Audio popping issue

[Teiren]

So I said I'd post every duty that it happens in, but it's been happening regularly enough now even with Listening Position at 100 that I would go crazy if I did that. It'd now make more sense to list what duties it didn't occur in with Listening Position at 100.

And indeed, reading that quoted post was VERY interesting:

It took much time to find simple way of stating this.. maahhh things make so much sense in the mind yet when you attempt putting them to words everything goes fooey.

This audio stuttering issue reminds me of the type of issues experienced during HLE audio emulation on console emulators. It seems Square could be struggling to schedule audio processing requests across multiple cpu cores if any slowdown in the pipeline occurs. This results in the audio engine waiting to process new requests which as you hear causes stuttering effect. This would be especially prominent on FX cpus because of unique nature of core configuration.

Example time! On Bulldozer (FX series) cpu cores do not have dedicated floating point units opting instead to share one across two cores. They are much much of the worse at certain calculations especially ones requiring these floating point units. Vector calculations were and still are quite difficult to work with and as spatial audio requires many of these to be made..

You cannot rely on cpu utilization either. You may see something close to 40% utilization and wonder; but the cpu is not at 100% so I have additional headroom! You may in fact not. If something has stalled thus starving those cpu cores of something to process it will not be processing anything so will read as "not fully saturated". Even worse for FX because if that shared floating point unit is busy doing something then both cpu cores sharing it must also wait.

I may have the number of FP units per core cluster wrong so many apologies again. I hated working with bulldozer and do not do much difficult software development anymore (because it causes insanity..).

Square must increase the audio buffer (this may introduce slight audio delay but is highly preferable to crackling audio) or add option for number of audio channels into the sound options going forward.

For any suffering from this issue who also attempt thousands of erroneous solutions, I would not waste too much time doing this. I.. just.. cannot believe a major developer would make drastic overhaul to their sound engine without seemingly properly testing it across multiple hardware configurations. At the least they should have implemented a legacy fall back should unforeseen problems arise allowing users to temporarily roll back to working solution until problem is resolved. Then I find out they charge for the sound pack that created the issue in first place, seriously? Who does this?

Myself and friends are not encountering the issue yet on older hardware (i7 4790K and Amd Phenom x4).

Edit time! The PS3 cell micro architecture suffered from similar issues when attempting to make those pesky spes do anything because you had to wait for the ppe. It was unholy nightmare for many.

I took a look at FFXIV's CPU usage when stuttering was happening (Intel i7-920, 2.67 GHz), and I noticed it would go to about 40-50, when normal usage is about 18-25. However, I wasn't getting FPS drops. So this must be what's happening for me. It also seems to happen more often around Sage actions, but then not always. Maybe Dancer too, can't really tell. One thing that I think has helped me a little is changing Battle Effects to Limited or None. This is inexplicably found in Character Configuration->Control Settings->Character tab. This is incredibly undesirable, but I can at least tolerate Limited for Party and None for Others, for now.

However, my biggest problem is that even when it's not stuttering, even if that is fixed, the audio is still wrong. All of the audio is just off, and it's not the fault of anyone's computer. It's just that the sound engine is incredibly poor and playing it all wrong. I don't know what much else to say about that. The sound engine was perfect in Shadowbringers, then plain ruined in Endwalker. I simply didn't realize it until I started doing pre-Endwalker duties again and hearing how obviously wrong it all is, such as in the Nier raids. This isn't some hard-to-grasp issue at all. You can hear it extremely easily on any computer. Even when the audio's working, it's just very obviously wrong in 6.0.

And I take back my concern that Endwalker's audio is unique to this sound engine and so they literally can't revert to 5.5. The benchmark proves that's false because it had plenty of Endwalker audio in it and it was very obviously on the same, good old sound engine that worked perfectly. So there should be absolutely no way that the 5.5 sound engine can't be provided for us, the players, in Endwalker. And if the response is that it can't be an option due to technical reasons, we will know something went very seriously wrong because the benchmark was fine.

