Audio popping issue

[MiaShino]

What kind of load do you mean? I routinely ran FF with other stuff running in the background. Firefox, Discord, Bannerlord or Rimworld. Usually have no issues with it. Since the sound issues started up, I've more-or-less stopped playing FF except to get in, do a few roulettes on lower jobs, and then log off. Easy, non-story stuff that I can do without sound. Since the sound issues cropped up, it doesn't matter what I'm running - absolutely nothing or my usual batch of whatever. None of it has any effect on the sound problems, positive or negative.

Mostly stuffs with high floating point requirements because I am most curious about something. Discord and standard browser would not be sufficient and am uncertain if Rimworld would stress the cpu much. Perhaps with many colonists. Do not know anything about Bannerlord. Most developers avoid long floats. I am wondering with my request if any highly specific cpu load can cause additional stuttering or induce stuttering on non FX cpus, especially Ryzen.

[MediArgentum]

If Bug Report A and Bug Report B are the same bug (duplicate bugs) Bug Report B will not be investigated, but Bug Report A will. Bug Report B will be moved to duplicate bugs, and Bug Report A will be the one focused on. That's what that kind of language typically means.

Yes, but we were specifically asked to report this bug if we had the issue, and while we all have the same bug/problem, surely our computers/systems aren't identical to be considered duplicate and unnecessary to investigate.

[Elliah-Seraheart]

That should be enough to thoroughly tax any cpu, especially stuffs like folding at home. I only need cpu test though and many many thanks!

You ask I deliver.

There was some popping I've never heard before towards the end at around 7:50. It did not get picked up by OBS - had no relation to FF14 BGM, sounded completely differently, and it continued even after I closed FF14. Only stopped when I stopped folding with GPU. Pretty sure that was completely unrelated and just due to GPU folding, recording with nvnec and playing ff14.

Anyway... Once again... I'm not an expert - but unless I did magically have overhead when folding proteins, I believe this proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the audio issues are unrelated to CPU workload.... and the audio issues themselves CAUSE the strain on people's CPUs. They are the origin, not the cause of CPU spikes and low FPS. Especially given the findings by that one poster here using accessibility settings suggesting that FF14 doesnt ever stop playing audio channels even if you mute them.

I don't know enough about any of this to be able to argue anything... but I really doubt that floating point calculations when folding proteins is less intensive than floating point calculations for ambient right there. It's pretty stupid, that the calculations made for the audio are even made BY THE CPU, rather than the GPU. CPU FLOPS/ROPs are incredibly poor compared to GPUs.

It doesnt seem like it's even about the FX Series weakness with those specific calulations. The way the audio is calulated just seems to be goddamn awful.

https://youtu.be/dqythtdgs8g

For anyone interested - this is a good read. Skip to "Spatial Audio", if you cant be bothered to read the entire thing.
https://www.gsmarena.com/understandi...news-49490.php

Having to reproduce audio with such high frequencies can also put a strain on the equipment and drivers, which can introduce additional distortion. This distortion most definitely is in the audible range, which means you're distorting sound you can hear for the sound you can't hear.

[AeroXaia]

I was lazy to do it at first, but I did it in the end. Please, everyone do this. The more bug reports there are for this problem, the higher it will climb on the priority list of bugs to be fixed ASAP. Not to mention that it helps with the investigation, as fixing bugs the devs can't re-create is a challenge and a half. Even with my measly insignificant programming experience, I know that.

Edit: I just checked the in-game bug reports page, and it seems many of these bug reports have been moved to "duplicate bugs". Now I'm not very familiar with these forums, I only made an account to post here about this issue, but a sticky thread on that page says the bug reports in "duplicate bugs" won't be investigated. I have a bad feeling about this.

Edit: Wait, ALL of the bug reports are gone, not just from this issue, but everything. I'm so confused. I thought we were told if we were still having the issue to submit a bug report with system information? Some of them seem to be in accepted or confirmed, but there's a lot of information missing (moved to duplicate bugs). Do they no longer need any info/reports?

I was going to add that the angle affects it the same way as in my first video in dungeons and trials, etc, too. Whenever it's bad, I can fix it 100% of the time so far by pulling the camera down low enough.

Greetings,

First, I'd like to thank everyone who has submitted a bug report on this matter as we continue our investigation on the audio issue.

Just to clarify, my previous post regarding CPUs that are older than 10 years is one of the possible causes that we have confirmed from the investigation and it is still possible to occur with other CPUs. I apologize if my message wasn't clear on that part.

As we are still investigating the matter, if you are still experiencing the issue, we ask you to please try the steps we provided in my previous post if you haven't done so and then submit a bug report along with your system information as this information will help us investigate further.

Thank you for your cooperation.

[Darthgummibear]

I just had Tsukuyomi come up on my Trial roulette, and it made me sad because the sound broke even before the fight started, so I had to mute the entire thing. I love that fight, the music, her voice lines, everything. But in addition to losing all of that, I lost my audio cues for stack markers and other mechanics, which made the fight four times harder - especially as a healer, since now my eyes have to do all of the work in the fight.

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.

This is the second time in less than a month that a community member has diagnosed a major issue in contradiction to Squeenix trying to blame people's hardware. This is nuts.

