Every time i play a game for the first time i have to immediately turn the volume down to like 10 percent. Does anyone play games at 100% volume? Are games being made to accommodate people who are hard of hearing? Why does the game need to be so deafeningly loud what the fuck.
it's not that the games start at max volume, it's that the max volume is louder than any human being could tolerate.
I think it just follows the general rule that you should turn up application volume and turn down system volume, to get more accurate audio quality. I always have my headphones at about 14/100, although my monitor builtin speakers have to be maxed to hear anything.
i've been playing games on pc for around 10 years and have never seen that rule. interesting
Could be that I'm just making it up. I've never done audio programming or whatever so I don't know exactly how applicable it is.
I think it's probably more about turning up software vs hardware but I dunno, here's an explanation: https://superuser.com/questions/492281/from-a-quality-perspective-what-is-better-turning-volume-up-in-the-software-i
Might also just be more efficient leaving software at 100% because it might not have to do as much processing of the audio data(i.e. multiplying it by a ratio) since audio data is very large but that wouldn't excuse not normalizing the audio to proper levels beforehand.
This is complicated by different operating systems handling volume differently. Some of them have their "neutral" volume (i.e., source-matched +/-0dB) at points other than 100%.
The goal for highest audio quality and greatest comfort is to keep everything at neutral and only adjust the last link in the chain. So if you're playing a movie, you keep the movie at 100%, keep the OS at 100% (or whatever neutral is), and only adjust the volume on your speakers/stereo. You also want to turn off OS-level adjustments, like auto volume leveling and other things which might make it harder to get the exact results you want.