DRC is usually the enemy in competitive titles rather than a help. Mechanically it flattens the amplitude envelope—quiet sounds like distant footsteps get boosted while transients like muzzle flashes get tamed, so you lose the natural attenuation gradient your brain uses for distance and elevation cues. In CS2 the HRTF spatializer already applies its own processing curve, and overlaying monitor-side dynamic compression on top crushes the directional information you rely on for wallbang reads. Most ladder players I watch run DRC completely disabled for exactly this reason.
On your Neo G8, if you’re routing audio through the monitor’s speakers or HDMI ARC, Samsung’s Adaptive Sound or Night Mode is almost certainly injecting compression into the signal path. Switch to dedicated IEMs driven by an external DAC—anything from a FiiO—so the monitor’s DSP never touches your signal. Keep the panel in Oyun Modu, which drops audio processing latency from roughly 20ms down under 5ms, and leave Windows Spatial Sound off while CS2’s HRTF toggle handles positioning.
For your latency budget, total audio round-trip through a DAC should stay under 16ms to remain invisible against a 240Hz setup. If you measure frame-time dips in the audio thread, that’s your real bottleneck, not the codec.
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