Turn the gunfire down. Keep the footsteps.Without a volume knob that kills both.
Every shooter has the same problem: the sound you need is the quietest thing in the mix and the sound that hurts is the loudest. A volume knob cannot tell them apart. This can.
Windows 10 and 11 · portable, no installer · 7-day refunds
The same forty seconds of a firefight, played twice — once as the game mixed it, once reshaped. Listen for the footsteps under the gunfire.
You turn it down so the gunfire stops hurting. Now you cannot hear anyone coming.
So you turn it back up, and spend the next fight flinching. You have been making that trade every session for years, and it is a bad trade in both directions: quiet enough to be comfortable is quiet enough to be ambushed, and loud enough to hear a footstep is loud enough to do real damage over a long night.
Gunfire & footsteps, in detail
Measured, not asserted
On the same forty seconds of gameplay, loudness-matched: turning the volume down costs you 8.9 dB of gunfire and 8.3 dB of footsteps. Reshaping the sound costs 8.0 dB of gunfire and 3.0 dB of footsteps. Almost all of the protection, around a third of the cost.
Because they are not in the same place
A gunshot and a footstep occupy different parts of the sound, so something working on the sound itself can tell them apart. A volume knob works on all of it at once, which is exactly why it cannot.
Four settings, not a slider
Off, Protect, Balanced, Clarity. One trade-off and three points along it, each chosen by listening to renders of the same recording — rather than a control whose two ends are both wrong.
Lift the quiet ones
Separately: bring distant footsteps up towards near ones, so far away still sounds like something. Four steps, and it lifts the whole range footsteps live in, so more is not simply better.
Per game
The setting travels in a profile, so a game whose gunfire is punishing gets Protect and one you play for the detail gets Clarity, without you changing anything by hand.
It costs the radar nothing
Measured rather than assumed: what the sound radar listens to is where footsteps live, and reshaping the mix there leaves the bearings it draws unchanged. The two features do not fight.
Or cap it instead
If you would rather install nothing: a loudness cap that holds the volume down while something is louder than you allowed, then lets it back up. It catches anything loud, whatever it is — it just cannot tell a gunshot from a footstep.
This is the settings window, running here
Not a screenshot and not a mock-up — the same window the app opens, on this page. Click anything.
A live copy of the app’s own settings window, seeded with the defaults a new install has. Nothing here changes anything — there is no app behind it.
Three steps, then stop thinking about it
-
Run one file
No installer for the app itself — it lives in the tray.
-
Add the effect, once
One click adds an audio effect to the output you choose. This is the one part that installs into Windows, and the settings window tells you whether it is there.
-
Pick a setting
Off, Protect, Balanced or Clarity. Change it whenever; it applies live.
Before you download it
Will this get me banned?
CtrlFlick Recon runs beside your game rather than inside it. It reads what is already on your screen and listens to what your speakers are already playing — nothing is injected, no game file is touched, and no other program's memory is ever read. The sound radar and a pinned region can sit entirely on a second monitor, so you can have both without anything drawn over the game at all. Whether a game permits an overlay is that game's call rather than ours, and the rules differ between titles, so it is worth a look at the policy of anything you play competitively. We would rather say that than imply a promise we cannot make on another publisher's behalf.
This one installs something — what exactly?
An audio effect on the Windows output device you choose. It is the single part of CtrlFlick Recon that installs anything, and it is opt-in: nothing is added until you press the button. Remove it from the same button or from Windows' own sound control panel, and it stops the moment the app closes either way.
Is this just an equaliser?
No. An equaliser turns whole frequency ranges up or down all the time, which moves the footsteps as much as the gunfire. This responds to how loud the sound is right now, so it acts on the gunshot and leaves the footstep alone.
Will it make the game sound worse?
Protect costs the most and Clarity the least; that is the trade the four settings exist to let you pick. Balanced is where most people land. Off is a real setting and it changes nothing at all.
Does it protect my hearing?
It reduces peak levels, and the numbers above say by how much. It is not a medical device and we do not claim it as one. If you have concerns about your hearing, see somebody qualified.
What does it install?
One executable and a folder beside it. Nothing in the registry, nothing in AppData, nothing outside its own directory — it runs from a USB stick and uninstalls by being deleted. The optional audio effect is the single exception, and it removes itself from the same button that installed it.
Something else? The support page goes further, or write to support@ctrlflick.com.
Hear them coming without the headache.
Gunfire & footsteps is one of five overlays in CtrlFlick Recon — one licence covers all of them, on one PC at a time, moveable.