Audio quality degraded even on 1.19.1 pre5 and pre6

Hello! So I recently replied to issue MC-252546 hoping that it'd get solved - and while it's marked as resolved, I still seem to be having this issue. The audio is no different on pre4 vs pre5 or even pre6.

It's the exact same issue as described in MC-252546 - sounds are noticeably degraded in 1.19+ compared to 1.18.2 and below, and the videos that the other issue links show the exact same audio differences that I hear.

Another detail to note is that the setting to change Directional Audio seems to have zero effect on audio quality whatsoever - I'm not sure if its just a matter of that setting simply not enabling or disabling properly or what, but i can turn it on and off and on and off and nothing changes.

The sound issue is also noticeable even in the main menu when clicking buttons as well - which I wouldn't think should be affected by 3D directional audio, but I suspect you guys will know better on that one.

Once again - really hoping to get some fix for this at some point, as for me right now 1.19 is actually uncomfortable to play for my ears.

 

— EDIT —

 

I've further tested the issue under Windows 11, and am experiencing the same problem there as well. As such, I can only assume this has something to do with my hardware, so I'm listing it here:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700x
Board: ASUS x570 Phantom Gaming 4S
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX PCIe 5.1

I'll also note that while I do use the sound card as my primary audio device, I've also tested the issue with onboard audio and still encounter the same issue (though all audio system-wide is a bit worse generally than my Sound Blaster).

— EDIT 2 —

As requested, I've recorded two videos demonstrating audio quality on MC 1.18.2 and 1.19.1-rc2

1.18.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgY8hzpozPc
1.19.1-rc2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0vbz2armWE 

 

— EDIT 3 —

I've done some additional research and it seems the actual root of the issue has to do with whether or not an OpenAL system configuration exists. I posted a comment below detailing the issue. The relevant portion of that comment is as follows:

 

If there is an alsoft.ini that exists at the system level, then the in-game option is ignored. If that file does not exist, then the in-game setting is used instead.

I renamed my alsoft.ini to something else so that OpenAL wouldn't use it anymore - and now the in-game toggle switch works as expected. HRTF turns on and off, and I can actually hear the audio change with it.

On Windows, the alsoft.ini is located in %AppData%\alsoft.ini. I can't say for sure where it is on Linux, but according to the Reddit post I linked in my previous comment, it should be located at ~/.alsoftrc.