Audio popping issue

[crovius]

I feel like it's more persistent at times until I adjust the camera angle again. Sometimes I will forget it's a thing when it doesn't occur for a couple hours, but am reminded that it's still ongoing when I go into combat and am hit with a moment of audio stuttering.

[TojiSuzuhara]

The very same people - you included - who keep spamming this thread - are the very reason there are so many, mostly irrelevant, posts. This behavior is the very reason lists like this are needed in the first place. You are actively hurting your chances of the real issue being seen in this thread with every single low quality post you are making. Do you see the problem here, when claiming that "you cant blame people for not reading the thread?"

When you sit in traffic - YOU are the traffic.

Besides, this is the technical support forum. Posts are supposed to be centered around technical support. Threads are not there for every joe to vent about his problems with the audio issues. It's not an emotional support forum, but it's essentially used as one... drowning out the actual technical support posts. I'd have to post this list every 8 hours, because it is immediately pushed back 3 pages by people too lazy and/or focused on venting, to read anything - or go through any effort of their own before posting.

Sorry for the language - but I'm incredibly upset. Both with square, and the people posting in here. The language may be unwaranted - but the frustration is certainly not. Besides, I believe there's value in using strong language to express strong opinions.

i knew someone was going to eventually snap LOL

[DendrielConcade]

So has there been any factor to differentiate from people who do and don't have this bug? I've been floating around this forum since a day or two after 6.0.1 as funnily enough, I experienced no audio issues in the pre-release from what I could remember but after it full released and then 6.0.1 dropped everything has gone to hell. I don't remember seeing anything on people mentioning the exceptions like people with objectively worse or better hardware not having issues at all, but I may have missed them if so.

[MoonstalkerZ]

So has there been any factor to differentiate from people who do and don't have this bug? I've been floating around this forum since a day or two after 6.0.1 as funnily enough, I experienced no audio issues in the pre-release from what I could remember but after it full released and then 6.0.1 dropped everything has gone to hell. I don't remember seeing anything on people mentioning the exceptions like people with objectively worse or better hardware not having issues at all, but I may have missed them if so.

If you want the short answer, no, there is no common factor in who has the bug.

If you want the long answer: For a while we thought it was only people with FX CPUs, or only people with old CPUs, but we've had people with all sorts of different CPUs, and people with both old and new CPUs. It seems to be 99% people on PCs, though I've seen one person on Twitter on Playstation who claims to have the bug, as well as someone in this forum claiming that people in shout chat were saying that they were on Playstation and had it. If you wanted to check for yourself, you could go to the Bug Reports section of the forums and look through the computer specs posted there (most of them have been moved to the "Duplicate Bugs" section).

As to hardware quality, I have an objectively worse CPU than most people in the bug reports, but as far as I can tell I don't have the problem nearly as bad as many of the people in this thread. There has been at least one mention of someone with a 12 year old (I believe) CPU not having the bug while someone with a newer CPU does have the bug. There has been at least one mention of someone with a CPU from 2019 who has the bug. (This may have been the same person, I don't remember.) See this post about CPUs.

[Baekho]

Just adding onto the pile: I've also been having severe audio issues ever since EW early acces... Sometimes the game runs and sounds fine, sometimes it runs fine but the audio stutters and occasionally both the performance and sound are completely down the drain... Since installing the Spacial Audio trial the performance issues have either disappeared or just become extremely rare and while the audio stutter seems to have gotten better, it still happens rather frequently...

It's just so puzzling to me because the timing seems to be completely random. I've seen claims that it happens mostly whenever the game has to process too many sounds at once, but, most of the time Alliance Raids are completely fine for me. Then I load into a remote instance where literally no one is around and the game sounds like it's about to crash.

I think the weirdest issue I had was when I was in the Grand Company barracks... game sounded completely fine until I clicked on the message board where you can check on your squad, at which point the sound starts stuttering until I closed the menu. Thought it was just an odd coincidence so I tried it again a couple times and yeah, the cracking/stuttering would literally start and stop in unison with the menu opening and closing. While I was literally just standing there. I wasn't able to replicate it ever since I logged out and just in general it seems like the areas where I'm experiencing sound issues are completely randomized with each session... I just don't get it, how could that be a trigger for this issue?

It's so frustrating because the game ran smooth like butter prior to EW. Never dipped below 60 fps even in the busiest of fights... and now I can't even complete the story because the atmosphere is completely ruined by these sound issues. I'm kinda worried that this is a low priority issue for them since while there are a large amount of clicks on here, the vast majority of players don't seem to be having this issue... :/

Not gonna go full on doom mode just yet and am still hopefull it's gonna be fixed, but I'd be devastated if the next patch rolled around and I'd have to rush through the MSQ with these audio issues...

[Ariel_Valmont]

The very same people - you included - who keep spamming this thread - are the very reason there are so many, mostly irrelevant, posts. This behavior is the very reason lists like this are needed in the first place. You are actively hurting your chances of the real issue being seen in this thread with every single low quality post you are making. Do you see the problem here, when claiming that "you cant blame people for not reading the thread?"

When you sit in traffic - YOU are the traffic.

Besides, this is the technical support forum. Posts are supposed to be centered around technical support. Threads are not there for every joe to vent about his problems with the audio issues. It's not an emotional support forum, but it's essentially used as one... drowning out the actual technical support posts. I'd have to post this list every 8 hours, because it is immediately pushed back 3 pages by people too lazy and/or focused on venting, to read anything - or go through any effort of their own before posting.

Sorry for the language - but I'm incredibly upset. Both with square, and the people posting in here. The language may be unwaranted - but the frustration is certainly not. Besides, I believe there's value in using strong language to express strong opinions.

You complaining about people every few pages is essentially doing the same thing you are complaining about. As far as I am concerned the more people in here posting something about the issue, the better.

[TaleraRistain]

I've just gotten off a 10 day ban so I couldn't give this info before, but I tested my account on my husband's machine. He has a Ryzen 7 1700X and isn't having the issue. But I think we had some with later gen Ryzens who were.

[Elliah-Seraheart]

You complaining about people every few pages is essentially doing the same thing you are complaining about. As far as I am concerned the more people in here posting something about the issue, the better.

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)

It has something to do with the camera positioning, and if there's any obstructions between the source of a sound and the listening position.

See video. And yeah, I got this off of Reddit. credit to PraggyD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLQW...&ab_channel=DP

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

[Mekhana]

Square should just take the big L and take back audio the way it used to be. Down the line with long-term testing, they can bring it back.

[minopoki]

Anyway - here's the original post with relevant links. Again.

Elliah, I have a suggestion, if you're willing, maybe you could create a new thread with those informations in the opening post.
Since this thread is already polluted, that would make informations more visible and accessible, and if new info come up that you'd want to add, it would probably be more convenient to just update the post.