[Nommers]

While it's frustrating to constantly be told that problems are on our end when there's 50 pages of evidence to back up the obvious fact that it's not, it's important to keep in mind that devs don't have any more time to trawl through huge forum threads than you do. Furthermore, we're dealing with a language barrier, and on top of that most of the Japanese playerbase is probably on consoles, so they likely aren't complaining nearly as much as we are. As a result of that it also wouldn't surprise me if Squeenix's in-house PC testing environment isn't nearly adequate to deal with the scale of the Western market (might explain the state of some of their other games). Point is, if you're having problems, filing an official bug report is the best thing to do. Software gets tested more in the first day after release than it does in months in development. The more people submit bug reports, the sooner we can give Squeenix an idea of what's actually going on. "I'm doing my part" and all that. Squash them bugs.

I gotta say though, the next time a shady company approaches Squeenix peddling some weird audiophile placebo-effect software that only five people are going to care about and suggest their biggest game be overhauled to accommodate it during the release of a major expansion, all the while begging for ear pics, I sincerely hope someone immediately calls security. This has been a profoundly effective advertisement against Immerse Spatial Audio and I will make sure not to have anything to do with Embody ever.

[Teiren]

Yeah, that's true. Hard to keep in mind with something so frustrating, but you're right.

[Elliah-Seraheart]

While it's frustrating to constantly be told that problems are on our end when there's 50 pages of evidence to back up the obvious fact that it's not, it's important to keep in mind that devs don't have any more time to trawl through huge forum threads than you do. Furthermore, we're dealing with a language barrier, and on top of that most of the Japanese playerbase is probably on consoles, so they likely aren't complaining nearly as much as we are. As a result of that it also wouldn't surprise me if Squeenix's in-house PC testing environment isn't nearly adequate to deal with the scale of the Western market (might explain the state of some of their other games). Point is, if you're having problems, filing an official bug report is the best thing to do. Software gets tested more in the first day after release than it does in months in development. The more people submit bug reports, the sooner we can give Squeenix an idea of what's actually going on. "I'm doing my part" and all that. Squash them bugs.

I gotta say though, the next time a shady company approaches Squeenix peddling some weird audiophile placebo-effect software that only five people are going to care about and suggest their biggest game be overhauled to accommodate it during the release of a major expansion, all the while begging for ear pics, I sincerely hope someone immediately calls security. This has been a profoundly effective advertisement against Immerse Spatial Audio and I will make sure not to have anything to do with Embody ever.

This is exactly why I feel so incredibly insulted by the replies we got in this thread. I've worked in software testing for a major company before. This was a continuous delivery app as well - like FFXIV. Any company who does anything software has people to JUST collect customer feedback and relay it to QA and Development. There's also people specifically doing "Validation", who do nothing but constantly check in with customers to see whether the product they are making is the right product for their consumers, and help inform decisions on features to come. Their observations also get relayed to QA, Development and testing and inform decisions about future patches etc.

The fact that they decided to actually implement the whole spatial audio thing is a testament to how bad their QA/Validation pipeline really is. Even if Square has the best of intentions, even if the producers and devs bring about their finest work... It doesnt make their product better, if QA/Validation/testing doesnt do their job.

This has been an ongoing issue in the AAA industry that has only gotten worse with releases in the last 2-3 years... And FF XIV has finally shown itself to suffer from the same negligent patterns. Just for clarities sake - the company I worked at had around 230k people employed and makes around 50billion dollars a year. It's not just a problem with videogames companies.

Devs may not have time to read through these threads. But there sure as hell are people who get specifically paid do do just that. And so far I have not spotted a reply from any such person. On the contrary, the reply infers that they are completely uninformed and will remain so. Because they cant bear sitting a guy down and actually "investigate".

Instead they give you the good ol "lel just buy a new iphone"

[Breezelyn]

I'd like to point out that even NEWER machines are having this audio popping/stutter shit going on. You know, 2020/2021 made hardware? I saw a conversation in novice network on a newer alt (I mean still going through arr, older alt I haven't touched for awhile) of mine about it. Like, for real?