[HeavenlyBrush]

These issues have nothing to do with performance and everything to do with spatial audio. I'm doing a leveling dungeon and if my camera is facing the back of my character i will get stutters but the moment i point the camera to face the front of my character the issues go away, even when the boss and all my party members are still on screen. The same thing happens in an alliance raid, can have no issues as long as my camera is facing the front of my character even with boss and everyone else in the alliance raid still on screen.

But then in squadron barracks and rarely inn rooms the stuttering happens and it can't be fixed by turning the camera. But surely those are definitely not related to performance in any way? Is the game really struggling with a single room and a single character? If that was the case raids would be unplayble in comparison surely...

Honestly being held hostage by this embody startup i have never heard about while we get vague allusions to our own hardware and software being the problem is exceedingly frustrating. We deserve clear communications about this issue and we're getting less than nothing.

[MoonstalkerZ]

The thing about blaming our hardware as the problem - they provided a benchmark. We ran the benchmark, it told us our computers could handle Endwalker, and we bought the game based on this information. They then rewrote the sound system, AFTER releasing the benchmark. If their ultimate solution is to say 'just get a better computer,' then their actual system requirements are different from their advertised system requirements, and this is a blatant case of false advertising.

This is why they MUST fix this issue, if only for legal reasons. It's just a question of how long it will take.

[Elliah-Seraheart]

The thing about blaming our hardware as the problem - they provided a benchmark. We ran the benchmark, it told us our computers could handle Endwalker, and we bought the game based on this information. They then rewrote the sound system, AFTER releasing the benchmark. If their ultimate solution is to say 'just get a better computer,' then their actual system requirements are different from their advertised system requirements, and this is a blatant case of false advertising.

This is why they MUST fix this issue, if only for legal reasons. It's just a question of how long it will take.

Pls read this article. It perfectly explains what is actually happening.
https://www.gsmarena.com/understandi...news-49490.php

It's pretty stupid, that we cannot play the game because some esoteric audiophile on the sound team felt like he needed to advocate for sound nobody can actually hear, and effectively strangle our drivers and CPUs to death, for "improvements" in sound that arent even audible for humans to begin with - cannot be heard on most equipment - and sounds like ass because the audio fed into it is not designed to be spatial.

ALL the complaints people have with FF14 audio, ARE side effects of the way audio is handled - and mentioned as "disadvantages" throughout this incredible article. Once you get a grasp on how this works, it's crystal clear what is happening, and that it has NOTHING to do with our hardware - and is ONLY because of the stupid effin embody thing.

Its this 100%

Let's look at the first advantage that high-resolution audio brings, which is higher bit depth. When you reduce the bit depth of the analog to digital conversion, you add more noise during the quantization process when it has to be converted back to analog. By increasing the bit depth, you naturally reduce the noise and thereby increase the dynamic range.

However, even with undithered 16-bits, you can get a dynamic range of 96dB, which is very close to maxing out the limits of human hearing (120dB), and the additional headroom offered by 24-bits (144dB) goes so far beyond it that it even exceeds the limitations of most equipment. In other words, you can't hear it.

Secondly, clever techniques like dithering can help reduce and shape the noise even in a 16-bit signal such that it would be inaudible to anything except precise equipment. The dynamic range of a dithered 16-bit signal can easily be made to go beyond 120dB by reducing and reshaping the noise in the audible range. This means for all practical purposes, 16-bit is perfectly adequate for human ears.

The other advantage high-resolution has is higher sampling rates. A 192kHz sampling rate means the audio can have a frequency response ceiling as high as 96kHz. As I already mentioned, humans can only hear as high as 20kHz, that too only those with perfect hearing at the prime of their life. Most people have even lower frequency responses than that.

For audio to have frequencies beyond the humanly audible range is like having a TV that shows light outside of the visible range. You can hear 96kHz sound almost as much as you can see X-ray. Which is to say, not at all.

Having to reproduce audio with such high frequencies can also put a strain on the equipment and drivers, which can introduce additional distortion. This distortion most definitely is in the audible range, which means you're distorting sound you can hear for the sound you can't hear.

How is it that I, someone who has never in their life even held an instrument, has never produced even a second of digital audio, and cannot write any code is able to test, troubleshoot and pinpoint the issue - yet an entire team of experts fail to foresee this problem, and has not been able to reproduce, troubleshoot or pinpoint it in 25 days. I have 0 expertise. I'm just an obsessive cunt with ADHD who does this for fun. This is not a onepunchman reference. I'm legitimately clueless - yet seemingly figured this out. Infuriating.

Edit:
Here's a video of me showcasing how to reproduce the bug - what audio channels are affected by what settings - and how the issue presents itself in cutscenes - channel by channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYGu2rv3gbg

I even pretty much proofed, that the CPU strain due to floating point calculations in older CPUs is NOT the cause of the audio distortions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqythtdgs8g), by SEVERELY straining my CPU by folding proteins (floating point calculations).

[Dekaar]

I like that all our submitted bug reports have been moved to the duplicate bug section which states:

"Submitted bug reports that are similar to an already reported issue will be moved here. Before submitting a report, please check to see whether a similar bug has already been reported. Reports that have been moved to this category will not be investigated."

I get it but I guess some people will be raging

[MoonstalkerZ]

I like that they told us all to submit bug reports, then moved the bug reports to the 'we will not investigate' section. /s