The SECRET to Perfect Audio for Black Ops 6! (Pulse 3D / Pulse Elite)

in the past week I've been diving deep into audio testing for Call of Duty Black Ops 6 on PS5 experimenting with everything from stereo and 3D audio tweaking every frequency I could find across the ps5s Five band EQ and the ingame is symmetrical settings to get the absolute best sound possible in this video we'll break down why it can be tough to pick up footsteps sometimes how to make different in game sounds more distinct so they don't blend together and how to amplify footstep sound this guide is for everyone no matter what headset you are using first let's talk about different audio modes and how they affect footsteps don't worry about all of this soon you'll understand how it works and I tested different Dynamic ranges audio frequencies and how loud are Footsteps in different audio mixes versus gunshot so we can understand which mode gives us the best audio for footsteps and separating them from the rest of the audio the was done in multiple stages for example running walking and then shooting from the same spot over and over again with different mixes once with stereo once with 3D audio and another time with 3D audio and personalized audio enabled now here you can see the results I'm going to explain how things work these are the audio mixes you can see here for example headphones voice boost and soccer punch and here you can see the footsteps loudness this is an average from multiple tests we made so for example you can see in Treyarch mix it's minus 28. 6 to the closer they get to zero the louder they will be so if you are seeing something like minus 23972 to -3 but there are two mods that have a less dynamic range one is tuer punch which makes gunshots quieter aroundus 6. 37 and you can see the same happens with headphones base boost so this way because the gunshots are not as loud as footsteps you can increase the volume a little bit even more and make them even louder of course I don't recommend any of this not soccer punch and not headphones base boost so I'll explain why but when it comes to the 3D audio things are a bit different so as you can see the dynamic range in some modes increased and in some others it decreased of course it depends on how you are playing what you are doing but you can see for example uh in Stereo we have soccer punch and headphones which have a much lower dynamic range so these are the most different ones from the rest and you can see the dynamic range increased significantly meaning the gunshots are even louder than you are playing in 3D audio compared to stereo but when it comes to the r the dynamic range is pretty much much similar now you may say what is a dynamic range a dynamic range is the difference between the loudest and quietest sound this is our footstep sound you can see how quiet it is and then here we have a gunshot you see how loud it is so the difference between this and this is dynamic range if footsteps are very loud for example if I increase it like this now the dynamic range is low because they are as loud as gunshots we have a low dynamic range but when they are quieter quieter than loud sounds we have a higher dynamic range afterward we have a Direction test for example have a listen to this one pass in concussion now have a listen to this one and now have a listen to this one all right you can hear a significant difference but if you don't it's okay I did all the test so what we did here is considered a fixed position when we are aiming and throwing something on the right side to see to hear actually how much noise is going to be on the right Channel and then on the Left Channel because it helps you to understand where the sound is coming from and here we can also see the sound loudness on the right side and on the left side and the delay it actually has a little more delay on the left when we are throwing it on the right side so it takes more time to be heard on the left which helps you to hear things easier on the right side to understand and it's happening on the right side now based on multiple tests I made on PS5 I'm going to show you the results so here we have the channels left left right right this is the first test and then this one is the second test so now you can see how is the dynamic range in Stereo and 3D audio without any profiles applied and 3D audio personalized Profiles In this case when the dynamic range is higher it's actually better to understand where the sound is coming from exactly or may help you to understand if it's coming mostly from the right side or it can actually change the way you hear things you can understand it's not coming exactly from far right it's a little closer to me and stuff like that so you can see in a stereo in both test we have the dynamic range is around uh 17 DB and the second is around 13 when 3D audio is applied the dynamic range is even more so you can easily tell that it's coming from the right side or you can feel it being on the right side even more and when the 3D audio personalized profile is applied it's even higher so it means you hear even less of the sound or the noise or something happening on the left side when it's happening on the right you can see it's minus 24 so you almost hear nothing on the left side and the delay also changes based on few test again I made here the delay until you hear certain audio on the left side is more than you are using 3D audio I'm not saying it's good or something we will get there soon and this actually might be a good idea for people who just want to find the directions better but there is a huge disadvantage in using 3D AIO at first I was also saying 3D audio is very good when I was testing it but when I did a few tweakings and testing it in the game playing multiple matches I realized 3D audio is not the best choice for Black Ops 6 and soon I prove it to you why it is not and with the settings I will give you you will hear the difference now the next test I made was a symmetrical frequency intensity so you can change the intensity of some frequencies for left and right channels separately which is great and it makes a huge difference in hearing footsteps finding their Direction I will give you the best settings soon for PS5 combined with pulse 3D and Pulse Elite which makes a noticeable difference so here we can change them from minus 50 to 50 which results in 8 DB change in gain you can also see the results on the screen for example between 0 and minus 50 you can see that the difference is around 4.

