For a competitive game like Fortnite, it’s important to be aware of your surroundings at all times. This awareness includes both audio and visual cues. While seeing players move across the map is obviously important, hearing someone creep up on you is even more important. To hear footsteps, you firstly need a decent audio solution (check: Best Headsets for Fortnite) that’ are good at audio imaging’ll deliver the ingame audio accurately. Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to dial in the best audio settings for Fortnite.
While scouring through all these audio settings, it’s easy to get confused considering their sheer number. To make the process easier, we’ve fine-tuned the audio settings for our own gameplay, and we’ll help you copy the changes in this guide. This guide will mainly help you set up your audio, for a detailed guide on all Fortnite settings, check our Best Fortnite Settings guide.
We’ll give you a quick rundown in the table below, and we explain more about the settings further down in the article.
| Main Volume | 100% |
| Music Volume | 0% – 20% |
| Sound Effects | 100% |
| Dialogue | 0% – 20% |
| Voice Chat | 10% – 80% |
| Cinematics | 0% – 20% |
| Sound Quality | High |
| 3D Headphones | On (turn off any virtual surround sound tech that comes with your audio devices) |
| Background Audio | Personal preference |
| Visualize Sound Effects | On |
| Audio Output Device | Choose the device you’re using to game with |
Best Audio Settings for Fortnite
If you want to improve audio imaging and overall hearing, follow along for the best audio settings for Fortnite. These settings will work well regardless of the platform, so you can use them on both console and PC.
Volume
To kick things off, head over to the Audio tab on the settings page. Let’s start with Volume. The changes you make in this section will have the most drastic effect, so follow along closely.
| Main Volume | We recommend using 100% here. This is what controls the rest of the elements. If you have it lower, the voice chat, sound effects, dialogue, and other settings will be lowered accordingly. You can control the overall volume of the game via your PC or audio solution’s settings. |
| Music Volume | Ideally, your Music volume should be less than 20%. Fortnite has some really good music, but it can cloud your hearing or distract you if it’s too loud. That’s not something you want in a competitive match. |
| Sound Effects | We recommend keeping the Sound Effects volume pretty high. There’s no harm in having it at 100%, but if your headphones start distorting at higher volumes or you feel uncomfortable, dial it back to 90 or 80 percent. |
| Dialogue | Keep this below 20% or turn it off entirely. It makes the game more immersive, but it offers no gameplay benefits. |
| Voice Chat | You’ll have to experiment with this on your own, as your teammates’ mic quality might warrant you to keep it higher or lower than usual. Some might find it fine at 10%, while others might want it closer to 80% if their teammates’ mics are too quiet. |
| Cinematics | Keep this below 20% or turn it off entirely. This is another sound slider that’s purely about immersion, so it serves no competitive gameplay purposes. |
Those are the main settings that you’ll want to change for the best possible outcome. If you’re ultra-competitive and want the best possible hearing, leave Dialogue, Music, and Cinematics at zero. This ensures that you only hear your teammates and your opponents, making it an intense and competitive experience.
Sound
The Sound section sits right below the Below volume section, and there are quite a few settings here that are just as important. Here’s a quick look at them all:
| Sound Quality | Modern gaming PCs don’t have a problem with handling crisp high-quality audio, so you can leave the Sound Quality setting at High. This will give you the clearest audio quality. |
| 3D Headphones | If you are using a stereo headset, turn on 3D Headphones for the best accuracy. If you have a headset with 7.1 surround sound or other virtual surround sound solutions, we recommend turning those off and going for the standard stereo profile with 3D headphones turned on. |
| Background Audio | This is mostly a personal preference setting and has no effect on gameplay, so experiment with what works best for you. |
| Visualize Sound Effects | This is a setting that a lot of players swear by. It allows you to see sounds on your screen in terms of indicators. A lot of the time, Fortnite’s audio accuracy can be inconsistent. With this setting, you can see visual indicators of where enemies are. Most pros prefer to have this setting on. |
| Audio Output Device | Set this to your headphones/headset/IEMs/… Whatever you’re using to game with should be selected here. |
Voice Chat
This section is purely personal preference. The main thing to check is the Voice Chat Method. Ideally, you should set it to Push to Talk to avoid any background noise when you are not talking. Don’t be the person with the loud fan near his mic – just turn on Push to Talk.
On the flip side, in competitive modes, have it on Open Mic. You don’t want to burden yourself with pressing another button in such intense lobbies. Apart from this, all of these settings are personal preferences.
Conclusion
With these audio settings, your in-game hearing should become better and, most importantly, more distraction-free. Tweaking your sound settings is the same as tweaking your video settings: if you’re a purely competition-minded player, it’s in your best interest to remove any an all distractions so that you can only hear and see the things that actually help you play the game.
