Headphones vs Speakers

Hearing what’s happening is just as important as seeing what’s happening. There are many audible cues to be listening for to be more in tune with your surroundings. Audible cues can inform you of your opponent's movements and actions, whether coming towards you or moving/running away.

Hearing what others are doing can give you a sense of whether they know you are there or not, which may inform your actions or strategy for engaging or not. Specific sounds can also guide you to specific types of chests or other desirable findings.

Just a few examples of sounds to be listening for in-game are:

• Footsteps
• Shooting
• Gliding
• Cars
• Zipline use
• Entering and exiting rifts
• Explosions
• Pulling out of a pickaxe or weapon
• Launching through a nitro loop
• Use of a jetpack
• Flag raising on an island or when flag is claimed
• Special chests
• The list goes on and on, and can vary from season to season…

Speakers can work just fine if you’re in an otherwise quiet area to play the game. However, we generally recommend headphones in order to really be in tune with the game and to block out periphery noise. There are many sounds that are subtle and may be hard to pick up on without using a decent pair of headphones.

Headphones can also help with the directional element of where the sound is coming from since they are inputting separately into your left and right ears, respectively, while speakers (especially if not aligned physically for extreme channel separation and precision) may have more of a stereo imaging effect and may make it harder to differentiate direction of sounds within the game.

To learn more about the importance of sound, see our section on using Visual Sound Effects.