It's not on the users' end; IT'S SE'S HARDWARE AND ON THEIR END. STOP. BLAMING. THE. USERS. WHEN. IT. IS. ON. YOUR. END. SE.

I can't imagine trying to raid with this shitty audio stutter when Savage drops. I'm betting there won't be any fixes until well into next month. I'm starting to get migraines from the radio static. I hate playing without sound--it's hard to do dungeons with certain boss mechanics having audio triggers (easy for me to get into position when I hear the cue). I'm not paying extra for some crappy "Immerse Gamepack", when the basic game sound is broken beyond belief.

I'm beyond insulted saying it's "our problem" when it clearly isn't.

[RenneTheCatte]

I've been having this issue since day one of Endwalker release, but had no issues from 1.0 until now. It was fixed during the emergency maintenance on all worlds, then after this recent patch, the audio must have gone back to the new system.

It's not us; it's Square-Enix. In most cases, "The customer is always right" is incorrect, but in this case, SE, it's your fault, not ours.

Please fix this. The game is unbearable without sound.

[Lagunow]

I see, so the official answer is "just buy a new PC".

Even though there's an ongoing semiconductor shortage and hardware prices are through the roof and we couldn't plan for it in advance because we got NO warning the new audio engine might break on older CPU, and the benchmark ran smoothly with no audio issues at all.

Honestly, I'm not even mad because it's a hardware problem, I think if they were going to do an update to the audio engine that could potentially cause problems with older hardware we should have been warned of this possibility months ago so we could plan for it.

Edit: Also adding that my setup is perfectly capable at running on high(desktop) with 60 fps with no graphic issues at all. It's just the audio that's lagging. There is no way my hardware is below "minimum recommendations". It's just error 2002 all over again, when we were basically told to get better internet.

[Nommers]

This is exactly why I feel so incredibly insulted by the replies we got in this thread. I've worked in software testing for a major company before. This was a continuous delivery app as well - like FFXIV. Any company who does anything software has people to JUST collect customer feedback and relay it to QA and Development. There's also people specifically doing "Validation", who do nothing but constantly check in with customers to see whether the product they are making is the right product for their consumers, and help inform decisions on features to come. Their observations also get relayed to QA, Development and testing and inform decisions about future patches etc.

The fact that they decided to actually implement the whole spatial audio thing is a testament to how bad their QA/Validation pipeline really is. Even if Square has the best of intentions, even if the producers and devs bring about their finest work... It doesnt make their product better, if QA/Validation/testing doesnt do their job.

This has been an ongoing issue in the AAA industry that has only gotten worse with releases in the last 2-3 years... And FF XIV has finally shown itself to suffer from the same negligent patterns. Just for clarities sake - the company I worked at had around 230k people employed and makes around 50billion dollars a year. It's not just a problem with videogames companies.

Devs may not have time to read through these threads. But there sure as hell are people who get specifically paid do do just that. And so far I have not spotted a reply from any such person. On the contrary, the reply infers that they are completely uninformed and will remain so. Because they cant bear sitting a guy down and actually "investigate".

Instead they give you the good ol "lel just buy a new iphone"

Fair point. In the interest of diplomacy, and in my own personal ongoing effort to not be angry on the internet, I didn't want to say it immediately in responding to Zhexos, but the tonedeafness of continuing to blame users' hardware for the game's problems after the 2002 debacle is particularly ironic. If any other company whose games I didn't play tried to pull that one on their fans, I'd be cackling at them, but instead I'm here huffing industrial-grade copium hoping a dev notices our cries. It does feel increasingly like screaming into the void. But they HAVE asked us to post bug reports, they've said they check there (even Soken's tweeted that people with problems should be submitting bug reports) and yeah it's a pain in the ass and we shouldn't have to do it at this point but it doesn't take THAT long to write one up and it seems like the most constructive option available to us for now. It's legitimately the best way to prove to them that the problems aren't on our end, whether they SHOULD get the point from this thread or not. Fortunately there's been quite a few more reports since Zhexos' post, but if everyone in this thread made one, Squeenix would HAVE to notice (or at least I would hope so).

