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For some reason, the audio in this game is incredibly low for a lot of people (myself included). This has been the case for years according to forum/reddit posts. This guide will show you how to edit the settings file to boost it above what the settings menu lets you set it to so that you can actually hear things in game without having to put your headset/speakers on 500%!
Scrap Mechanic’s audio problem
For whatever reason, scrap mechanic is a VERY quiet game. Or at least it is for a lot of us. If you search, you can find people asking about this from 3-4 years ago across reddit and in the steam discussions. There was a video covering how to fix this (apparently), but it seems its not available anymore. I haven’t even played a full hour of the game yet because of this. The only way I was able to get it to an acceptable volume was to turn my headset up to eardrum-shattering levels and just hope that no other sounds happened. Not cool…
The fix
Thankfully, the discord used Nomadd on the /r/ScrapMechanic discord server pointed out that you can edit the settings file and set the volume to over 100% to fix this issue! So here are the steps to do so…
Step 1: Locate your settings.json fileThis file is in your appdata folder. The easiest way to get to this folder is to use the run dialog by pressing the windows key + R and typing %appdata% and hitting enter.
This will open the Roaming folder within AppData specifically, which is exactly where we need to be. Once in here find and open the Axolot Games folder, then go into the Scrap Mechanic folder, then User, then another folder called “User_[NUMBER]” (the number will be different for everyone), and you should finally be in a folder with a bunch of other folders and files. One of the files should be called settings.json.
The full path should be something like:
Appdata/Roaming/Axolot Games/Scrap Mechanic/User/User_[NUMBER]/settings.json
Step 2: Edit your settings.json file
Open up this file in a text editor, such as notepad. You will see a bunch of lines that each correspond to a different setting. We only need to edit one single line, the one that mentions MasterVolume. By default this will be set to a value between 0 and 1, based on what you set it in game. The trick here is that you can set it to a value above 1.0 and the sound will be boosted! If you set it too high, the audio will start to distort, but you should be able to set it to 2.0, 3.0 or something in this range without too much issue. For me I found that 2.0 was enough, but it will likely vary from person to person. Simply change the line from:
"MasterVolume" : 1.0,
to
"MasterVolume" : 2.0,
And save the file. That’s it!
A few notes
Firstly, as mentioned – I didn’t come up with this fix. I’m just sharing it because I couldn’t see it anywhere. The discord user Nomadd on the /r/ScrapMechanic discord was the one who told me about it.
Other than that, there’s a few things to note here. For one, there are different settings for each audio category that you could boost separately if you want. I just included MasterVolume here because that does everything, but you might want to boost AmbientVolume, EffectVolume, GUIVolume, and/or MusicVolume separately. The process is the same.
The other main thing to note here is that when you change your settings in-game via the settings menu, this file is going to be overwritten, meaning that you will need to apply this fix again. If you don’t want this to happen, you can right click on the file, open its properties and set the file to Read Only. However, if you do this, then you won’t be able to change settings in-game anymore. As such, I’d recommend you set up the game how you want it, then apply the audio fix and then set it to read only.
Other than t hat, that’s it! Enjoy the game without risking your head exploding when your friends spam you on discord or something now 🙂