Experiences and issues with the Immerse Gamepack, seeking feedback and help

I've been trying out the Immerse Gamepack for FFXIV lately, and I'm just providing my feedback, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. I'm new to using the SE forum, so I hope this is the appropriate channel; yes, I'm aware of the ongoing audio stuttering/slowdown issue (I suffer from it myself), but this is regarding the Immerse Gamepack specifically.

My husband bought the Immersive Gamepack for FFXIV and gave me an account code for it, since he got two of them. I've tried it, both on an older profile and a more recent one I just made. It sounds...I admit, even after the fixes provided that you mentioned in the edit to the linked thread above, things still feel underwater or muffled to an extent, even when using the treble booster equalizer setting in-game. I suppose it's an improvement from what it was a few days ago with an older profile (I have several piercings in my ear that may have affected the AI interpretation of my ear, which I took out for my second profile), but it's not much of one. In addition, when panning the positioning around, certain constant positional sound effects (like fires or fountains) sound completely different from different angles in a way that seems unnatural and finicky; for instance, a waterfall from one angle will sound like a muffled quiet rush, while from a slightly different angle will feel like a treble-boosted kitchen faucet on blast. This is also super noticeable with house/apartment/inn-room music (since the orchestrion provides a point source for the BGM unlike other areas) where the quality and equalization (for lack of a better word) changes radically based on the audio positioning. For relatively large sound effects (think of the large waterfall in the Goblet or like Orchestrion-provided music), a more generalized sound effect that isn't so tightly spatialized (like that provided with the default audio without the Immerse Gamepack) sounds much more natural and soothing.

I can only stand to use it on full camera positioning; not only do things sound far more muffled with anything closer to the character, but it feels less intuitive as well (but then, I'm not playing a first-person game where such spatialization would be needed). As a career black mage, I have to keep the audio positioning far from my character with the new spatialization, because the transitions between sound effects happening at my character and the sound effects happening at my target are so jarring and abrupt that it just...sounds awful. Likewise, when playing something like sage or dancer with large sound effects happening all around me, it all sounds muffled and muted if I'm keeping the positioning at my character, but sounds much clearer if the positioning is at the camera. I was otherwise happy keeping the positioning at about 50 or even 70, halfway between camera and character or somewhat closer to the character, without using the Immerse Gamepack. Beyond that, though, while a number of sound effects are more distinctly spatialized, I admit that I don't actually feel or sense much of a practical difference in locating particular sound effects mentally compared to the normal stereo output. If anything, the distinct (and muffled, and abruptly-changing) sounds contribute more to a mild headache and feeling of nausea after prolonged use, which is...not great.

I've been using 32bit 48kHz audio settings on my stereo headset as suggested, and followed through with the rest of suggestions you've provided. I've turned off all other options through Windows for any other sound effects or improvements or spatializations (many of which I wasn't using anyway). I don't have an option in my headset to go any higher than that, and my headset isn't so advanced to have its own custom settings apart from what Windows itself provides. And yes, I have the most recent version of the plug-in installed.

To be honest, I'd rather not use the Immersive Gamepack at all. I'm only using it because, after a series of other attempts, I suffer from the continued audio stuttering/slowdown issues that otherwise make FFXIV unplayable. Like everyone else, I had no such issues prior to 6.0 being released (I've been playing since 2014 on several machines, and my current machine is far from being a toaster), and the issues have only gotten worse with 6.01 being dropped on us; I also have no such issues with any other game or other software on my computer. Using the Immerse Gamepack does help (reinstalling several unrelated drivers seemed to do something for me), though it still briefly stutters in limited instances still, albeit at a greatly reduced rate (in *most* cases) to the point where it's negligible, as opposed to the near-constant suttering without it (though it still does happen in some fights and cutscenes, which is frustrating). These issues can only be related to the spatialization efforts in the new sound engine and camera positioning, and while using the Immersive Gamepack is better than nothing, I'd honestly rather just go back to the normal stereo sound which I'm both used to and sounds more natural and intuitive for me for a game like this, especially with the nausea and headaches induced by it which never happened prior to 6.0 or without the Immerse Gamepack installed (though the audio stuttering is even worse to play with and forces me to mute the game entirely). In a sense, the Immerse Gamepack makes things sound like an extreme caricature of what I'd expect and what I'm used to, with the spatialization of sound effects being so over-emphasized to the point of it being distasteful.

What are other people's thoughts and experiences using the Immerse Gamepack? Has anyone continued to suffer from muffled sounds or weird abrupt changes like how I described above? Is this just something I have to get used to while using it?

I haven't tried it, myself (I don't have a private cell phone, and I don't think the company I work for would approve of me downloading non-sanctioned apps just to take pictures of my ear), but from what other people are saying, general muddiness of sound, muffling, what people equate to "hearing sound underwater", distortion, and generally poor quality are all common complaints about the spatial audio plugin.

From what I've been able to gather, though, the only people I know who have tried it are those who are having sound issues because of Endwalker. I don't know anyone who wasn't having issues that tried it.

My husband uses it and says that it sounds great for him; additionally, he's one of the lucky ones whose rig hasn't been impacted by any sound issues with the release of 6.0 or 6.01. Ah well.

Gave it a try and while it seems to have stopped the audio crackling if the equalizer is set to standard, everything sounds muffled in combat.

My work place recently had an update to our credit card machines, so now "Credit" is selected by hitting "VISA Debit" and "Debit" is selected by hitting "US Debit"
Most folks are using a VISA Debit Card and so they select VISA Debit, which selects credit, and declines the card so they have to try again.
I speak of this example because I have the same question for the people who made this spatial pack and for Square for implementing it as I do the ones who changed the card system

"How is this better? May I see your test group? Who does this help or make the experience improved for?"

