatically lowers the rest of the in-game sounds a bit, controlled by the variable snd_ducktovolume (has to be set via console or autoexec.cfg, not settings window). I forget what it's at by default. The thing is, sometimes people hold down the talk button if they might need it, without actually talking. This has the effect of lowering most of the in-game sounds seemingly for no reason.

If that seems to be the case, add this line to your tf2 autoexec.cfg file:

snd_ducktovolume 0.8

The value can be anything from 0 (completely mute in-game sounds when people talk) to 1 (full volume ingame sounds when people talk). Fiddle with that until you find a good balance. Personally, I bite the bullet for those button-holder occasions and have it set to 0.1 so I can really hear people well.

TwistedJester

I am indeed running Windows 7 so I'll try that and see if it works.

And it definitely is not just due to people using voice chat, although that is a pretty helpful tweak since I'd rather the in game sound not get drowned out so much just because some people want to be chatty.

Thanks guys.