Just started on Bloodlines. The game is very quiet (compared to other games I'm playing, at least). The volume slider in the options menu is already maxed (default). Now, I usually prefer to set the volume in each game's settings, rather than fiddling with the volume controls in Windows, or on the speakers. So this is annoying to have to turn up the volume on my speakers when playing the game and then turning it back down when I'm done, but I could manage to tolerate it.

However, some of the audio levels are off. The distant gunshot sounds in the tutorial are way too loud and drown out what Jack is saying, and the radio in the apartment immediately after the tutorial is way too quiet. I really don't want to manually turn up and down the volume while I'm playing.

Is it possible somehow to adjust the audio levels for different things in the game?

If not, I suppose I could turn on Loudness Equalization in the Windows audio settings. It's not without its problems though, so if there's a better way, then I'd rather avoid it.

Possibly the single most bizarre thing about Bloodlines: no there's no way to do this in-game.

The volumes are managed by text files called "schemes," with one for each area. If you don't mind modding a little you can alter them that way. I'm not sure what other players do about the sound volume, but I tweak my sound scheme files a little bit each time I play.

I agree with you about the inconsistency, too. In some places the music is loud and the dialogue is low so you can barely hear it. In other places certain sounds are inexplicably loud. I have no idea why it was done that way.

Yeah, too bad. I took a quick look at the schemes files and it seems mostly for background noise/music. Nothing for dialogues or other sound effects? I probably won't manually go through those and tweak them since this is my first playthough and I don't know what's what.

I played some last night using Loudness Equalization and it's not too bad. Quiet sounds like my footsteps get boosted, but at least everything else is audible. Still, I hope there's a better way to adjust this.

That doesn't sound too bad.

I think there's a way to boost the footsteps with a setting in "autoexec.cfg" but I don't recall it off the top of my head.

It might be possible to edit the sound files themselves to amplify them in the cases where that's needed. That's pretty involved though, and you probably don't want to mess with something like that for your first playthrough.