Audio popping issue

[ChilledApple]

So, after the fight, I decided to go into Accessibility Settings and found the Visual Alerts option. I turned this on. For those who have never used this (as I hadn't), this basically puts equalizer bars on both sides of your screen that show the sound being played in the game. Unlike nearly every other game I've ever played, FF14 does not actually switch the sound "off" then you mute it or turn it off. You can turn Master Volume down to 0 AND mute it and all of the sound effects will keep playing. You just aren't hearing them. I guess is because it needs those effects, music, etc, for the visual alert system?

Anyway. Getting back to my point. The visual alerts. They show the distorted audio. That means that it's actually conclusive proof that it's Final Fantasy itself that's causing these problems, since if it were feeding "clean" audio out of the game and it was our computers mucking it up, then FF should show "clean" visual cues. Not the distorted ones. That means that FF itself is aware of the issues, which wouldn't be the case if the problem was in the game audio being pumped into our system.

At least, so it seems to me.

EDIT: Interestingly, if I mute master volume, the visual cues still show distorted audio. I can tell because whenever I cast Dyskrasia, if it doesn't distort, I get a clean, single push out on the bottom-most equalizer bar. When it's distorted, that bar will push out and bounce a few times before going down. With the sound muted, I'm still getting the bounce 2 out of 3 casts.

Tried that today aswell, its the same for me here. It's a little bit funny that you can visualize the issue. Welp guess i have to keep playing with the audio pack for a while. My poor ears T_T

[raelgun]

So my Audio is a bit funky.
I guess something happened with my motherboard so trying to run audio directly from the green port in the back does -not- work. There's no audio at all no matter what I've tried from reinstalling sound drivers and more.
So I had to plug in a Roccat JUKE into the USB in the back, and then plug the audio port into that which allowed me to have audio.
So my audio isn't plugged into the motherboard's sound plug directly, but instead plugged in through the USB port.

USB soundcards is something I probably should of added ( I tend to class them as audio interface for some reason ), USB audio devices tend to do more of the onboard processing and ignores more of the CPU or anything onboard for the matter to process the audio signal.

If you play around with the bit rate and sample rate, does that impact anything for you?

[Grimno]

USB soundcards is something I probably should of added ( I tend to class them as audio interface for some reason ), USB audio devices tend to do more of the onboard processing and ignores more of the CPU or anything onboard for the matter to process the audio signal.

If you play around with the bit rate and sample rate, does that impact anything for you?

Nope. I have the Spatial Audio Pack downloaded for the trial and it does help (though combat sounds muffled) but doesn't get rid of the audio crackling 100%
I'll still hear it sometimes in enclosed spaces, or during loading screens between zones. Though I can play Reaper now without crackling. Just ran the Grimlyt Dark dungeon without any crackles as reaper.

[Mousezilla]

I'm at that one level 88 quest in zone one (the one with the crying, you know what I'm talking about) and I have to put a pin in the MSQ until this issue gets resolved. Not only is Soken's music too good to turn off, but I rely a lot on sound queues for fights, which is unfortunately where the stuttering issue is the absolute worst. I can work on crafting and gathering and older content, but I can't do any roulettes that put me in the new content where I'm not familiar enough to manage without the sounds, or risk the glitch deciding to branch out into the voiced cutscenes. Like everyone else here, I didn't have this issue prior to 6.0, and it became impossible to ignore after 6.01 dropped.

You guys know I love and appreciate your hard work, and I've come to the forums to complain maybe twice in the... dear god, 8 years? Jesus. The probably-way-too-long time I've been playing. But this third-party sound software was a frankly iffy idea that maybe should have waited to be implemented sometime not during a huge launch when you would have had more eyes and hands free to catch this before it went FUBAR.

[Breezelyn]

Catching up on reading the thread, I decided to try what Maeklos did, because I rely on audio cues as well for boss fights. Including when I usually run heals, the audio cue for the big stack markers gets me ready for big heals. It's not much better, but... ugh. The audio stuttering has given me a migraine I can't get rid of. I'm on day 3 of having it, and it's NOT fun over the holidays. I took a break from the game most of the last night.

I just wish their damn sound engine was tested BEFORE they put it into the game. The benchmark would have been the best option to do it with. I just feel a bit duped with the game currently. I paid 40 USD for the expansion, then 15 USD a month (plus extra retainers on top of that). Just to have this game-breaking, audio stutter persisting to who-knows-when making it hard to actually do much. I'm just tired of getting headaches and migraines from something they could prevented. You know, TESTED before they released it into the actual game, and now, players/customers are paying for the consequences...literally.

Before anyone gets on me about this: We are paying real life money to play this game. It's NOT F2P where you can play without having to buy/pay for a cent to have access to said game. I love this game-- I want to be happy playing it. I've been with this mmo for a long while. Just this audio stutter is starting to affect me in real life at this point. If it's not fixed by next month before Savage, I don't know what I'm going to do.

[MoonstalkerZ]

Anyway. Getting back to my point. The visual alerts. They show the distorted audio. That means that it's actually conclusive proof that it's Final Fantasy itself that's causing these problems, since if it were feeding "clean" audio out of the game and it was our computers mucking it up, then FF should show "clean" visual cues. Not the distorted ones. That means that FF itself is aware of the issues, which wouldn't be the case if the problem was in the game audio being pumped into our system.

This is a HUGE clue. If you haven't already, put this in the bug report, the devs need to see this.

I also encourage everyone to test this for yourselves, put it in your own bug reports, and make videos if that's within your abilities. The more proof we can gather, the quicker this gets fixed.

[MoonstalkerZ]

I did some testing with the equalizer bars and crafting while facing away from the camera, which fairly reliably produces the audio stuttering. I've posted my results in my bug thread here.

I've also been reading through the bug reports posted on these forums. Someone said a few pages ago they knew someone with a Phenom CPU had no stuttering issues, and speculated that Phenom CPUs wouldn't cause this problem - however, this bug report indicates a user with a Phenom CPU is having the stuttering bug. So now we're up to FX, Ryzen, Phenom, and i7 CPUs having this problem, as well as (anecdotally) consoles - however this last only comes from something a forum poster reported reading in shout chat. If we could get someone on the forum with a PS4 or PS5 to confirm they have the stuttering bug, this would be a great help.

It's entirely possible that one source of the problem is something that happens with the CPU, but if it's happening with every type of CPU, then just getting a new CPU isn't going to fix the problem.

[MediArgentum]

So now we're up to FX, Ryzen, Phenom, and i7 CPUs having this problem

Might as well add AMD APU series there too, as this sound stuttering problem won't go away for me either, no matter which of the proposed solutions I try, and I have AMD APU A8-5500. Also reported here.

[Grimno]

Trying out the Spatial Audio Pack and it feels like it just hates bass.
Doing ocean fishing, and there's no crackling with it on sure...
But once it gets to the result screen, and it starts showing all the Bonuses for fishing (+10% +20% etc) and hits in that series of WHUMPS with each one, it freaks out and stutters/statics/slows down

[Kyocchi]

I've noticed the stuttering doesn't happen at the First and Second Circle of the new raids for me. It comes back at the Third Circle and becomes unbearable at the Fourth.

Also, it's probably not related to this issue, but in System Configuration > Sound Settings there's an option called "Play sounds when window is not active". I only have it set to play System Sounds and yet, when duty queue pops I can hear the game's BGM with every "tick" sound the queue window does, as if both types of sounds were integrated to each other. This didn't happen before 6.0.