COD Warzone Ultimate Audio Settings

This audio guide will help you find the best audio settings for louder footsteps in COD Modern Warfare Warzone. I discuss the maximum distance a which you can hear an enemy player as well as a the maximum loudness of ambiance and footsteps sounds in each audio mix.

Maximum audible distance on pavement and terrain

For the first test, lets look at the maximum distance at which you can hear a running enemy approaching. Quit surprisingly, dynamic home theater came out as the best performing audio mix both on pavement and terrain. A close second and third are home theater and boost low, respectively. From this test it is clear the studio reference will give you a hard time to hear enemy footsteps, while the other mixes are generally quite similar.

Maximum loudness outside

You can obviously also better hear footsteps if they are generally louder. For the second test, I consider the maximum loudness (in terms of decibels) of footsteps outside. However, we also need to take into account the volume at which ambient noises are played back because they can interfere with the ability to hear enemy footsteps. Thus, the best audio mix would then be one where ambient noises have low loudness whereas footsteps have high loudness.

From this figure we can see that, surprisingly, the largest difference in loudness is found with studio reference. However, this audio mix is also notoriously low volume (only -10 dB for footsteps) requiring you to turn up your headset or Windows volume quite significantly. Personally, I prefer to use boost low or home theater which both give me much greater footsteps loudness while their ambient noise levels are relatively low. Definitely do not use boost, as this will simply make your ambient noises extremely loud (-10 dB) whereas footsteps are only 9 dB louder.

Maximum loudness inside

Footsteps indoors have quite a different audio signature compared to outside. In this test I evaluate the maximum loudness of footsteps while running indoors, immediately next to an enemy player.

As you can see from the figure above, boost low results in the highest absolute loudness (in terms of decibels) while studio reference has the lowest loudness values again. Another well performing audio mix is home theater. Note that ambient noises are generally less loud indoors and therefore have been omitted for this comparison.

Recommended Warzone audio settings

Based on the previous tests, these are my recommended audio settings to boost enemy footsteps in Modern Warfare Warzone

You should make sure to have music volume set to zero (no need for that really) and to reduce the dialogue volume to about 15%. Effects include anything from gunfire, grenades, vehicles, parachutes, or enemies running and should therefore be set to 100%.

Additional audio tests

In the final section, I did some miscellaneous test regarding audio in Modern Warfare Warzone:

• Friendly footsteps are significantly less loud (-4.1dB) than enemy footsteps (+0.6dB)
• The field upgrade “dead silent” will make your footsteps disappear altogether!
• Firing an un-suppressed weapon (even pistols) will mark your position on the enemies map if they are less than 250m away from you