24 DB 50 and 25 the difference is 2 DB so when you go from 0 to 50 you can expect that things get louder by 4 DB which is a good range now we don't have very low frequencies here you can see it starts from range like 250 HZ but the good news is we have 100 HZ frequency on P PS5 which is so effective for uh hearing footsteps louder I will show you how to do that but it's only available for pulse headphones now before we make any changes here to try to make footsteps louder and stuff like that first we need to understand what frequencies are most effective for footsteps and what frequencies affect other stuff like air strikes or gunshots if you don't have your headphones connected I would like to ask you to connect it right now and listen to these tests I make and if you can't hear them loudly or loud enough you can understand your headphones are not good enough for hearing footsteps and if you have an app or something you can change that but right now you can test it and understand how good are your headphones for hearing footsteps for example between pulse 3D and Pulse Elite Pulse Elite does a very better job so connect your headphones from this moment and listen to the test we are making I'm not going to go so in depth so you don't understand what's going on but I'm going to let you hear the difference so we tested multiple scenarios such as running walking on different surfaces and different testing different frequencies and I realized something very important that most phep sounds are typically uh in the range of 70 to 120 Max 140 HZ that's the most important range for Black Ops 6 when we get an average from multiple scenarios and surfaces so what I did here was to separate the audio frequency say zoom in and uh copy them and test the dynamic range and also test the loudness of footsteps in different frequencies for example from 70 to 120 and then from 200 to 320 HZ I know it just sounds a little too technical but I'm going to show you and you can also hear what I'm talking about so now this part is walking and running on a vit wood and we only capture 320 to 200 I'm going to make it louder for you but I already tested them and the difference between different frequencies I just want you to hear what you would hear in this frequency when it comes to footsteps you see this is not that much of importance and it may blend in with many other frequencies in the game and it doesn't help with hearing footsteps now let's have a listen to 70 to 120 HZ the same part the same graph has the same wood and stuff like that you know you're here this is the kind of frequency that affects the direction of the sound and understanding if someone is running behind you and hearing footsteps and by the way let me pause it for a second if you can't hear it with your headphones right now of course if you're watching on your phone or TV you would definitely not hear this I mean it's going to be so quiet but if you are using your headphones that are that you are playing in the game and you can't hear this right now I did boost it so much and you can't hear it it means your headphones are not that good now this wasn't the only test or the only place I did tested in different situations different frequencies and if I open it once again let's go for the next one 200 to 320 and this one was walking on a grass you here it's not that effective to hear footsteps but when we go to 70 to 120 HZ once again all right and if you can't hear any of this I would suggest just changing your headphone settings and EQ settings because these are low base frequencies and if your headset is weak in these frequencies no matter what you do you would not hear footsteps so good and it's not a game problem it is a headset problem as well I wish we had we could have actually changed these frequencies in the game and PS5 we have 100 h i will talk about it soon that's very effective and for example if you're going to talk about post 3D and post Elite post Elite is much stronger in low based frequencies and when I play with that I can literally hear the difference I can play better I can find enemies and all the time kill them but when I'm playing with post 3D it's really hard sometimes I'm too late to understand what they are doing doing or where they are coming from I will show you example clips of that soon now I'm also going to show you uh the frequencies and the affection so you understand it's not just some BS made by me you know so I tested them in depth and here are the two scenarios we tested them you can see the loudness in 200 to 320 it's like a boxy sound and it was minus 3726 but in 70 to 120 HZ it's minus 34 as I told you the closer we get to zero the louder it will be we have proof that footsteps are louder in this frequencies around 70 to 120 HZ and the same happens with grass of course different surfaces affect how you hear things and this is a proof you can see when it comes to Grass the difference is not that high because when you are walking or running on grass uh a lot of noises will change to higher frequencies because the game is sensitive to where you are walking or running at we have a base that most of the time in most situations it's going to be louder in those frequencies we know 70 to 120 so we're not going to consider every surface because if you're going to optimize for all of this it's obviously not possible now I want you to listen to some of these uh surfaces that I was running at so you can hear how different they sound it sounds different on different surfaces for example base frequencies were much lower on this wood so you got an idea of how it works there is a thing you can do to make it sound overall better and I'll show you soon now this is the most important part of this video because I realized something when I was testing this game that I think many people didn't realize it and it has a huge affection on how loud the footsteps