When “Headset Simulation” or “Communication Output” is selected in General>Sound settings, it adds background radio static into the sound device when an active ATC frequency is tuned, but not when an “inactive” frequency is tuned. Maybe this was intentional in order to know you’re on an active, but quiet frequency, but it’s not how radios work in real aircraft.
This is unrealistic as modern aircraft VHF radios have a squelch function to remove this background static and interference. I’d suggest removing the sound completely, including it only when HF radios are used, or adding a realistic & working squelch function.
The only way to remove this annoying background noise is to change the setting to “Default”, or drown it out with aircraft and engine volume.
Usually I fly on Vatsim with the ingame voice audio turned off. Now the area I fly at atm is sparsely covered and I fly VFR anyway, so I thought I give the ingame ATC a whirl. So I turned the Voice part of the audio back up and whenever I am tuned to an active frequency, like say tower on departure or center during the flight, I get the worst VHF humming and beeping. It is so annoying. Is there any way to turn that off? It drives me insane. I tried VHF signal degradation on and off to no avail. I have Headphone Simulation turned on. And no, it is not some background noise from the GPU or something. If I switch to a frequency that is not in use in the area the noise immediatly ceases.
At this point I doubt that this will ever get fixed. I suspect for many non-aviation people this bug is actually kind of “cool”. “Hey listen to this, it’s radio, of course it makes noises!”.
One real flight is all it would take for them to agree that this “feature” drives some people insane and is completely immersion-killing. Oh well. Perhaps in MSFS2024?
