Every sound in the game is now mixed to a measured level. Nothing in the audio had ever been compared against anything else, and it showed in ways that were easy to hear and hard to place.

Music. The battle theme was noticeably louder than the rest of the score — enough that the jump between exploring and fighting read as a volume change rather than as a fight starting. Every track now plays at one level, with combat still deliberately above exploration and the Margin still hushed.

Narration. Playing as a female hero made every spoken line in the game roughly half as loud as playing as a male hero — the same words from the same script, in a quieter voice. All 1,095 clips are now at one volume, without re-encoding any of them.

Sound effects. A critical hit used to be quieter than an ordinary one, which is backwards for the cue that exists to mark the exchange worth noticing. Criticals and slams now land above an ordinary blow, a status cue is no longer the loudest sound in the game, and an effect that has several recordings no longer changes volume depending on which one gets picked.

The three together. Music, speech and effects are now balanced against each other, so footsteps stay audible over the score instead of being buried by it.

Fixed:

  • The volume sliders ran to 200% while the audio stopped at 100%, so the top half of every slider moved but changed nothing. They now run 0–100%, and all three start at 100% — which is the balance point, not the maximum of a control that could go further.
  • An effect played from its recording and the same effect played without one were different volumes, by as much as a factor of three. They now match.