How to Fix Low Voice Chat Volume in Big Walk (PC, PS5, Mac)

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The Australian bushland of Big Walk is vast, intricate, and heavily reliant on communication. House House has built their entire new adventure around the concept of a “walker-talker,” where up to 12 players coordinate, share discoveries, and solve puzzles through proximity voice chat. However, immediately following the game’s highly anticipated launch on August 4, 2026, the community hit a major roadblock: the voice chat volume is incredibly quiet.

If you are wandering through the Wilsons Promontory-inspired wilderness and can barely hear the friend standing right next to you, you are not alone. According to widespread reports across the Reddit VoiceWave community, the core issue stems from a harsh spatial audio falloff. Once another player steps further than approximately seven meters away, their voice drops to a near whisper, making long-distance coordination essentially impossible without specialized tools.

While we wait for the developers to finalize a permanent fix—as noted in our recent update on how House House addresses the proximity chat audio bug—players have already discovered several highly effective workarounds. Applying these adjustments across your operating system, game client, or console settings can dramatically improve your multiplayer experience right now.

The In-Game Solution: The Walkie-Talkie Trick

Before adjusting any external sliders or system settings, you should first look at the tools House House has scattered around the open world. The most reliable immediate fix for the volume bug relies entirely on in-game mechanics.

Community testers have confirmed that audio transmitted through the game’s walkie-talkies operates on a completely different audio channel than standard proximity chat. While direct talking suffers from the bugged 7-meter falloff, radio communications bypass this environmental volume drop entirely. The audio coming out of the handheld radio is reportedly much louder, crisp, and unaffected by the bugged spatial decay.

If you manage to locate these items early in your expedition, distribute them among your group immediately. Having your squad rely entirely on radios not only acts as a temporary fix but also adds a fantastic layer of immersion to your survival and puzzle-solving efforts. For more details on where to find these communication lifelines and how they interact with the environment, check out our breakdown of the tools in Big Walk.

Adjusting Steam Voice Settings (PC and Mac)

If you are playing Big Walk on a computer, the game does not rely on a proprietary internal voice server; instead, it pulls directly from the Steam platform’s existing audio backend. Because the game itself currently lacks a dedicated, granular microphone input slider in its own options menu, you must make the adjustments through Steam’s overlay.

Follow these steps to boost your input and output levels directly through Steam:

1. Launch Big Walk and load into a lobby with your friends.
2. Press Shift + Tab to open the Steam Overlay.
3. At the bottom of the screen, click the gear icon to open Settings, then navigate to the Voice tab.
4. Look for the Input volume/gain slider and push it all the way to maximum.
5. Crucially, look for the setting labeled Auto Gain Control. If it is turned on, try toggling it off. Sometimes, Steam’s automatic leveling aggressively lowers your microphone volume if you speak loudly for a moment, permanently leaving you too quiet for the rest of the session.
6. Verify that your designated microphone is correctly selected in the input device dropdown menu, rather than a low-quality default webcam microphone.

By forcing Steam to broadcast your voice at maximum gain, the game will receive a much stronger audio signal before applying its own aggressive distance muffling.

Boosting Microphone Gain at the OS Level

If the Steam overlay adjustments do not provide enough of a boost, your next step is to amplify the microphone at the operating system level. Windows and macOS both have built-in tools that allow you to forcefully increase the gain of your recording devices.

For Windows Users

1. Right-click the speaker icon in your system tray (bottom right corner of the taskbar) and select Sound settings.
2. Scroll down and click on More sound settings to open the classic Control Panel window.
3. Click on the Recording tab.
4. Locate your active microphone, right-click it, and select Properties.
5. Navigate to the Levels tab.
6. Make sure the primary slider is set to 100. If your microphone supports it, you will also see a Microphone Boost slider beneath it. Carefully increase this boost by +10dB or +20dB. Be cautious: setting the boost too high will introduce heavy background static, which your friends will definitely hear.

For Mac Users

1. Open System Settings from the Apple menu.
2. Navigate to the Sound section in the sidebar.
3. Click on the Input tab at the top.
4. Select your active microphone from the list.
5. Drag the Input volume slider all the way to the right. Speak normally and watch the input level meter; you want it to consistently hit the upper ranges without completely maxing out and clipping.

PlayStation 5 specific fixes: The “Game Chat” Toggle

For players enjoying the game on console—especially since it arrived as a Day One PS Plus Essential game—the volume issues often stem from an entirely different source.

Multiple users have reported that their PlayStation 5 systems are muting Big Walk’s voice channels at the hardware level. Sony’s operating system features strict privacy and audio mixing controls that can occasionally conflict with proximity-based game chat.

To ensure your PS5 is actually broadcasting and receiving voice data correctly:

1. While in the game, tap the PlayStation button on your DualSense controller to open the Control Center at the bottom of the screen.
2. Navigate to the Sound icon (shaped like a speaker).
3. Scroll down and look for a setting labeled Disable Game Chat Audio. If this toggle is turned on, you will not hear anyone, and no one will hear you, regardless of how close you stand to them in the Australian bush. Ensure this is toggled off.
4. Next, navigate to the Mic icon in the Control Center.
5. Ensure your microphone is not physically muted (the orange light on your controller should be off).
6. Select Adjust Mic Level and increase the slider so your voice clearly registers in the “Good” zone.

Because the game relies heavily on cross-platform communication, console players must ensure their hardware is transmitting a strong signal to PC players. For a deeper understanding of how these lobbies connect, you can read our breakdown of how Big Walk handles crossplay and cross-progression.

The Importance of Communication

Until House House deploys the highly anticipated patch to normalize the audio falloff curve, these workarounds remain mandatory for groups attempting to solve complex environmental puzzles. Big Walk is not a game that holds your hand; the map is massive, landmarks are confusing, and splitting up is incredibly dangerous.

The core philosophy of the game demands that you talk through every problem. When you find a strange mechanism in the woods, you need to yell for your friends to come look at it. If your voice cannot reach them, the fundamental loop breaks down. Take the five minutes required to optimize your OS levels, adjust your Steam settings, or un-mute your PS5 dashboard. Better yet, scavenge the map for walkie-talkies immediately upon spawning. Your friendships—and your success in the game—depend heavily on your ability to be heard.