Personally, I'd have unsubbed by now if it weren't for the fact that we just got three weeks of free game time due to the queues. I was able to get on just fine during that time due to being on at weird hours. so for now this is where that time is going for me. If the PR campaign continues along these vaguely defensive and accusatory lines without any substantial fixes, though, yeah, my sub's looking pretty dire.

Also just want to say it's been absolutely infuriating dealing with this while everyone copypastes the same damn memes about grapes. I hate those grapes, I'm glad they're gone, give me my sound back.

[MiaShino]

I'd love to help out. Can you walk me through a way to provide you with the necessary information?

Someone below I shall be quoting suggested speccy, you can also obtain good information from cpuz found here; https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Everything from memory speed and timings to bios revision and cpu cache.

CPU: AMD FX-8350 63 °F
RAM: 16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 933MHz (10-11-10-32)

Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD65 (MS-7640) (CPU 1) 105 °F
GPU: 2048MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (XFX Pine Group) 101 °F

I almost mentioned ram speeds before, but I was a bit confused whether to say 933 or that times 2, since it's been a while and I forget how that works.



You can use Speccy to get the info free and easy with the timings just in case (the 4 numbers at the end above), small simple program I've been using for years. It should all be in the bios somewhere too, or other programs can probably get it, but this is just "open, copy and paste".

Speccy is here: https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

Yikes! I had almost forgotten to remember how toasty those FX cpus and the older 200 series can get. Anyone can post either it is acceptable as it is just base speed times two. Unfortunately 1866 is the maximum for that FX cpu. Darn, I thought I may be onto something. Memory timings are even in acceptable range. Plenty of bandwidth to feed that cpu.

Computer stats:

• CPU: AMD FX-6300
• RAM: 16 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 722MGz
• Motherboard: ASUSTeK M5A99FX Pro R2.0
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (MSI, 4095MB)

Hmm, am guessing maximum memory speed for your system is actually 1600 and is just operating memory controller at lower c state. 1600 is also enough

I took a look at FFXIV's CPU usage when stuttering was happening (Intel i7-920, 2.67 GHz), and I noticed it would go to about 40-50, when normal usage is about 18-25.

You were the one with zee old reliable 920! Was looking for your older post as am surprised the 920 is also potentially suffering here. That was one of intel's better architectures and absolute joy to work with. X58 was fantastic platform (triple channel memory support!). Your i7 920 is stock speed yes?

Many apologies all as I was hoping to give some temporary alleviation to this issue but am off base. Was shot in dark, I suppose. Memory speeds can effect effect various cpu architectures differently (especially Ryzen) and easily starve them if too low. Also with everyone using integrated sound chips that also access system memory (anything realtek).

Have just awoken and coffee to blood ratio is loooooow so post may be more sloppy then I would like.

Ohhh right! One additional thing; Can anyone confirm if this issue is occurring on ps4/ps5? Am remembering reading something that it might have been but am uncertain. Checking options on ps4 and the "spatial audio" option doth not even exist there. Are ps4 and ps5 still using legacy sound engine? Am most curious now.

[Teiren]

Yeah, stock. I would be too nervous to overclock it or anything like that. Though maybe it has some dynamic form of it? I wouldn't know, but I highly doubt I've pushed it much. It's interesting to hear that CPU was really nice for its time; I didn't even realize what I was picking back then. I guess that's how everything's survived this long, haha, since January 2011. I just kept procrastinating on getting anything new besides the graphics card and RAM.

Oh, speaking of, this is the RAM, along with other things, just to have it all together:
CPU: Intel Core i7-920, 2.66 GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, 4 GB
RAM: 12 GB Triple Channel DDR3, PC3-10700 667 MHz (9-9-9-24)

Anyway, sounds like you were onto something, but not, huh...technically, it could be anything.