Sound effect clipping problem

[Zfz]

I'm sure anyone who's taken part in any congested FATE will notice that the sound effects are getting clipped all the time. For example, the Rage of Halone has 4 slashing sounds, but in FATEs it often gets clipped midway. Same for any other class.

For me, I'm using an USB external sound chip. Perhaps it's because it doesn't have enough processing power? If anyone's using those $300 sound cards or even S/PDIF to a decoder, it'd be interesting to know if the same clipping happens.

But after now a few months of grinding dungeons, I've found that the same can also happen in smaller parties. Full parties and even Light Parties.

So I'd like to ask if the devs are aware of this situation, and if they plan to "fix" it or is it something that's limited by player hardware spec. If the latter, could there be some pointers as to what kind of sound capability we should be looking for to avoid this?

[Drako]

I've noticed this as well, for some reason this makes me also wonder about the SFX of a goblins bomb toss, it sounds like its extremely low quality sound, and all garbled sounding. its prob working as intended, the bomb thing anyhow.. but id expect it to sound better then what it is now. More on topic tho it sounds like the game is limiting the number of SFX that can be heard at anyone one time. I think FFXI had a setting to adjust how many SFX that can play, so maybe theres something in the game like that idk.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Does this happen with external speakers that you hook into the jack on a computer? I have noticed a lot of sound clipping from my built-in speakers when I do the Svara fight in Coerthas. Like in the crowd of battle against the dragon. Most of the sounds get cut-off with another sound, so it just sounds like a short clip then another sound followed by the same thing over and over again.

[Arcaloid]

Guess another limitation from PS3.

[Ri_ri]

It's funny how Rage of Halone overrides every other sound effect, and then stops midway.

Shink shank shink shank - cute female yell -
Random battle noise
Shink shank shink shank - cute female yell -

[Zfz]

I've tried this with two setups:

#1 Motherboard built-in sound chip + speakers connected directly to the back of the motherboard
#2 USB external sound chip + speakers connected to the USB sound system

Both give me the same clipping problem.

I'm thinking the game doesn't have a built-in mixer, so when too many sound effects co-exist, the later ones overwrite the previous ones, hence cutting previous ones out half-way. I never had this problem even in 25-man raiding back in World of Warcraft, so either FFXIV is too heavy on sound effects, or the game client itself is not processing sound effects properly.

I'd really love to know if there's anyone (on PC) that never had this problem even on populated FATEs like Svara and Odin etc.