Why is there no sound in WARDOGS?

Total silence: lower your output format

When a player reported that “if windows is set to the highest sample rate no sound can be heard”, Team17 Support answered on 25 September: “the game does not support this audio level”, and gave the fix it had already posted in three other threads — drop the device to 24-bit, 44.1 kHz, because “very high bit-depth / 384 kHz devices can break game audio”. It gave the same answer to a player whose in-game input and output lists were empty. One player in that thread confirmed it worked on 22 September; the original poster said it did not bring his devices back, and Team17 then pointed him at its voice help article.

1. 01

   Open Windows Sound settings

   Right-click the speaker icon → Sound settings → More sound settings (or run mmsys.cpl).

2. 02

   Open your playback device

   Select the device the game should use → Properties → Advanced.

3. 03

   Set 24-bit, 44100 Hz

   Pick “24 bit, 44100 Hz (Studio Quality)” from the Default Format list and apply.

4. 04

   Restart WARDOGS

   Then check the in-game audio menu lists your device.

Audio that drops for a few seconds is a different fault, and it is open

Since 11 September, the day after launch, players have described the same pattern: every 30 seconds to a few minutes, all audio goes silent for two to five seconds — Discord included — then returns. The reports name Razer BlackShark V2 Pro and V2 X, SteelSeries Nova 7 through SteelSeries Sonar, and HyperX headsets, and several say the playtest never did it. Team17 Support asked for DxDiag files, suggested AMD drivers and switching off Xbox Game Bar’s background recording; the players who tried those said nothing changed, and on 13 September Team17 wrote that it had “shared your comments as a report to the team”. No patch note since has claimed a fix.

• One player using SteelSeries Sonar found the cuts stopped when they played through speakers — worth one match without your audio router.
• Another found it worse while recording with NVIDIA ShadowPlay, though it still happened without it.
• Updating drivers and turning off Game Bar recording did not help the players who reported trying them.

Silent on the headset only

One player reported on 11 September that the game is silent when the headset is the output and fine on speakers, with the headset set as the Windows default. Nobody replied. Windows keeps a separate format for every device, so the 24-bit, 44.1 kHz fix above has to be applied to the headset itself — that is this site’s reading of Team17’s answer, not a report that it worked.

Left and right swap mid-match

A Sound Blaster Z owner reported on 6 October that the game’s audio randomly reverses after minutes or an hour of play. Turning Windows’ Mono audio on and off again restores it until the next time; disabling Audio Enhancements stopped it for them, at the cost of worse positional sound. One report, no reply from Team17.

If it is your microphone, it is voice chat

A dead microphone is a different system from game audio. One player with several inputs found on 3 October that the chosen microphone stops working after start-up or a server switch, and that selecting a different input, saving, and switching back brings it back. BULKHEAD’s Season 1 changelog lists voice fixes, including recovery after failed joins; nothing it has published covers game audio.

Voice chat, squads and the Season 1 voice fixes →

What is not established

None of the following has a published answer, and this page does not supply one.

• Which output formats WARDOGS does support beyond Team17’s 24-bit, 44.1 kHz recommendation.
• What causes the few-second cutout, and whether a fix is scheduled.
• Whether the headset-only silence and the empty device list share the format cause.

Common questions