are they are not consistent in this game as well I mean it was much worse when we talk about Modern Warfare 3/ war zone but in Black Ops 6 it's much better but I'm going to show you a few scenarios how they are not consistent so you get a better idea of why sometimes you don't hear footsteps what happens to them exactly so what I realized was testing some ambient noises and I realize when I'm punching something in this location the ambient reduces and then when the punch sound effect is done uh it slowly increases the ambient again I'm going to play it from here exactly around this moment once you are going to punch and a few milliseconds after you are punching it I mean not a few milliseconds but have a listen this part exactly to be specific now you may say what does it have to do with footsteps it's very interesting what I realized I did test a lot of interesting stuff in here but I'm going to just talk about a few of them so I realized when uh something happening around you for example someone uses a grenade even if it's far from you it's going to reduce the loudness of footsteps even in those 70 to 120 HZ frequency a few moments before and a few moments after so if there's an explosion or something happening in the game even if it's far from you it's going to actually reduce the frequencies of footsteps and you won't hear anything and that's why most of the time if something happening in the game which happens a lot uh you can't hear the enemy footsteps and you say like I go to shooting range it's very loud I watch it from the kill cam it's very loud because it doesn't apply to the kill cam I did test it multiple times and now I'm going to show you what I exactly means so this is the part when where we are actually walking and how loud the footsteps are all right so first we walk and run on this surface and then we throw a grenade far away and then we measure the footstep sounds before we throw it the moment we throw it and after the GR sound effect is finished so here's how I actually tested it I threw the grenade right there and then I started walking and measuring the footsteps all right what exactly happened the 70 to 120 HZ which we have a lot of footstep sounds there before we threw the grenade it was minus 38. 6 so that's the loudness we got but the moment we throw the grenade the moment after when the sound effect was completely finished for a few moments the loudness reduced to minus 44 DB it means the moment we throw the grenade everything was fine but a few moments after the footsteps were quieter what it means the foot step sounds are not in a consistent loudness regardless of what dynamic range you are using so this is the footstep sound and then we have after grenade okay we have a before grenade we have a after grenade so now I open the audio file where I tested it so I can show you the proof of how it worked this is the 70 to 120 before we throw the grenade in on the same surface with the same level of volume and we have if we scan the selection the highest we are getting is around - 37. 7 and on the left side we are getting - 38.

6 which I did includeed here now this is the moment the grenade explodes in this specific frequency and then we have the reduction test a few moments after the grenade sound effect is gone this part and if we scan the selection the same frequency we tested there now it is reduced to minus 45. 96 or minus 44. 9 DB on the right side which I included here I I tried to keep it like let's just be positive but the difference was huge but still the differential value was so big so after a while after this explosion was done it again increases the footstep sound and that's the interesting part now let me tell you why it is very interesting they tried to mimic the reality in my opinion they are trying to make it real and in a way it's good but it's also not that good in reality when you hear something very loud for a few seconds your ears are like more sensitive they hear quieter sounds much less if a real explosion happens around you you may not hear quiet stuff even for minutes you know that's a reality but what the game does here is to make that happen in the game and doesn't let your ears decide so what it exactly does is when there's an explosion or something even far from you it reduces the other Quiet Sounds such as footsteps it makes them quieter so it feels like real life in contrast you can't hear anyone behind you around you and the main reason is they are trying to achieve reality here in my opinion maybe there's another reason but what I would love to see is just let it be consistent and let our ears do the job if you hear something very loud in the game let the job be for our ears just don't change the loudness of footsteps because you want to make it more real maybe my ears respond and my brain responds differently when something loud happens and what the game does here is just applying the same effect for everyone I I did test a lot I I made multiple tests here I only included one for you so I didn't want to make this video very long I'm sure it's going to be a long video I'm recording right now but I'm I'm sure it's going to be very long now the next part is I wanted to know how effective this thing is in different situations so what I did was once again do the same test but this time I went to a building and running here and throwing grenade far away you can see I thrw it exactly there and then walking again on the same surface testing before explosion and after the sound effect is done so I wanted to see if it has the same behavior as the previous test and you can again see the results here and the loudness of 70 to 120 HZ on this surface before explosion and after is very similar so what we learn here is if something happening very far from you or if it's outside of a building it's not going to affect the way footsteps are heard but if something is happening