WARDOGS with no sound: audio missing, cutting out or stuttering

With game audio there is one case that two settings reliably clear up, and one that is still open. Both feel the same: the sound disappears, comes back briefly and drops again. We separate the cases, name the official step from Team17 Support and say plainly where only individual player reports exist. This article covers game audio; microphone and squad comms have their own piece. Status: 22 September 2026.

First: game audio or voice chat?

Making that split saves you half the search.

• Gunfire, engines and menu sounds are missing while your microphone works: you are in the right place.
• You hear the game, but nobody in the squad hears you or you hear nobody: that is voice chat, with its own routine of reconnecting from the scoreboard and setting the Windows default device.
• The sound drops in the game, in Discord and in the browser at the same time: that is the open case further down. It affects the whole system, not just the game, but it is only triggered while WARDOGS is running.

The official step: 24-bit, 44.1 kHz

Team17 Support keeps pointing at the same setting in the forums, and with missing audio it is the first thing to change: lower the output format of the Windows device. Very high bit depths and sample rates, 384 kHz named explicitly, mean according to support that game audio never starts in the first place.

• Windows key and R, run mmsys.cpl.
• On the Playback tab select the device you actually use, open Properties.
• Under Advanced set the default format to 24-bit, 44100 Hz and apply it.
• Close WARDOGS completely and start it again. A change made while the game runs does not take hold reliably.

That sounds like a step backwards, and it is one. In a firefight you will not hear the difference, and it is the only step in this article that support itself prescribes.

Turn off 3D audio and spatial sound

Several players report that only the combination of two switches helped: 24-bit and 44.1 kHz in Windows plus spatial audio off. Both sides need to go.

• In Windows, in the same device properties: set Windows Sonic, Dolby Atmos or DTS to off.
• In the game: clear the 3D audio option in the sound settings.
• Additionally disable all audio enhancements on the device and turn off exclusive mode so the game cannot claim the device for itself.

That is a community result, not an official instruction. It costs you nothing but a restart of the game.

DAC, interface and virtual mixers

The cases pile up on good equipment, not cheap equipment. An external DAC or an audio interface running at a high sample rate is exactly the setup that fails, while a plain headset at 44.1 kHz runs through. On top of that come virtual mixers: in the forum thread one player traced their dropouts clearly to their headset maker's software, because the sound stayed stable through simple speakers. Others report the same behaviour with different headsets, which argues against a pure hardware fault.

This is how to narrow it down in five minutes:

• Close virtual audio devices and mixing software, do not just minimise them, and switch to the real device.
• As a test, plug the headphones straight into the PC, without a DAC and without a hub.
• If the sound is stable then, bring the extra device back step by step: 44.1 kHz first, then without spatial audio, then without exclusive mode.

Device swapped while the game was running

An unspectacular but frequent case: swap the headset while WARDOGS is running and the sound keeps going to the old device. The game does not always pick up the switch. Set the device as default in Windows, restart the game, done. The same applies when audio is missing after waking from sleep.

The open case: dropouts every few seconds

This is where what you can fix yourself ends. In the "Report a Problem" board several reports line up with a matching pattern: the sound drops out completely for about five seconds roughly once a minute, at the same time in the game and in every other program, and most often in combat when many sounds overlap. The people affected have reinstalled graphics and audio drivers, verified the cache, rolled back Windows updates, swapped headsets and disabled Xbox Game Bar background recording, without success. A report from 22 September describes the same thing after a full Windows reinstall.

Team17 Support has confirmed in one of the threads that the reports were passed on to the team. No fix or patch for it has been published so far. Several reporters state they did not have the behaviour in the open beta, only in the retail build. That is an indication, not a confirmed cause.

So the sensible approach is: apply the two settings above, and if the dropouts remain, file a clean report instead of swapping more drivers.

What the game cannot do

Two expectations regularly start a search for a fault that is not there:

• There is no multichannel output in the sound settings. Anyone expecting 5.1 or 7.1 and hearing nothing from the rear is looking for an option this version does not have.
• The muffled mix and the quiet footsteps are a widespread criticism of the current audio balance. No setting on your machine changes that, and it is not a defect in your hardware.

If you report it, report it fully

For the open case only a usable report counts. Support asks for the same things anyway:

• The exact pattern: interval between dropouts, how long they last, whether other programs drop out too.
• Output device with its connection type, the format set, and whether virtual mixing software is running.
• DxDiag as a text file: Windows key and R, dxdiag, save all information, upload the contents to a pastebin service and give the link.
• What you already tested, above all 24-bit and 44.1 kHz and the test without the extra device.

Our order in short

• Check whether it is game audio or voice chat.
• Set the output format to 24-bit, 44100 Hz and restart the game.
• Turn off spatial audio in Windows and 3D audio in the game, enhancements and exclusive mode off.
• Close virtual mixers, listen without the DAC straight from the PC as a test.
• Restart the game after swapping a device.
• If the dropouts keep coming at second-level intervals, the case is open: report it in full instead of swapping more drivers.