Petition for Legacy pre-Endwalker Sound Option

[Jennah]

I've only had two audio issues.
Maybe about twice a week, one type of sound will cut out completely until reboot - battle noises, BGM, etc. A reboot fixes it.
Second, in the Old Sharlayan BGM, there's an INCREDIBLY loud clicking sound every 30 seconds or so, that with my headphones, sounds like it's coming from 3 feet behind my desk chair.

The clicking sound stopped with the update; and I haven't lost sound ... yet.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

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)

I've had it happen many times over the years. I think a glitch happens that blows out the interface (if you look at windows sound thing you can see it gets pegged to 100% volume spike or w/e it's called)

Funnily enough, I've had no issues since endwalker dropped.

[Caurcas]

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!

To be honest the FX cpus are ancient, and these issues tend to crop up with such age. However, audio related issues and crashes have been pretty common for me for years across 3 different systems.

[Nihility]

i only have sound issues with a usb headset
not sure what the issue is for everyone else but that was it for me

[Catwho]

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.

Some of us have had success switching audio in Windows (NOT in the game engine) to avoid a complete restart of the game.

This fixed it for me when inexplicably my sound effects track went out mid dungeon, but the music kept playing. I switched the Windows audio output from my headphones to speakers, then switched it back, and the sound effects returned.

[Nommers]

I would support this as well. Started occasionally having audio stutters related to other players or NPCs using skills around me in combat when early access dropped. It didn't break the game for me but it did impact my enjoyment of several of the fights in Endwalker, including the final trial. Other people in my FC lost sound entirely or had much worse stutters than I did when they were just standing around with no one nearby.

Now in 6.01 the stutters happen every time anyone uses a skill near me, even if they're just crafting. Cities are unbearable. The stutter itself has also become much, much worse. The game has been rendered unplayable by a patch that I was hoping would finally fix the issue. None of the devs' or other players' suggested fixes have worked.

If it's at all possible to implement, legacy 5.55 audio would be very much appreciated as a temporary solution until the cause of the problem can be properly identified and fixed. I also sincerely hope this comes as a hotfix and not in 6.05 - this issue has been around in some form for nearly three weeks already.

[Kyeria]

Agreed.

Please give us an option to use the old sound engine or at least roll back to it temporarily until the issue is fully resolved. I sadly don't even get the benefit of audio lagging/popping. Mine just cuts out entirely 100% and I have to play the game in silence unless I want to restart the game and sit in queue for another 4 hours...

This issue is particularly frustrating to deal with while queue times the way they are...

[Nyxs]

My audio has been stuttering which is annoying to listen to while trying to enjoy the bgm in areas.

[Jin-]

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.

I thought it was 6.0 related. Happened to me once during the launch day, all sound effects and voices disappeared after a loud popping sound

[FangsBrightclaw]

+1 for the petition. I had to completely swap PCs in order to have sound working, leading to a very angelic experience when, after borrowing a PC from my tech savvy father and spending about 8 hours downloading the game, I finally heard the Pharos Sirius music ring true. The fact that these issues are CPU related is leading me to a situation where no one believes me, forcing me to hunt down placebos that almost work. It really gets to you and sours the experience. Music means a lot to me in general, especially in a game so masterful at it. That being said, I wasn't expecting to start crying of relief once I finally implemented a fix of the largest magnitude. I really should not have to get a newer PC to run FFXIV when I ran it perfectly for years on end prior.

I humbly request either SE puts in a toggle for the new sound system, fixes this mess, or, at the very least, make a large list of incompatible hardware and have the transparency to tell us their Benchmark did not do its job months prior. This is getting to a point of being unreasonable.