Sound Issues after 6.01

In the update notice it was stated the sound would be fixed, simply put, its not even after lowering my sound settings on my configs. Now running 24bit, 44100 Hz. The only difference is that intermittently the sound gets better for a second to then progressively gets worse. This only seems to happen when sound effects happen, but when it does it distorts all sounds the game would produce. Sounds from other apps continue to work as normal.

Came here to see if anyone else was still having issues, and yep. The sound issues on my end seem to be worse than before the patch. As soon as skill effects start flying the audio locks up and begins stuttering terribly. Everything else on my computer works fine.

I had no issues with audio prior to this patch. I'm now having issues with audio having almost no bass or low freqs now, particularly on combat effects. Some effects are just straight-up distorted as well.

Yep. Been having this issue since 6.0. It's been terrible. As stated everything is good until skills start going off.

I've had this issue since Endwalker and somehow it's gotten worse after the patch

Same its really bad when using skills but ive also had some sound issues with music aswell

Been stuttering with music since 6.0 and now it seems to have gotten worse after the patch. Lowering the rate even to CD quality didn't do jack (and it was one of the laundry list of things we had already tried in another thread to troubleshoot this ourselves).

Ok the problem still exists... pls do something Yoshi :(

Patch definitely made it worse. There was chopping and stuttering in 6.0, but turning sound off and on again would fix it (for me, at least). With the 6.01 patch, sound has turned into complete garbage. As soon as skills start getting used, the audio quality explodes, it sounds like someone running rocks in a blender. Even after combat is done, music and ambient sound is choppy and distorted. Dialogue is broken and unintelligible.

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Originally Posted by Ifrinne

In the update notice it was stated the sound would be fixed, simply put, its not even after lowering my sound settings on my configs. Now running 24bit, 44100 Hz. The only difference is that intermittently the sound gets better for a second to then progressively gets worse. This only seems to happen when sound effects happen, but when it does it distorts all sounds the game would produce. Sounds from other apps continue to work as normal.

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I had sound issues before patch but the issue got worse after this patch.

I tried doing the suggested settings in the patch today but persisted after setting them back to pre patch settings.

I also tried to see if immersive spatial audio software would help, it did not so I uninstalled the software.

Issue gets worse when around others especially fates. Its specifically the sounds of abilities used in battle. As the post quoted above, it distorts all game sounds when it happens.

It is not as bad on WHM as it is on MCH and especially horrible on BRD. My guess is something related to the amount of physical projectile impact sounds are than magical.

I'm so heavily frustrated right now, i can't even.
I have this sound issue since Endwalker Early Access dropped.
I have tried every fix and workaround i found in forums, reddit and god-knows-where, to absolutely no avail.
I refrained to just level my jobs and farming Gold Saucer, but...BUT!

I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME GODDAMNIT!

I'm currently in Stormblood and i want to continue playing the story, but I CAN'T with shit like this.
Please please please please fix this!
I'm currently on the edge wether i'm cancelling my supscription and just wait till i see some patchnotes that adress this
(the last patch obviously didn't do jack) or if I continue to be frustrated because i'm just beating a dead horse here.

This is absolutely unacceptable!

I've been having this problem since the endwalker launch.
I waited patiently for these two weeks with the hope that they would fix this problem and they only made the situation worse.
I just canceled my sub because i refuse to ruin my experience with the game.

imagine paying to play a game without sound lmao

Yea, I'm really trying to stay polite but in the end we have paid for the game, paid for the expansions and on top of that a monthly subscription. Besides having been reimbursed for the past 2 weeks, which is nice, this patch did nothing.
So do we now have to wait until the fourth of january? Are we going to get that paid game-time back too?
Since the servers are getting more stable, will that end with us just not having a fix, nor reimbursement until who-knows-when?

As many suggested and the new thread that has been made, at least give us the old audio driver as an option if you can't figure out how to fix the issue. There are too many people with the problem to think it's something iffy on our end. We have tried everything and I'm getting really tired of this now.

If I had to hazard a guess, my (admittedly, poor-educated) opinion is that the issue has to do with the fancy new environmental audio program that you can buy. Since the issue seems to be oriented around positional audio cues (there's a couple of threads about that where moving the camera in certain ways, or changing the audio position from camera to character changes the problems - at least in 6.0), my guess is that something with the audio encoding for the fancy new environmental program is the problem.

It must have something to do with the positional audio! When I play bard, I can get the audio to sound less stutter-y and gross if I distance myself more from the target and pan the camera so that I'm looking at myself (which is a terrible way to play, but it helps). This is ridiculous. I just want to play one day in EW without it sounding terrible.

It's definitely from the Spatial audio update, and it's so frustrating. We've already paid for a lot, and now we have to pay for working audio too? It just doesn't add up. Love this game & the people who work on it to bits, but it was definitely not a smart move to release a whole new sound system at the same time as your most anticipated expansion. It just gives you a metric ton more angry customers..

What makes even less sense is to introduce an entirely new sound system which you have to PAY to use, build an entirely new sound engine around that extraneous paid feature, and then release it with an EXPANSION with no option to opt out of the new changes.

This is actually some Blizzard level of tomfoolery.

No issues before todays patch. Now no audio in game at all. Works in menu screen but as soon as that 4k+ multi-hour queue goes, no sound. Thanks.

An issue wherein certain sounds do not play correctly under certain conditions.
* We expect sound issues created after the release of Patch 6.0 to be resolved via adjustments to the sound engine. Should you continue to experience sound-related issues, we recommend the following:
Open the Windows control panel, select your default audio device, and view properties. Then, under the Advanced tab, select a lower setting for the default format. (A lower bit rate and Hz range is less system intensive.)

