How To Check Your Apex Legends Surround Sound Output in 2020

Audio Royale
Audio Royale
Published in
2 min readApr 13, 2020

When you’re playing Apex Legends, your entire game rides on milliseconds. With the wrong surround sound output settings, a misstep or a misfire can make all the difference between a win and a loss. Even though Apex Legends requires skill and a bit of luck, there are some checks you can make to be certain your gaming rig is failsafe.

For many players, Apex Legends is the perfect game: hoards of fantastic weapons, awesome battle-royale gameplay, and powerful character classes. But there’s one other development that we bet you overlooked. OK, overheard. Enough with the puns, right? We’re sorry. But there’s one secret about Apex Legends that not everyone knows.

What is it? Apex Legends was actually mixed in surround sound.

Yep. The developers intended Apex Legends’ players to listen to the gameplay in surround sound! Unfortunately, when played on a computer or over standard headphones, the gameplay audio is mixed down — a fancy word for converted — into standard stereo. So, what better way to gain an edge on the competition than to play in the sound format that the game developers intended?

Follow these steps to make sure your surround sound is working, and you’ll be back to hearing enemy footsteps and through walls. gaining that split-second advantage over the other legendary competitors battling on the fringes of the Frontier.

  • Open this file: “C:\Users\[your username]\Saved Games\Respawn\Apex\local\settings.cfg”
  • Use ctrl+F to find the line that says “sound_num_speakers”
  • If it says 8, you are good to go and are currently outputting surround sound.
  • If not, change the number (most likely “2”) to 8 and save the file.
  • Reboot the system

Once you’re reset, read our article on how to optimize settings for Apex Legends. In order to really benefit from the new surround sound output, you’re going to need software, like Audio Royale, to really benefit from the surround sound output. Once surround is enabled, you’re all set.

Want more tips on how to play Apex Legends? Read up here.

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Audio Royale
Audio Royale

The world’s first PC sound driver tuned specially for battle-royale style games.