Having a bizarre issue with audio.

[Sharples]

So I've been having this issue for couple years now and I've looked all over the net for similar reports, I've found several of them, but nobody could conclude the issue.

 

Basically while I am gaming the left-right audio is completely reversed. So things on the right side sound as if they're coming from the left and vice versa. Obviously this is a very frustrating issue. But when I'm watching a video on Youtube or anything on the web, the sound is perfect. Left is left and right is right. It only reverses when I game, I've tested two oldish games, Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty 1 (yeah I don't have a great selection of FPS).

 

This is a thread on tom's Hardware that another user was facing this problem: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/reversed-audio-in-all-games-fine-in-windows-youtube.2744293/

 

I have two headphones and I just bought a new one today. My previous one was the Hyperx Cloud II. The new one is Hyperx Cloud Alpha. Both of them are facing the exact same issue so I highly doubt it's the headphones. The only way I've been able to alleviate this annoyance is to either 1. Turn the headphones the other way (now I can't use the mic unless somebody snaps my skull) or I use software to switch the audio from left to right, which is what I did. The audio in games now works perfectly! E-expect that watching a video on Youtube is now... incorrect.

 

Last year back in April, I got a new computer with new parts. (New motherboard, graphics card, CPU and RAM). On the old parts before this, it also had the same problem. So I'm really, really confused.

 

Hyperx Cloud II had a USB that went into the computer, Hyperx Cloud Alpha has audio jacks. I've tried both the back and front of the case, still the same issue.

 

I could really do with some assistance to help fix this bizarre issue. I want to record games, to me the recording sounds fine because I've reversed the audio, but on Youtube it sounds reversed, so any viewers think it's coming in the complete opposite direction. It's annoying!

 

 

[Wyllio]

I can't really think of anything besides uninstalling and reinstalling your audio drivers. As a safety measure you should probably also uninstall any software that changes or controls sound.

[Sharples]

Yeah, I did that before you posted and Windows didn't load up again. I've reinstalled Windows now with a blank state just to see if that could fix the problem to no avail.

 

If the sound is working perfectly while out of games, then why is it suddenly deciding to reverse it? Surely something else must be controlling how it happens.

[ItsTworty]

Sounds like you have some sort of issue with game ready audio drivers, try using guru3d's driver cleaner and reinstall the drivers for your GPU, sound like you have an old audio driver that is ghosting and making life strange. If you can then please upload your pc specs so we have some more info regarding your pc.  

Edit: Name of the program i used is "Guru3d's display driver uninstaller."

[Sharples]

3 hours ago, ItsTworty said:

Sounds like you have some sort of issue with game ready audio drivers, try using guru3d's driver cleaner and reinstall the drivers for your GPU, sound like you have an old audio driver that is ghosting and making life strange. If you can then please upload your pc specs so we have some more info regarding your pc.  

Edit: Name of the program i used is "Guru3d's display driver uninstaller."

Before I continue, can I just say that Microsoft is a pain? Went into msconfig to set safe mode to boot automatically, so I go into safe mode and then it asks for a password to get INTO safe mode and that isn't the password to the normal boot mode. It's actually from your Microsoft account (which I doubt a lot of people would've known), how bloody confusing! Luckily I typed a bunch of passwords and got lucky.

 

I used that application and selected 'GPU' (there was an audio one as well but I didn't use that just as precaution from what happened last time and given you didn't tell me to do it). It did remove the drivers from the GPU, so I tested a game (in this case L4D2) and issue still persists. So I've reinstalled my graphics drivers again. Specs are below:

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics 3.50 GHz

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

System: Windows 10 Home 64 bit

Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H-CF

 

Sound seems to be from Nvidia High Definition Audio and Realtek High Definition Audio

 

If you need more let me know.

 

 

 

[Arphis]

Since you only face it in game, it may be coming from some game specific settings. Spatial audio could be at fault, so in case you have ingame audio set to 5.1, 7.1 or something fancy just try stereo.

 

You should also check if ingame audio is set to headphones or speakers and try the other one.

 

I am not sure which sound-API CoD 1 and L4D2 use, but you could reinstall DirectX to see if something went wrong with DirectSound / XAudio 2 during a previous install/update.

[ShearMe]

what youtube video are you using to test for left/right?