I am now on CD quality for game and sounds like I threw a few bricks in a Dryer and hit max speed.(see youtube for that video) When in combat its bad now in raid with 8 peeps its beyond insane..... you did not fix it and apparently the above instructions that seem to be saying its due to our audio not able to handle the game and lower the settings so its not too intensive sounds really funny hmmm... everything was fine prior to patch for YEARS!! and now drum roll!! <<<< oh I would not be able to hear that over this NOISE!

Yeah I just got into the game and have been having issues since EW. Just finished the 7th astral era quests with HORRIBLE popping audio. I hope they find a fix for this soon ;_;.

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Originally Posted by Nisava

We've already paid for a lot, and now we have to pay for working audio too?

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Don't even bother. They have a free trial for that spatial audio thing, and going through the hoops to set that up doesn't help. There's even a youtube video where someone was showing off the stuttering and even toggled the new plugin on and off to demonstrate that plugin or not, the problem happens.

That's not to say that the change to support the plugin isn't to blame. As a software developer, I'd certainly agree at this point that the changes just to support the plugin are likely to blame and that the presence (or not) of the plugin itself is clearly irrelevant given the evidence from that video and my own first-hand tests with and without the plugin.

I saw some discussion that apparently this even affects some PS4/PS5 users. Does anyone know of a link to a post/thread about that? Does PS4/PS5 even have any kind of option for spatial audio? This would make for an interesting twist to this situation as I'd be surprised if the console versions were affected by the changes to support a plugin that I'm pretty sure is PC-exclusive. All I see are PC users, and the range of hardware is all over the map from AMD FXes through Ryzens, some Intel i7s and i9s, some with discrete audio cards such as soundblaster (so not Realtek) and both NVIDIA and ATI GPUs.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

I saw some discussion that apparently this even affects some PS4/PS5 users. Does anyone know of a link to a post/thread about that? Does PS4/PS5 even have any kind of option for spatial audio? This would make for an interesting twist to this situation as I\\'d be surprised if the console versions were affected by the changes to support a plugin that I\\'m pretty sure is PC-exclusive. All I see are PC users, and the range of hardware is all over the map from AMD FXes through Ryzens, some Intel i7s and i9s, some with discrete audio cards such as soundblaster (so not Realtek) and both NVIDIA and ATI GPUs.

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This even further cements the fact that it's a problem on their end. They have to do something, the situation is atrocious.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

Don't even bother. They have a free trial for that spatial audio thing, and going through the hoops to set that up doesn't help. There's even a youtube video where someone was showing off the stuttering and even toggled the new plugin on and off to demonstrate that plugin or not, the problem happens.

That's not to say that the change to support the plugin isn't to blame. As a software developer, I'd certainly agree at this point that the changes just to support the plugin are likely to blame and that the presence (or not) of the plugin itself is clearly irrelevant given the evidence from that video and my own first-hand tests with and without the plugin.

I saw some discussion that apparently this even affects some PS4/PS5 users. Does anyone know of a link to a post/thread about that? Does PS4/PS5 even have any kind of option for spatial audio? This would make for an interesting twist to this situation as I'd be surprised if the console versions were affected by the changes to support a plugin that I'm pretty sure is PC-exclusive. All I see are PC users, and the range of hardware is all over the map from AMD FXes through Ryzens, some Intel i7s and i9s, some with discrete audio cards such as soundblaster (so not Realtek) and both NVIDIA and ATI GPUs.

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There's a user in this conversation that says they're on PS4 and I think someone in one of these threads here has mentioned console, too.

https://twitter.com/bunsbunbuns/stat...90235038646272

My other half and I are both experiencing the same issue since Endwalker release and it's driving us nuts - given the effort that has been put into the audio of this game it's really disappointing to have it ruined by this issue.

I've tried playing the game with different audio devices which include:
Speakers (AUX)
Wired headset (USB)
Wired headset (AUX)

I've tried adjusting the different settings as suggested on a couple of Reddit threads:
Run in DX9
Change listening position (tried both extremes of 100% Camera and 100% Character)
Lower audio quality (all the way down to 16bit 8000hz - Telephone quality)

I have found that as soon as I get the stuttering, simply turning the camera in different directions can reduce it - I think this gives even more evidence that it's the sound engine changes they've made for the spacial audio.

The issue still persists and I believe it needs to be officially accepted by the developers as a known problem that is caused by something they have adjusted and not try to shift this onto an issue with users hardware.

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Originally Posted by ArcheusWren

The issue still persists and I believe it needs to be officially accepted by the developers as a known problem that is caused by something they have adjusted and not try to shift this onto an issue with users hardware.

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Good news, they've acknowledged it.
Bad news, they are blaming user's CPU's.

The issue with sound also started for me once the 6.01 patch dropped; prior it had been fine, and now I can't join any fight either in the overworld or in duties / instances without the audio sounding like a skipping record. Doing content with my audio muted is terrible for the user experience an no quick-fixes seem to help. I can only hope the acknowledge this is ongoing and offer a better response than 'update your systems'.

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Originally Posted by Raikaris

I can only hope the acknowledge this is ongoing and offer a better response than 'update your systems'.

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SE's response can't be "update your system". They put out the benchmark, right? The benchmarked worked fine. No one had an issue with that - because it used the old sound engine. But see, the thing is, because it was benchmarking software for Endwalker, and Endwalker doesn't work like the benchmark did, that leaves the door open for a case of fraud if the problem isn't rectified.

It's the equivalent of buying an electric car with all the bells and whistles, then the car gets delivered and it doesn't have any wheels, runs on leaded gasoline, has an 8-track player, and the convertible top is actually just some dude's Hawaiian shirt stretched over the top of the cab. In effect, it's not what was advertised and it's not what customers paid for.