Best VALORANT Audio Settings

Introduction

Dialing in your VALORANT audio settings can give you an edge over your opponents, so in this guide we’ll go over the best audio settings to use in VALORANT. Optimized audio settings give players vital game-changing information regarding enemy movement patterns, ability cues, or strategic insights that visuals alone cannot reveal. If you use the correct audio settings along with a good headset, you’ll have the hackusations coming at you in no time.

Why is Audio Important in VALORANT?

In games like VALORANT, footsteps, abilities, and weapon sounds can convey a great deal of information. Having the ability to not only hear these sound cues when things get hectic, but also knowing where these sounds are coming from (this is where the headset/headphones come in as well) can give you a massive advantage. When you see pros starting a spray just before an enemy rounds the corner, they’re probably going off of sound cues. The same goes for ‘random’ sprays through smokes; quite often these are inspired by a sound that the player has heard.

VALORANT is filled with all sorts of sounds. These include:

Footsteps: The sound of footsteps, indicating the presence of enemies approaching you, helps you dictate a countermeasure as needed because each agent produces a different sound. Furthermore, having the ability to determine how many enemies are coming can aid in figuring out counter-strategies.
Gun Sounds: Many weapons can be heard to locate the enemy. Phantom, Ghost, and Spectre are silenced beyond the 40-metre mark, but even they can be heard if you listen attentively and are close enough. Knowing what kind of weapon an enemy is using can dictate how you approach the enemy.
Abilities: Players can’t hear enemies swapping abilities but once used, abilities do make sounds. This can help you determine where the action is happening on the map, and it can also dictate your strategy; if you hear a Raze boombot rounding the corner, you better be ready to shoot it, for example.
Voice Chat: Voice chat in VALORANT allows players to communicate properly and, as a consequence, perform better as a team. Settings related to Voice Chat will help improve fluency and coordination amidst gameplay, eliminating unneeded chatter and distracting noises.

The best VALORANT audio settings

There are several sound settings in VALORANT, and we’ll go over each of them.

Overall Volume	It should be set to maximum for optimal hearing of all audio. You don’t want to miss sound cues, such as footsteps or ability sounds. Do note that you don’t want to damage your hearing; tweak the overall volume of your system with your headset’s volume wheel. Don’t turn the volume up so high that it becomes distracting or painful, as that can permanently damage your hearing.
Sound Effects Volume	Set this to 100%, as it contains crucial information such as abilities being deployed and so on.
Voice-over Volume	Voice-overs can portray crucial information, but they can also get distracting. For this reason, we recommend turning down the Voice-over Volume to something between 50% and 60%. This way, you can still hear the voice-overs, but they do not get too loud.
Video Volume	This is the skin previews video volume. Leaving it all the way up will have no effect on gameplay, so you can leave this at 100%.
All Music Overall Volume	This is the ‘master volume’ for all music. Turning this off will make the game play no music at all. If this is too drastic of a solution, you can leave it on and tweak the different music sliders separately.
Menu and Lobby Music Volume	This is the music that plays in the menu and lobby. Since it doesn’t play during actual gameplay, you can leave this at 100%, though we prefer to lower it to 50-60% so that it doesn’t get too distracting when preparing for a match.
Agent Select Music Volume	This music only plays during agent select and not during gameplay, so you can leave it on. However, we would recommend you to lower it to a value between 50-60%. Since agent select can be an important phase for strategy discussions, it’s always better to not be distracted by music in this phase.
VOIP Ducks Music	This setting lowers the audio of the ingame music and other ‘side music’ when team or party voice chat is running. This setting mostly comes down to preference: if you don’t have a problem hearing teammates during the game, you can leave it off. If you do, turn it on.
Mute Music When Game Window Out Of Focus	This setting does exactly what it says. We recommend disabling this feature, though. If you’re alt-tabbed (which we don’t recommend when playing; as teammates can often spot and give crucial information when spectating) and this feature is enabled, you might not even hear it when a new round starts.
Speaker Configuration	Set this to ‘stereo’.

Best VALORANT voice chat settings

Voice chat settings in VALORANT are less important than the regular audio settings, but they’re still worth configuring. Having clear audio (and, perhaps most importantly, not sounding like a nuisance to teammates when you speak) for communication can improve your gameplay. You can use the loopback test function to hear exactly how you sound to other players. This will help you configure your optimal mic settings.

Output Device	This refers to whatever device is being used to play back audio — headsets or speakers, etc. Set this to whatever device (headset, earbuds, …) you’re using to play the game.
Input Device	Set this to your input device. Usually, this is the mic of your headset, but if you’re using an external microphone, set it to that.
Incoming Volume	If you have difficulty hearing voice chat, set incoming volume at 100%. Otherwise, you can adjust as necessary; a standard recommendation is 60 – 75% so that the voice chat doesn’t overpower the ingame sounds.
Mic Volume	This depends on your microphone; if your mic is too loud, then adjust its volume by decreasing the mic volume slider. No one wants to get jumpscared when a teammate speak up.
Mic Sensitivity Threshold	This refers to the threshold beyond which your mic sounds will be detected and transmitted. Set this according to your environment; if you (for example) always have a dog barking in the background, you want to set the slider so that the dog doesn’t get picked up, but your voice does.
Party Voice Chat	This enables voice chat for parties. Enable this.
Party Voice during Custom Game	This enables voice chat for parties during custom games. Most players won’t play a lot of custom games, but you can enable this to be safe for when you do.
Party Voice Activation Mode	It is up to you which mode you prefer for communicating with your party; push-to-talk is usually best to avoid unnecessary chatter and provide clear, efficient communications between team members.
Team Voice Chat	Allows for team voice chat when in a game to enable communication among teammates. Always use push-to-talk functionality.

Should I Enable HRTF in VALORANT?

Yes, you should enable HRTF in VALORANT. This setting makes an enormous difference when used with quality headsets during gameplay, and it will make locating sounds a lot easier in the game. For an audible example of why you should enable this setting, you can check out VALORANT’s official video announcing HRTF.

Make sure to turn off any third-party audio software so it does not clash with HRTF.

Conclusion

Overall, the best VALORANT audio setting will vary from player to player, depending on personal likes, dislikes, and their audio equipment. With that said, there are definitely some settings you should change. Enabling HRTF, for example, is a must.

Using this guide as a starting point, you can tweak your VALORANT audio settings to match your setup so that you can get those nasty ‘sound only’ kills.