So, I've been making more tests and trying out different changes to the Immerse Gamepack for FFXIV. I've been putting my observations in a Reddit thread where I've been giving feedback to /u/EmbodyGoblin (a rep of the company making the gamepack, and also a fellow FFXIV player):
https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...erse_gamepack/

I don't expect everyone to read everything there, but I would like to give a summary of some of my findings and see how those might compare with others':

- I am, indeed, using the most recent version of the Immerse Gamepack for FFXIV, and have done everything I can to get as clear and as good an ear picture as I can. The HRTF profile is set up appropriately, as best as I can tell.

- It may just be my own perception (which seems to be a common one), but the new spatialization effect does seem to "muffle" sounds, especially those near to the character, as if they were listened with a high-power faucet running or like listening to someone speak through several layers of fabric. They just don't sound as crisp, clear, or bright as they did before without the Immerse Gamepack's effects, which is why I prefer to run the game on full-camera audio positioning (which I've found to alleviate the issues somewhat, even at the risk of causing further audio stuttering even with the gamepack).

- Another issue, besides the SFX muffling, I have with using full-character audio positioning is how abrupt and jarring player-localized SFX now sound. As a BLM, if I'm standing a few feet away from a target that I'm casting spells on, the effects of the spells on the target sound "normal" (as I'm used to and as I expect), but my casting sounds and other SFX from actions I use now sound extremely loud and abrupt, which is a jarring experience for me.

- Much is being made by Embody about spatialiation and how this is relative to your character, which does appear to be true—as far as your character's position is concerned relative to the position of other sound effects, but it doesn't appear to be the case with regard to your character's orientation/directionality. For instance, if I stand at a particular point with a fountain at the east of my character while my character is facing north and the camera behind the character also looking north, I hear the fountain on my right; straightforward enough, since the fountain is on my character's right! If, however, I make my character face south while having the camera continue to face north, even with the audio at full-character positioning, then the fountain *still* makes sounds coming out of the right of my headset. This is unintuitive, given how Embody is describing the spatialization, and our experience only seems to reflect what we're told if we're in first-person view, where camera directionality and positioning is the same as the character's. Needless to say, playing FFXIV in first-person view is a non-starter for many of us; while I can certainly agree that this sort of spatialization is great for VR/AR games like those that make use of a VR headset, FFXIV is not a game meant for first-person view.

- As noted earlier, my husband also uses the Immerse Gamepack, and speaks highly of it (one of the exceedingly few people whom I've seen to say anything positive about it). His ears have different piercings, have different sizes, and are of different shapes than my own; out of curiosity, I tried giving his headset on his computer, set up for his own HRTF profile, a try. I was surprised to see (or hear, rather) that it sounds *identical* to my own headset, keeping Windows and FFXIV equalizer settings the same between the two. Likewise, he tested my own headset, and agrees. We have different opinions on the quality effects that the Immerse Gamepack have on certain sound effects, but he agrees with my overall assessment about what the objective changes are. It raises the question about how important this much-vaunted AI process to analyze individual ears really is, as well as what impacts this significantly (or not-significantly) makes on using headsets that aren't over-ear, like earbuds or bone-conducting headsets. I'd be interested in seeing studies done or user testing results, because I'm suddenly even less inclined to think that this makes much of a difference.

- We only got word of FFXIV 6.0 sound engine changes, as well as the inclusion/promotion of Embody's Immerse Gamepack, with the PLL in November 2021. The FFXIV 6.0 official benchmark came out in July 2021. Granted that I have no knowledge of the development/implementation/testing timeline at SE, it strikes me and many others as super questionable it is to implement a major backend change to performance and systems *after* a benchmark was alread put out, and suggests that this change was super rushed through (lack of testing on SE's part, lack of expected/necessary functionality on Embody's part, etc.).

Just adding my own anectdotal evidence to the pile. It sounds fine for me? Wearing headphones I notice it helps with spatial audio ... a bit? Like it's not head-over-heels better. But I do notice that the audio sounds a bit.. clearer? if that makes sense. I can also tell when stuff is *behind me* more easily with it turned on, even without visual cues.

It also seems to treble-boost the audio a noticeable amount. Not so much I find it unpleasant, or that it sounds 'wrong' but if you turn it off and on in quick succession the difference is noticeable, but if I've been using it for a while or start my game wearing my headset I don't notice a change *until I take my headphones off*. It sounds *awful* over normal speakers if you don't turn it off (I switch between headphones and a proper 2.1 channel speaker setup). Like I've removed all bass and ran it through a 'for the hard of hearing' style treble boost.

Though, this might play into the fact that I don't have any other audio issues with the game now. Even issues I had before (switching sound sources causing the games audio engine to crash, and then some unspecified time later take the rest of the game down with it) have been cleared up. (I can now change audio sources willy-nilly and the game doesn't seem to care.) I almost wonder if the sound engine has bugs with certain audio chipsets? I just have a Razer Blade 2019 15" so my audio is either going out over HDMI or through a USB headset.

I almost wonder if it it's like most AI learning algorithms involving people in that if your phenotype wasn't a common one in the training set it gets random or poor results. (IE maybe most of the training set was men, and therefore it doesn't work well on women, or on some minority group, etc..)

EDIT:

I'm still on the free trial of the pack and am very on the fence about buying it. Like.. it's great, but I dunno if it's $15 US great. It certainly isn't $20 US great.