Ingame Sound/Music extrem stuttering in battles

The only notable bandaid fix for now for me personally is just simply turning off player effects down to zero. Boss fights and big FATEs might have some music stuttering but nothing nearly as terrible and it seems to go back to normal afterwards.

Glad there are more threads about this. Not that I'm happy that all of us are having this problem. But the more we put it out there the sooner it can get fixed I hope. Been having the same stuttering and skipping with sound since the 6.0 patch.

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Originally Posted by twixelstix

The only notable bandaid fix for now for me personally is just simply turning off player effects down to zero. Boss fights and big FATEs might have some music stuttering but nothing nearly as terrible and it seems to go back to normal afterwards.

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That was one I hadn't tried so I did since I will do *anything* to be able to have sound in combat right now and that didn't work for me :(

I believe I have found the solution:
System Settings > Sound Settings > Scroll to the bottom and look under 'Wireless Controller Settings' ... there's a new option that has audio settings. Click the speaker so that it mutes this setting (assuming you are having audio stuttering issues). ... I've not had the problem pop up now since I turned it off... will update if I experience further issues but so far it seems fixed.

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Originally Posted by SjachDragonkin

I believe I have found the solution:
System Settings > Sound Settings > Scroll to the bottom and look under 'Wireless Controller Settings' ... there's a new option that has audio settings. Click the speaker so that it mutes this setting (assuming you are having audio stuttering issues). ... I've not had the problem pop up now since I turned it off... will update if I experience further issues but so far it seems fixed.

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Nope. I tried it and everything in the audio options. Sometimes something would seem to work, but it just came back later. Once it went away after a teleport for a few minutes too, I got hopeful and then it was back. Sometimes it seems to take a moment to "charge up" till it breaks, like somebody else was saying about their GPU getting hotter, although I don't know what it's really based on.

Since there seems to be a trend of Realtek onboard audio being related, I have something to try but I'd be surprised if it works. Can't get in because of the queue for now though, and don't want to recommend anything before trying it, because apparently the software installs malware, is a trial version, introduces sound latency, and there aren't many alternatives. It might narrow things down though.

So what I tried didn't help at all. Using a virtual playback device that sends the sound to the normal speakers. I was hoping it would circumvent the drivers but it probably doesn't even do that anyways.

Edit:
Somebody posted a video of what it sounds like here: https://youtu.be/xVDG5YSDA9o

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Originally Posted by Triple-D

I've also tried every suggested "fix" with no success. Frustrating when voiced cut scenes stutter and dialog cuts off.....distracting to rotation flow during dungeons....open world stutters in random place....even alone in Inn rooms it stutters. Re-ran the Endwalker Benchmark with a "High" rating, and no frame rate or audio issues. Everything was fine until the 6.0 patch.

I know the Devs have a lot on the go right now, and Early Access is when they iron out as many bugs as possible before official release, just hope they're seeing these threads.

PS... THANK YOU DEVS.... we love what you do.

UPDATE: As proposed in a thread elsewhere, I attempted to install EMBODY'S Immerse Audio Gamepack Trial. Although this seemed at first to finally fix the issue, my PC blue screened in the middle of the first Voiced Cut scene after the install. I have no definitive proof yet that the plugin caused the crash, as I'm now in a 5.5K World Login Queue, but I find the timing very suspicious. More updates to come.

UPDATE 2: Installing the Spacial Sound plugin did not fix the audio stutters.

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Have you tried this? It seemed to work for my girlfriend. Although, switching to DirectX9 fixed her problem, it made her game unstable and crashy, which exacerbated queue grief. So this is certainly worth a shot. Let me know. If it does work, spread the word of it as a potential fix.

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Originally Posted by twixelstix

The fixes I suggested yesterday seemed to have not worked too much, however that might have something to do with the fact that I switched back to Dx11. I'm not sure what it is, but at this point I've just turned down the player effects volumes across the board by a lot so I don't notice it as much.

I had to switch from Dx9 because I kept crashing during teleportation scenes or mid-cutscene. I'd rather tackle audio issues than deal with another queue.

I really hope Square Enix puts this on their list of known issues soon.

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Must be nice to be able to play with DX11:( woke u this morning to constant DX11 errors after having no issues all of ShB

Just adding my two cents here - I suffer the same issue (wired headset). No problems in 6 years of playing and only since EW dropped. Also only in combat, for the most part. I did see that Soken had acknowledged the issue on twitter:
https://twitter.com/SOKENsquareenix/...20178749845504

So hopefully a fix can be found. My husband hasn't had this issue and his PC is a little newer than mine, but hardly top of the range and still old. After seeing so many people have had this issue, I think hardware is playing only a small part, if at all. They need to fix something on their end by the looks of it, otherwise someone would have found a fix and no matter where I've read, there hasn't been one, just stuff that makes it less bad for those experiencing worse sound issues than I am.

My workaround has been to just take my headset off during combat lol! Music is fine the rest of the time with only a minor hiccup here or there. Does mean i'm missing the good tunes, but I am considering muting the game and finding the trial/dungeon music on youtube so I can enjoy it while fighting...but I've not tried that yet! When I reach the next dungeon I will.

Just to share my experience. I was also having sound issues in combat. As suggested by someone else, I went into sound settings and saw that my equalizer was already set to standard. I changed it away from standard and the issue went away. I returned it to standard and the issue stayed away.