Hypocrisy aside - that's easy to say AFTER my original post got deleted cause it - low and behold - dared call the community out and (oh no) used the f word and close familiars. Guessing my post got deleted as retribution for getting the post deleted that flat out threw ableism my way. If you are reading this - you.. yes YOU. I AM autistic. Do with that what you will. I dont care.
Anyway - here's the original post with relevant links. Again.
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Original Post (more or less)
That is my video/reddit post. It's completely outdated information. This was made on the day of Endwalker Release (02.12.2021). Stop rotating around the CPU issue, everyone. The problem has already been troubleshot and identified. It's crystal clear what the actual problem is, where it comes from and what needs to be done. It's not a hardware issue, and not an issue of FX Series Bulldozer architecture CPUs being too bad to play the game and process the audio.
People just arent reading the thread - and the relevant posts get buried immediately by posts stating the same thing for the 500th time. Stop posting the same low quality information over and over. You are actively making it harder for both players and square to see relevant posts. Read. The. Thread.
Here's a summary of the relevant posts I'm refering to. This is not the chronological order of posts, but in an order that helps you get a good idea of what the issue is, what has been done and what the final verdict is.
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Former software developer discusses first concerns about what could be the problem and what needs to be done. Explains why FX Series AMD CPUs are more vulnerable than other architectures, and proposes an audio buffer
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5771335
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Reassurance of said developer, that this is not an issue with the FX Series Bulldozer architecture being too weak a CPU to keep up with FF14 and it's audio, calling into question that this is indeed a hardware issue.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...428&viewfull=1
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Someone found evidence that the audio channels never stop playing audio, and are not properly separated. This becomes important further down the list. Popping is also observed in the visual audio equalizer.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5775054
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Enlightening Article explaining how lossless, uncompressed and spatial audio work. All the side effects from that type of audio are discussed in the article, and appear to be exactly what is happening in FF14. Further video proof with reproducable audio issues.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778604
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Benchmark tests that proof that system is perfectly capable of running FF14 and real time audio. More video evidence including a 3 minute video that reproduces audio issue in controlled environment and shows CPU and GPU data alongside it.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5777850
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Software developer analyses above video, mentions CPU bottleneck but ultimately thinks it's alarming that my CPU is being contrained any time the audio issues pop up. Suggests audio issues are the CAUSE of additional CPU strain experienced by people since 6.0, rather than audio issues being the effect of increased CPU strain.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5777948
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Software developer asks for stress testing to put a heavy load on the CPU. Since folding proteins is a really high stress test for CPUs, and just like spatial audio does a ton of floating point calculations - this is the agreed upon method.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778061
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Stress test is delivered. It is very clear that the audio issues are NOT caused by CPU strain. It further shows that it's the other way around, if anything.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778151
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Software developer draws his final verdict. There are too many audio emitters. There are also a lot of emitters being treated as spatial, although they have no reason to. The audio channels are not properly separated. The audio never stops playing, and is instead sending continuous stop calls - generating even more emitters. The volume of calls will continue to grow until the audio driver begins dropping requests, resulting in audio stutter. The fact that the audio is now lossless, uncompressed, spatial audio plays heavily into this and makes this issue 10x worse.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778799
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If you are looking for a summary of things that may or may not help alleviate the audio issues somewhat - I've compiled everything found in this thread, and everything I found online here. This is certainly not a fix, but may help a bit.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5777769