After shooting the mosin today to kill a deer, I noticed that the gun shot was so loud that it actually hurt my 'real life' ears, I use headphones and after this happened, I needed to log out and take a break. Personally im very careful with my hearing as part of my job is being an audio engineer and recordists (I make videos, and record all my own sound effects). Currently there doesn't seem to be anyway to turn up the ambiance, while having the sound effects of guns and tools, that you are using turned down to a safe level; Even chopping down a tree is ridiculously loud.

I really love listening to the ambiance in Dayz, even though the crickets chirp in the morning when it should be the birds. The only solution for me that i can see is to manually turn down my volume before using tools or shooting, or to actually wear real life hearing protection, but as you can imagine this is not always practical. There should be a volume slider for ambiance and one for other sound effects. Even as im writing this post, my ears are ringing and sore (this was part of the reddit post I made yesterday).

If I turn down my volume then I literally can't hear anything, I can't hear zombies, I can't hear other players. If I wear ear plugs under my headphones, I can't hear these ether. Thing is, there is such a massive difference in the sound decibels db, we go from 'barely audible' to 'ear damaging' levels of loudness. If the volume is at a comfortable level for ambiance, then I have personally measured close gun shoots at 75db to 80db. I know you're going for realism with Dayz, however you can't damage peoples hearing for it.

Today, is the second day after this happened, and my right ear has a strange inner ear twitching going on, I know that with time this will go away, but this should highlight the reason for needing a separate volume slider for sound effects.