[Sharples]

22 hours ago, Arphis said:

Since you only face it in game, it may be coming from some game specific settings. Spatial audio could be at fault, so in case you have ingame audio set to 5.1, 7.1 or something fancy just try stereo.

 

You should also check if ingame audio is set to headphones or speakers and try the other one.

 

I am not sure which sound-API CoD 1 and L4D2 use, but you could reinstall DirectX to see if something went wrong with DirectSound / XAudio 2 during a previous install/update.

Spatial audio is set to off, but just in case I enabled it as well but that didn't help anything. As for ingame audio check, I've selected all that was available, Headphones, 2 Speakers, 4 Speakers, 5.1, 7.1, ect. I don't have a massive library of games to test this on but I've noticed it on games like Spore as well (I know, not the most recent of games). Everything just feels like it's in reverse. Hearing somebody shoot front right when it's actually happening back left.

 

I tried reinstalling DirectX, not sure I did it correctly to be honest, I'm confused how to actually 'reinstall' it.

4 hours ago, ShearMe said:

what youtube video are you using to test for left/right?

 

I've uploaded a Youtube video showing it in action. I play the video above for about 25 seconds then go into Left 4 Dead 2, and you can immediately notice that the sound is completely reversed. Like the characters are on the right of me when they're actually on the left. I've also shown the sound options, if you want me to show something else related like device manager or something, just let me know.

 

 

[ShearMe]

1 minute ago, Sharples said:

Spatial audio is set to off, but just in case I enabled it as well but that didn't help anything. As for ingame audio check, I've selected all that was available, Headphones, 2 Speakers, 4 Speakers, 5.1, 7.1, ect. I don't have a massive library of games to test this on but I've noticed it on games like Spore as well (I know, not the most recent of games). Everything just feels like it's in reverse. Hearing somebody shoot front right when it's actually happening back left.

 

I tried reinstalling DirectX, not sure I did it correctly to be honest, I'm confused how to actually 'reinstall' it.

 

I've uploaded a Youtube video showing it in action. I play the video above for about 25 seconds then go into Left 4 Dead 2, and you can immediately notice that the sound is completely reversed. Like the characters are on the right of me when they're actually on the left. I've also shown the sound options, if you want me to show something else related like device manager or something, just let me know.

 

 

ha.... In your video, both the test and game sound properly on my end. This is weird

[Sharples]

11 minutes ago, ShearMe said:

ha.... In your video, both the test and game sound properly on my end. This is weird

I promise, I'm not going insane. I can't quite describe it, I can hear the sound coming from the left side (which is where the survivors are at during the start of the game) but it feels like it's on the back right. When watching the recording on Youtube, I can specifically hear that it's in reverse.

 

If it helps, another thread I found with similar results: https://forums.tomsguide.com/threads/my-directional-sound-is-completely-opposite-when-playing-games-help.396969/

[Arphis]

Just like for @ShearMe the video sounds fine to me, I can hear the characters talk on the left until you turn towards the vending machine when I can hear it center and right for less than a sec.

@Sharples To make sure, the "Stereo: Left Right" sounds correct for you, but the game footage doesnt?

If you hear the video reversed as you hear the game, the issue shouldnt be the game/DirectX because they use a different codec than youtube, afaik.

So unless there is any software turning things around, your hearing might be conditioned to give you false input.

Things you can still try:

 

1. Another pair of headphones or maybe even some cheap earbuds from your phone or something.

2. Mute one channel and check if the game-audio goes mute/quiet when that side faces a sound and gets normal when your unmuted side faces it.

3. Try different games if you have them. Especially something with a wider area, maybe Arma, Squad or something along the lines if you have it. L4D2 and CoD 1 have rather confined spaces and can get a bit hectic, so anything slow paced wide open would be better for testing purposes.

 

Headphones can perform really different from ear to ear, and listening through headphones is different from normal listening.

[Sharples]

1 hour ago, Arphis said:

Just like for @ShearMe the video sounds fine to me, I can hear the characters talk on the left until you turn towards the vending machine when I can hear it center and right for less than a sec.

@Sharples To make sure, the "Stereo: Left Right" sounds correct for you, but the game footage doesnt?

If you hear the video reversed as you hear the game, the issue shouldnt be the game/DirectX because they use a different codec than youtube, afaik.

So unless there is any software turning things around, your hearing might be conditioned to give you false input.

