The latest patch attempts to use hands-free voice even if you have it set to be lower priority than other microphones, this will disable playback (the audio you hear) from your headset. To fix this go into sound settings and disable hands-free voice in the recording options. When the game attempts to access this, Windows raises it’s priority and this causes your sound to stop working the moment you launch the game since player voice is enabled by default in this patch.
Thank you, this worked for me too.
More detailed path:
go to settings, bluetooth and devices, devices, more devices and printer settings, double click your headphones, go to services tab, disable handsfree telephony
Thanks for the tip. Its annoying and I hope they patch that issue out.
I don’t use voice chat or play online, so this isn’t a problem, but I noticed that the in-game sound gets noticeably more compressed when my bluetooth headphones are on.
I think you just need to launch the game for it to alter which device has priority in Windows, so it doesn’t matter that you’re not in VC/Multiplayer since it’s an opt-out setting.
So I followed the above instructions, found my headset, opened up the properties and I don’t have a services tab in there, only General and Hardware. But I still have this sound issue you’re describing ever since the first time I played after the update.
Any other ideas?
It would be bad enough if it just distorted the game audio, but it’s ALL audio so whatever I’m trying to listen to while I play campaigns sounds like it’s coming through a bad fast food drive-through speaker. Unbelievable lack of QA on this patch. Coming from a company with infinite money like Microsoft. It’s just inexcusable.
You can also try to change the sound device in the game options:
AoE2 game options, audio tab, voice chat menu, output device, select a device that is NOT your bluetooth device.
(It still matters even if you disable it).