Hi 
 
For anyone who has the game and has been playing, is the audio mixing fucking garbage in this game? Even though you can control individual channels such as Vehicle, SFX, Music, etc, I can never distinguish the sound of my own car's engine versus the others around me. For a game that tries to achieve the in-helmet feeling so desperately, it wouldn't make sense for all the car engine sounds outside of yours to be at exactly the same level. I can't play manual transmission as a result, and thus neither can I play the game.  
  
I loaded up Dirt 2 just to make sure I wasn't being a retard, and yeah, sounds way better, I hear my own engine and everything in the environment is muffled, so I can clearly determine when I should shift gears.  
 
Just for technical purposes: I play with an HT Omega Claro Halo soundcard (Dolby Headphone, DDL, 5.1) with Astro a40's + astro mixamp. 

I can hear my car engine just fine. But i have problems with the audio too. Before each race i can hear Vaught Gittin Jr. to much, and balancing it to "normal" instead of "max" will make him almost silent in the menu. And the music can in some cases get really loud. I'm not sure if it's intended or if it's a bug in the game.