Things you can still try:

 

1. Another pair of headphones or maybe even some cheap earbuds from your phone or something.

2. Mute one channel and check if the game-audio goes mute/quiet when that side faces a sound and gets normal when your unmuted side faces it.

3. Try different games if you have them. Especially something with a wider area, maybe Arma, Squad or something along the lines if you have it. L4D2 and CoD 1 have rather confined spaces and can get a bit hectic, so anything slow paced wide open would be better for testing purposes.

 

Headphones can perform really different from ear to ear, and listening through headphones is different from normal listening.

That's so weird, on Youtube every single video sounds perfect. Except for the one I tried to show off because I was showing it in-game. It just sounds completely reversed to me.

 

If it helps, I had the Turtle Beach PX22 about three years ago from what I remember. That had absolutely no issues aside from well... they aren't exactly durable. Which prompted me to buy Hyper X Cloud II. Now immediately when buying this I could immediently notice that when playing Left 4 Dead 2 that something was wrong (the PX22 didn't have this problem, I've played over 5,000 hours of L4D2 and trust me, I KNOW something is up). It just felt reversed. (I tried support which told me to download the latest firmware. Didn't help at all.) At the time I loved the Cloud II's because the microphone and sound was excellent, so I kept them and just swapped the L channel to R and vice versa using Equalizer APO. Now the game audio worked perfectly for all my games! Except that out of anything game related like Youtube it would just sound reversed. Well, except from the recordings of the videos I DID while these L-R channels were swapped, like this one below:

Go about 3:00 in and you can probably do a test to hear if it's working properly. But I can probably guess that for you guys this one is reversed because of the channel swapping I did. Funny, because it sounds very reasonable to me, I know what's coming and can react to that location.

 

Now I bought HyperX Cloud Alpha because I wanted this problem to go away (it obviously didn't). My first assumption was the headphones so I just figured to buy another pair (probably shouldn't have brought the same company but the sound feels amazing when it bloody works right, and they're super durable, Cloud II still has zero issues aside from this problem.

 

Anyway, I'm on a new OS now and I don't have that software, and I'm on a new hard drive. The other one I used isn't connected anymore.

 

As for your second question, I've muted one side and it still sounds reversed. So if I mute the right channel and all the sound is coming from the left, I can still feel it from the right. And it's vice versa if I mute left and try right, it 'feels' like it's' coming from the left.

 

Can you suggest any free games I could possibly test? I'm literally broke at the moment and frankly, I don't want to buy games merely for testing. The headset alone set me back £70.

 

Edit: I just tried my TV, which is attatched through HDMI and that works fine for both in and out of games.

 

[Arphis]

I just noticed something in this vid

On 1/12/2020 at 11:12 PM, Sharples said:

 

 

at around 1:44 you scroll through the settings of your Realtek driver and it looks like its set to a multi channel system with everything but center and side muted. So you could try to set that to Headphones/Stereo. And if the driver was installed by Windows, maybe delete it and do a manual install just to make sure. I guess Equalizer APO was installed after the problem occured, but you could do a fresh reinstall along with the driver.

 

2 hours ago, Sharples said:

Edit: I just tried my TV, which is attatched through HDMI and that works fine for both in and out of games.

Did you use the TV's speakers and can you try your headset on the TV?

 

The long video has barely any stereo seperation for me tbh, so I cant really tell if regular or reversed.

 

2 hours ago, Sharples said:

Can you suggest any free games I could possibly test?

Out of my head I cant think of one, but you could load a CoD map throw a grenade turn 90° and listen if the explosion is on the correct side. But ...

2 hours ago, Sharples said:

As for your second question, I've muted one side and it still sounds reversed. So if I mute the right channel and all the sound is coming from the left, I can still feel it from the right. And it's vice versa if I mute left and try right, it 'feels' like it's' coming from the left.

...since that was sounding reversed I guess I know the result already.

[Idefixjm]

I actually found a solution for this problem at least for me:
Systemcontrol - audio device - turn off Applications have full control over this audio device

[Astyanax]

This is caused by whatever your motherboard, headphones or soundcard has implemented Nahimic into, if they bothered rebranding it at all.

 

Get rid of Nahimic, its buggy trash.

 

 

[Sarra]

Easy fix: flip your headphones around when you start gaming, flip em back when you're done.