Petition for Legacy pre-Endwalker Sound Option

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Basically, thousands of players have been experiencing horribly distorted audio because of the sound engine changes that came with Endwalker based around the new third party spatial audio plugin. 6.0 introduced a lot of problems that, for a part of that group, were manageable. 6.01 broke it completely and created a situation where the in-game audio is absolute and complete sound garbage.

Here's an example (with very minor Endwalker location spoilers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLQW6ShIkJY

This is from -before- the 6.01 complete broke sound. Imagine this distorted sound, but now 10 times worse and completely unavoidable.

Post linking 50+ other posts on English, German, Japanese forums about the issues, as well as Reddit: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...uttering-issue

oh my god that is awful. im so sorry. I assume there have been attempts at windows/driver adjustments and troubleshooting??

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

oh my god that is awful. im so sorry. I assume there have been attempts at windows/driver adjustments and troubleshooting??

It seems to mainly (not fully, but majority of the reports I've seen) effect people with old amd FX CPUs.

[Shialan]

When will you people understand that these reports are utterly useless without any mentioning of your hardware and driver versions?

[Packetdancer]

So, interesting side note, though I don't know if it'll help anyone else or not.

I run FFXIV's audio output manually redirected onto a pure-software sound device (a "virtual audio cable"); I've done this for ages, mostly so that I can capture the audio in OBS for streaming separately from any Windows system sounds, but it also allows me to swap the audio output around (using the 'Listen' tab of the VAC's device entry to have it output onto my headphones or my normal speakers).

The other day, I accidentally blew away those settings and FFXIV was playing audio directly onto my sound device... and I started having this audio issue. When I restored my VAC settings and forced FFXIV's audio through a virtual cable again, the issues stopped.

The problem is 100% in the game engine, but it seems like maybe it's some sort of timing-dependent thing, and that pure-software solutions like the Virtual Audio Cable stuff are not subject to this particular wonkiness? I haven't dug deeply, regardless, I just know it did fix things for me. I don't know if it'll work the same for anyone else, but it can't hurt to try?

There are multiple virtual audio cable options out there; if anyone else wants to try my specific setup and see if it fixes things for them, the one I used in this case was VB-Audio's. They offer one cable free, and then additional driver packs to add more cables are paid; the freebie cable pack would, I figure, be enough for someone else to test this as well.

If anyone else does try this, I'd be curious to know what the result is. I'm assuming that the virtual cable fixed the issue in my case (because it went away when I swapped back to using the cable), but it could hypothetically be pure coincidence.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

So, interesting side note, though I don't know if it'll help anyone else or not.

I run FFXIV's audio output manually redirected onto a pure-software sound device (a "virtual audio cable"); I've done this for ages, mostly so that I can capture the audio in OBS for streaming separately from any Windows system sounds, but it also allows me to swap the audio output around (using the 'Listen' tab of the VAC's device entry to have it output onto my headphones or my normal speakers).

The other day, I accidentally blew away those settings and FFXIV was playing audio directly onto my sound device... and I started having this audio issue. When I restored my VAC settings and forced FFXIV's audio through a virtual cable again, the issues stopped.

The problem is 100% in the game engine, but it seems like maybe it's some sort of timing-dependent thing, and that pure-software solutions like the Virtual Audio Cable stuff are not subject to this particular wonkiness? I haven't dug deeply, regardless, I just know it did fix things for me. I don't know if it'll work the same for anyone else, but it can't hurt to try?

There are multiple virtual audio cable options out there; if anyone else wants to try my specific setup and see if it fixes things for them, the one I used in this case was VB-Audio's. They offer one cable free, and then additional driver packs to add more cables are paid; the freebie cable pack would, I figure, be enough for someone else to test this as well.

If anyone else does try this, I'd be curious to know what the result is. I'm assuming that the virtual cable fixed the issue in my case (because it went away when I swapped back to using the cable), but it could hypothetically be pure coincidence.

Wouldn't that mean it's a driver level issue? Since you are changing the audio device being used with said virtual device?

[Packetdancer]

Wouldn't that mean it's a driver level issue? Since you are changing the audio device being used with said virtual device?

Unfortunately, no.

Windows audio can be finicky in many various ways; witness how Unreal Engine has or had (I don't know if it got fixed in the more recent 4.x lines, though 5.0's early access edition does seem to fix it) a long-standing issue where trying to change your audio output outside of the game could cause it to crash. (Plug in a headset, watch ARK crash to desktop. Try to swap from headset to speakers, watch Remnant: From the Ashes hork up a DirectX error. Etc.)

This didn't happen with all systems; whether you had those crashes was dependent on your audio setup, but the issue itself was still in Unreal Engine.

So, it's quite possible for driver-specific behavior to expose issues in application-level audio code. The issue can be in an application, in other words, but be exposed (or exacerbated) by driver behavior. Whereas if it were an issue with the audio drivers specifically, chances are you'd see the same audio stuttering in many other games.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

It seems to mainly (not fully, but majority of the reports I've seen) effect people with old amd FX CPUs.

ahh I see thats too bad. I had an old 8350 FX that that I had extreme watercooling with, and got a solid 5ghz all core. But it was toasty! It lasted about 2 years before dying at nearly 1.5v stable I couldnt complain though. Not derailing, just bumping. Imagine getting through these queues for your game to sound like that! Has anyone tagged Soken on Twitter about this? I doubt he could personally fix it, but I guarantee you he would be able to get the ball rollling!

[Bacent]

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
And a few times in new dungeons, specifically in <Insert level 81 dungeon between first and second boss>, I've had the game stop playing any/all sound effects
Including window opening and closing/DF sounds

Only way to fix it would to be closing the game, but I'd always get a crash error when closing. The issue happened most the first week or so, but it bothered me enough where I'd be willing to close the game during prime hours of the game.

[Packetdancer]

Only way to fix it would to be closing the game, but I'd always get a crash error when closing. The issue happened most the first week or so, but it bothered me enough where I'd be willing to close the game during prime hours of the game.

FWIW, this is a long-standing issue since long before Endwalker. It is also annoying as heck, and really needs to be fixed, but it's not a new issue -- nor, in all likelihood, directly connected to the weird stuttering audio that is new to Endwalker.

[Bacent]

FWIW, this is a long-standing issue since long before Endwalker. It is also annoying as heck, and really needs to be fixed, but it's not a new issue -- nor, in all likelihood, directly connected to the weird stuttering audio that is new to Endwalker.

Only ever had it happen after 6.0, but I haven't had it happen since the first week of the game (Starting from the 3rd)