Sound in MSFS2020

[Turpentine 375]

There are tons and tons of threads about the visuals (FPS, 4K, render scaling and the likes) but I cannot find much information about sound. I devoted as much money and time to sound than picture quality when building my home theater system, yet never in the past paid much attention to that dimension when simming. I currently have two small low quality Logitech speakers sitting on each side of the screen and a subwoofer under the desk, and that's it.

So let's start with a basic question: how is the surround sound in MSFS2020? Or is not that relevant in a flight sim context (there's not much "peripheral action" like in a movie)?

And second: what is your sound setup?

[Nedo68 533]

well if you ask me, never heard any better sound on external airplanes.

I fly with every sound set at 100 cept the engines i lovered them to 50-60 this way you hear all

the noises a cockpit makes when moving on ground and especially in the air.

The cockpit sounds i love them, very immersive.

[Turpentine 375]

8 minutes ago, Nedo68 said:

well if you ask me, never heard any better sound on external airplanes.

I fly with every sound set at 100 cept the engines i lovered them to 50-60 this way you hear all

the noises a cockpit makes when moving on ground and especially in the air.

The cockpit sounds i love them, very immersive.

Thanks! Do you have a basic 2-speaker setup? Headset?

I'm trying to figure out what kind of setup would maximise immersion.

[4L0M 33]

Microsoft Flight Simulator natively supports Dolby Atmos if you have the hardware for it. 

It sounds fantastic to me in Dolby Atmos with a 5.1.2 surround setup, but I did have to turn the ATC voices down a touch as they were REALLY loud.

 

My setup is 2080 RTX HDMI in to Denon Atmos/DTS-X certified amp, outputting to 5 Surround Speakers, 1 Sub Woofer and 2 Dolby Atmos height speakers HDMI out from Denon to Samsung Qled 65" 4k TV.

[EmaRacing 302]

Sennheiser HD598, they do everything without needing an amplifier and they're light, very very high quality for listening to music too, the price doesn't reflect the sound quality you get.

[Turpentine 375]

54 minutes ago, 4L0M said:

Microsoft Flight Simulator natively supports Dolby Atmos if you have the hardware for it. 

That's really great to hear! More $$$ out of my wallet...

[molleh 451]

I'm glad you made this topic. The sound in MFS is PHENOMENAL and one of my favorite features of the new sim.  For once it's not just about "does this aircraft use sound samples recorded from the real thing" but rather how well is it mixed? How is the spatial processing? What's the ambiance like?

I joined one of the popular flight sim streamers for a bush trip fly-along and at one point we took turns landing on a sand bar. With my engine off, just listening to everyone attempt the landing (or go around, or crash..) I was amazed at what I was hearing. You can really tell they put a lot of thought into distance and directional effects.

The other big thing for me is ambient sound effects. Forests, beaches, open water, trees, grass, all make appropriate sounds (including bugs and wildlife!) and not only that, the wind affects all of it. So if you're parked on a beach with calm winds, you hear gentle waves lapping the shore and maybe some birds, while if you crank the wind up to 30 knots you will hear crashing waves, rushing wind and so on. It's really incredible. Example:

 

[jpf 14]

I used to use a separate speaker for ATC in FSX/P3D; a single bluetooth speaker that was aimed at me. this setup would approximate enviromental sound with headphones (without wearing headphone) and it seems like that functionality is not available in MSFS. 

I can see this being a problem with a lot of pilots that want to separate comms (headphones) from environment.

[pevides1 15]

Flight Simulator 2020 has an excellent sound overall, but some things are not so good :  the landing sound is really weird.

Every soft landing, sounds like a crash.. 

Edited August 23, 2020 by pevides1

[Turpentine 375]

24 minutes ago, molleh said:

I'm glad you made this topic. The sound in MFS is PHENOMENAL and one of my favorite features of the new sim.  For once it's not just about "does this aircraft use sound samples recorded from the real thing" but rather how well is it mixed? How is the spatial processing? What's the ambiance like?

I joined one of the popular flight sim streamers for a bush trip fly-along and at one point we took turns landing on a sand bar. With my engine off, just listening to everyone attempt the landing (or go around, or crash..) I was amazed at what I was hearing. You can really tell they put a lot of thought into distance and directional effects.

The other big thing for me is ambient sound effects. Forests, beaches, open water, trees, grass, all make appropriate sounds (including bugs and wildlife!) and not only that, the wind affects all of it. So if you're parked on a beach with calm winds, you hear gentle waves lapping the shore and maybe some birds, while if you crank the wind up to 30 knots you will hear crashing waves, rushing wind and so on. It's really incredible. Example:

 

This is phenomenal! Alright, I'm convinced, I will get a cheap used AVR and install some surround speakers in my new flight-sim man cave 😁 oh, and get a decent sound card I guess..

[4L0M 33]

If you are going to get an AVR then you will not need a soundcard. Windows 10 natively supports output to an AVR via Dolby Atmos for Home Theatre which is free (obviously as long as your AVR supports Atmos). As far as I'm aware, there are no PC sound cards that support Dolby Atmos. All soundcards and onboard Motherboard audio only output Dolby Digital live and DTS connect which is compressed audio.

[Nedo68 533]

4 hours ago, Turpentine said:

Thanks! Do you have a basic 2-speaker setup? Headset?

I'm trying to figure out what kind of setup would maximise immersion.

yes i use a Sennheiser HD598 like EmaRacing. Usualy i fly with my VR Headset and they have

build in Headphones, but until the VR is in MSFS i use my sennheiser.