Immerse Spatial Audio offers an entirely new way to experience sound in FFXIV. We encourage you to experiment with your in-game sound settings in order to achieve the most optimal spatial audio listening experience for you. We recommend starting with the following settings:
Listening Position
Setting this to "100 Character" adjusts the spatial imaging relative to your character's position, making it easier to tell where spatial SFX are coming from. For additional information, check out this video. Here's a short guide to help further explain what this setting does:
Example 1: Listening Position set to 100 (Character)
In this example, sound effects from player A will come from Back Left, those from B will come from Back Right (and slightly above), and those from C will come from Front Right. All distances are relative to where our character is standing.
Example 2: Character rotates 180 degrees.
Although our character is now facing towards the camera, all sound effects will play from the same directions as in the previous example. The direction our character is facing has no bearing on which sounds play from in front vs behind us.
Example 3: Camera rotates 180 degrees
When our camera's perspective shifts 180 degrees, our front vs rear imaging reverses. Now sounds from player A will occur from Front Right, B from Front Left (and still slightly above), and C from Back Left.
Example 4: Listening Position set to 0 (Camera)
For this final example we've set our Listening Position to 0. Now all sound effects from A, B, and C will occur from in front of us and from a distance relative to our camera's zoom position. A will be further left in the spatial image than B or C, but none of them will emanate from behind you. We've found that this Listening Position offers a less intuitive and more homogeneous spatial listening experience, since most SFX will sound like they're coming from in front of you.
Self Player Effects
When Listening Position is adjusted to 100 Character, you may find that your player SFX sound louder than before. Lowering the volume of these effects may help bring increased clarity and separation to your spatial mix.
Ambient Sounds
Some Ambient SFX in FFXIV are affected by Immerse Gamepack, while others aren't. Waterfalls and the hum of Aetheryte crystals, for example, are tied to sound objects and therefore subject to spatialization. Bird chirping in Central Shroud, however, is not tied to a sound object and is unaffected by Immerse Gamepack. In some cases, such as the Ifrit primal fight, you may find it helpful to reduce the volume of Ambient sounds in order to allow spatial objects to stand out better in your mix.
System Sounds and BGM
These sounds are not affected by Immerse Gamepack, so you may find that adjusting them down slightly will allow you to better hear the spatialized sound objects.
These are the settings we used when recording our Tech Demo:
While adjusting these settings is a good place to start, we encourage you to experiment with the tools Square Enix has provided in order to find the right mix for you!
Comments
4 comments
I have listening position set to 100 character, and have tried it set to both 0 camera and 100 character and the immerse free trial audio only ever uses a listening position of the camera. At both ends of the spectrum I can use a ranged ability on a target dummy, and the sounds vary in position based on how I rotate my camera instead of consistently sounding in front of my listening position, which is supposed to be my character at 100. At first I thought the entire thing was broken, but then I realized it's just not working with the listening position setting. Please fix.
Adjusting Listening Position to 100 Character tunes the proximity of the spatial sound effects based on your character's position. However, the direction your camera is facing will still effect front/rear imaging.
Let's say your character is standing in the center of a circular arena and your camera is zoomed out and pointing in the same direction as your character. To the back-right of your character, and very close to your camera, someone is performing the /mandervilledance. With Listening Position at 0 Camera, that /mandervilledance will sound like it's coming from in front of you at very close range. With Listening Position set to 100 Character, that /mandervilledance will sound like it's coming from behind you to the right at some distance relative to your character.
Now let's say you rotate the camera so that it's facing in the direction of the /mandervilledancer. This places that sound effect farther away from your camera's position, but your character hasn't moved. With Listening Position at 0 Camera, the SFX will sound like's coming from far in front of you. With Listening Position set to 100 Character the SFX will still be in front of you, but its distance will be relative to your character, not your camera.
We hope this helps!
That first line pretty much answers my problem. I assumed that since camera facing dictated front/rear audio position that it was also listening position. Trying it out for longer shows that it's not. I don't like the choice to have camera facing instead of character facing dictate whether a sound is front/rear when listening position is set to 100% character but now that I know that it is the audio feedback is easier to make sense of.
I'd like if there was an option to have front/rear imaging to be based on character facing, but understand that it's not currently an option.
Thanks Anthony, glad to hear our response helped and that you're able to make better sense of the spatial imaging now. As of right now we have no way to implement front/rear imaging based on character direction, but we really appreciate you sharing this feedback with us.
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