around you it's going to affect the footsteps loudness hope that makes sense but if you didn't understand what I'm talking about let me know in the comments and I will make a more in-depth video exactly about this so considering all of this how it behaves when you're are outside of a building when something happens inside there are a lot of things we need to consider when we want to make a custom EQ and change the frequencies in the game and that's one of the reasons of why this video took too long to make the first thing I want to tell you is that we have a dedicated Discord server where I share these results and test and everything the Early Access and then extra data for nerds who want to know how the game behaves in different frequencies for different stuff and we also share the details about uh the best settings to get the least input like for dual sense and ede and stuff like that because there are a lot of videos that we have to make sometimes we don't have time to make videos about everything we are testing and it may take a few weeks or a few months I made a patreon page with some tiers where you can get the early access to data sheets and extra data and the Discord access for people who like to support the channel and this test V are making because it takes a lot of time and it's just $3 per month and you can also help the channel to grow thank you so much I leave both links to patreon and the channel membership in the comments and description below now the next part is gunshots and what frequencies they affect the most so we repeated the same test testing frequencies and see how much of gun noise we have in deep base frequencies and high pitch noises because you're going to hear a lot of gunshots in COD so what I did here was again test uh different frequencies for gunshots and listen to how is the noise for I'm going to give you an example for example we're going to test this one and if I zoom in let's say we want to test for example from 70 to 120 HZ when we are shooting with this weapon this is what you're going to hear you see it's not loud you probably don't hear it at all right now we're going to listen to the gunshots from range let's say from 250 to 350 you see it's still not that effective now if you go for higher frequencies let's say 1K to somewhere around like 6K now you see how effective this one is now this is the range you hear and you feel like the gunshots and now if we go even further let's say from 1K to around [Music] 10K I'm not going to waste your time so let's jump into the results so what we got here was like when when we were just testing all frequencies it was aroundus 2.

49 which is too loud in three Arc mix and then you can see when we tested 70 to 120 HZ it's minus 23 it means it's very quiet it doesn't impact the Footsteps in those frequencies it's not going to bother you but then from 250 HZ to 20K we got a loudness of minus 1. 19 DB so these are the frequencies we want to be very careful about headphones and if they are very loud in these frequencies we're going to reduce them a little bit even if they have a very good neutral sound profile if they are flat we're going to still reduce them a bit more more so it bothers us less I will tell you soon how to set it up to get the best result now I'm going to give you the best PS5 audio settings I've checked ratings. com measurements and multiple other sources to get an average of how left and right drivers respond in pulse 3D and Pulse Elite there's something very important if you use these headphones and you feel the audio is louder in one side compared to the other there might be two reasons One driver mismatch meaning the drivers don't don't produce identical loudness on both sides two hearing loss you may not even notice it but I suggest going to an audiologist taking test and ensure both of your ears are fine I did it a while ago and I noticed my right ear has some loss in high and turel frequencies what you can do later is to increase the Debs of those frequencies in your gear or the PS5 or the Call of Duty settings so you hear things more accurately sometimes your headset drivers are not matching and this issue itself could cause hearing loss over time now that you know all of this I have to tell you pulse 3D and Pulse Elite aren't perfect when it comes to loudness of drivers they are fine but I took an average of multiple tests and tried my best to give you a setting that help both with your health and hearing everything better in the game this is my recommended EQ for Pulse Elite on PS5 it's located under the audio section I suggest this EQ with these settings in the game as metrical settings this is considered to give you the best audio in Black Ops 6 and help you hear everything much better however I suggested with stereo audio not 3D I will soon tell you why this one is my recommended EQ for pulse 3D on PS5 with this game's asymmetrical settings to get the best output with stereo audio now you may wonder about the game mix my recommended mix is first triarch second headphones mode and at last soccer Punch If you don't don't care about getting a headache this Theory makes the most noticeable difference another tip for both PSE 3D and Elite is that these high and trible frequencies may work differently for different people based on their ear shape and many more so if you feel it doesn't sound good enough you can increase or decrease it but I don't suggest changing the rest of the settings in case you wonder what the PS5 frequencies are for these five band eqs I did write them on the screen for you now there are two more EQ I want you to to try these are for pause 3D the top one is based on ratings to give you a flat EQ and the second one is designed to give you louder footsteps you don't need that left and right channel values that's for PC Gamers if they want to use an app to adjust it I suggest a Q factor of 1.