Audio quality degrades after 1.19

Pre 1.19, audio in FFXIV was one of the best I've heard. Everything sounds crystal clear.

Post 1.19, everything in-game sounds like it has a low bitrate, like something played on a radio: it cracks and generally sounds bad all-around. And that's for everything, player voices, system sounds, and even music.

This audio issue only happens in FFXIV. Tried watching a movie and playing Battlefield 3 beta, everything sounds crystal clear.

Any thoughts?

Dolby pro Logic II under the options ?

Could also have corrupted files...tis been known to happen. Happened to me I had to re-install. There's no file integrity checker...some of your problems may simply be that one or 2 bad files.

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Originally Posted by Agoven

Could also have corrupted files...tis been known to happen. Happened to me I had to re-install. There's no file integrity checker...some of your problems may simply be that one or 2 bad files.

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damn if that's the case, then I'll have to reinstall? the thought of having to redownload all those patches is killing me LOL.. but I have to do it to be sure I guess. Thanks guys.

I'm having the same problem, and it doesn't seem to be a rare issue either. The thought of possibly having to do a fresh install (if it even fixes it) is giving me a headache already.

nRosenberg,
Give me a heads up if it ends up solving your problem. I'm huge about audio quality and I was irritated the moment I logged in after the 1.19 update. :\ Dolby settings had no effect on the quality either.

Heads up: reinstalling and repatching the game DOES NOT work. Square-Enix please fix this in 1.19a!

Good to know, haha. I was about to break down and re-install tonight. I really hope they take care of this in a hotfix, the difference is VERY noticeable, and it seems to be more common than I originally thought.

I've noticed this as well from the very moment I'd logged in after the patch. First sound I heard was a footstep on a metal ground plate joining sections of Uldah only for it to have a hard cutoff with the Sound-FX like it's being ended early. Since then I've constantly been noticing it in many other areas at random and gets both distracting and disturbing toward keen ears.

I'd originally thought myself going a bit nutters until I came across this post.

For me, it's most noticeable during battles. Sound effects like sword slashes, monsters hit, protect spell, they all sound horrendous! Let's keep this topic up so SE notices.

Also, it seems that many people actually have this problem, it's just that they don't notice it.

It cuts off animation sounds, menu sounds, fanfares, virtually everything. Very annoying and the fact that they didn't even acknowledge it as a known issue is a little irritating.

Ha!

Got the same problem here.

I'm made the same topic in the French section. Playing with a SB X-fi Titanium HD soundcard via spdif on a Denon device, it's pretty obvious that they degraded the sound quality.

Hope SE will do something about this & fast cause for me Music is as important as graphics ^^
(Sorry for my english :p)

Having the same problem. Logged on and noticed the menu sounds were muffled and seemed like very low quality. I hope they can fix this soon, it's extremely annoying.

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Originally Posted by roivas

Playing with a SB X-fi Titanium HD soundcard via spdif on a Denon device, it's pretty obvious that they degraded the sound quality.

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Seems it's less likely to be hardware related then. Myself with a rather old soundcard [Yamaha YMF-724 PCI] experiencing it coupled with someone with a rather more recent X-FI amongst others, it's definitely to do with the patch. I took the liberty of testing it with other soundcards I had in back storage, another that was borrowed, and the built-in audio chipset with surround capability only to get the same results.

This is happening to me too.

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Originally Posted by Chozo4

Seems it's less likely to be hardware related then. Myself with a rather old soundcard [Yamaha YMF-724 PCI] experiencing it coupled with someone with a rather more recent X-FI amongst others, it's definitely to do with the patch. I took the liberty of testing it with other soundcards I had in back storage, another that was borrowed, and the built-in audio chipset with surround capability only to get the same results.

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This probably seems rather extreme, but did you try it with a fresh install of Windows (preferably 7)? Could be a common configuration issue that's causing it. Not to say the people in this thread have incorrect configurations, but perhaps something that was done wrong on Square's part that's causing it to clash with it. Seeing how you seem to have the technical knowledge and hardware to troubleshoot this, perhaps you can take a crack at the fresh install to help narrow the problem down?

Hell, when you log into the game, the Prelude cuts off abruptly when the "ding" is heard for clicking on "Start". Seems like the sound effects are interrupting the music.

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Originally Posted by Rubicon

Hell, when you log into the game, the Prelude cuts off abruptly when the "ding" is heard for clicking on "Start". Seems like the sound effects are interrupting the music.

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For me, the prelude is playing fine, but the "Ding" for Start gets cutoff short. Then if i go back to the main menu from the character selection page, and then click start again, "Ding" doesn't even play at all from that point.

Someone at SE's been tempering with memory relocation and streaming.

Reinstalling Windows 7 DOES NOT work. Reinstalling audio driver DOES NOT work. Reinstalling FFXIV into another PC DOES NOT work.

I'm having an even worse problem with the audio. I don't get ANY sounds except the bass from the background music :(

Wish I this thread could get bumped up so they'd take notice. It keeps getting buried under the useless complaint threads...

Just wanted to say that I also noticed a huge decrease in audio quality the moment I logged in after 1.19. It must be a game issue and I hope they fix this soon cause the sound quality is really bad now compared to how it was before.

Maybe the game lost it's EAX?

Anyone notice any audio changes with 1.19a?

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this, try updating your drivers.

You guys using digital output or analog? They played around with the sound-engine and added an ingame dolby software encoder it seems (I don't use it as my soundcard has a hardware encoder). Try disabling EAX or using stereo :/

Drivers were up to date to begin with, no EAX options using Realtek HD Audio. Tried using the SRS Premium Sound settings but to no avail. No matter what you do it sounds like you're hearing it out of a tin can/bucket.

Tried both analog and digital, set to stereo, still getting the exact same problems.

This deserves a bump as I too experience this and it irritates me to no end.

Still no response from them regarding the audio...
In this current state XI's audio is better than XIV's. This should NOT be the case!

Not getting the issue, the audio is as clear as .ogg can be.
Using analog output though (3x3.5 jack), maybe it has something to do with how audio gets passed through SPDIF
No weird FX cutoffs either.

Try setting your analog output as default and see if it fixes the issue.

Analog was set as default from the start. Same problem across digital/analog sadly.

I am having troubles as well. When I try to make a new character and put them through the intro, the cutscene has no music and sometimes no speech. Also when I play the game, there's no music in the town and I notice some sounds missing, such as the teleport sound.

run a filecheck with a batch md5 checker, here are the checksums link

My problem is solved, I simply failed to take into account the new sound settings.