Audio popping issue

[TojiSuzuhara]

i can say with fair certainty when they "acknowledged" sound issues, it was more toward people having no sound/losing sound entirely. i.e. fringe cases. i dont think they had or have any intention on fixing this. i'd like to know anecdotally who here has a confirmed case of having this issue and not having an outdated system past 5 years?

[FatalCharm]

I'm upset that it wasn't even mentioned in the 6.05 patch notes as a known problem. I suspect that they can't fix it without doing away with the new 3d spatial sound thing, at least temporarily, that people have already been purchasing, so rather than go through that hellscape they are just sweeping the problem under the rug for the "few" people that have it. I hope that isn't true. Hope they are TRYING to find a solution, but they have not given us any reason to be hopeful at the moment.

[XenophineEX]

While I agree that it takes time to fix issues, and there's a finite amount of resources to go around and all that, I have two issues. First, it's now been over a month since the sound issues started, with very little recognition. There were and are login issues, lobby errors, etc., and those were all handled well, with the team saying they were working on them and were compensating players due to the game being unplayable for so many. The sound issues, which have existed for just as long, took over a week to acknowledge they even existed, and all we were given was a few lines at the end of another announcement.

Second, and this ties closely into the first point, it doesn't take that much time or effort to put out some kind of statement saying the issue is being worked on. If there was a lodestone announcement, or a tweet from the official FFXIV account, or something at all saying they were aware of the audio issues and were looking into them and doing their best to fix it and we just needed to be patient, I personally wouldn't be nearly as hopeless about this as I am. But currently the entirety of the response to the sound issues is a Notice from December 9th that was updated on December 20th (over two weeks ago) saying "The issues we had announced before Dec. 9, 2021, have been addressed in Patch 6.01." The 6.01 patch notes list the audio issue as "Resolved", even though that patch introduced audio stuttering to people that didn't have it before. And then, when patch 6.05 came out, there is no listing of any kind of audio issues in the "Known Issues" section. This heavily implies that Square-Enix has considered the issue to be fixed, and is no longer working on it.

While I won't claim to speak for everyone on the forums or that's having issues with the sound, I think that a lot of people that are pushing hard not to get the audio stuttering actually fixed, but just to have it acknowledged. Why should anyone be willing to wait 3 months for a potential fix if the company they're waiting for a fix from said the issue was resolved, doesn't list it as a known issue, and remains oddly silent on it when asked? As I said, I can understand them not having a fix ready by now. What I don't understand is why, when so many people are asking if it's actually still being worked on, they won't answer.

I think we are getting back to what you originally quoted from me.

They have at least 3 months of work ahead of them ignoring expansion duties to fix everything twice for the new sound system and those without.
I agree it was not wise to introduce such changes at such a... strenuous time. But they did, for what ever purposes they chose.
And it affects nearly every AMD customer.

They aren't responding to it for legal reasons.

[yami131]

Well like i post my specs 1 or 2 sides befor i have problems and just my graphic gard would be outdatet i guess. I got a ryzen 5 and an msi amd motherboard. And for me direct x9 run clear on sound while in dirext x11 alrdy the start screen is lagging in sound.

[XenophineEX]

Well like i post my specs 1 or 2 sides befor i have problems and just my graphic gard would be outdatet i guess. I got a ryzen 5 and an msi amd motherboard. And for me direct x9 run clear on sound while in dirext x11 alrdy the start screen is lagging in sound.

posting your pc specs won't fix the issue, they are well aware of the problem. They can't publicly acknowledge it for legal reasons, mainly for those already seen in this thread. People demanding refunds, suing, etc. They are in the right to remain silent and retain council.

[yami131]

posting your pc specs won\\'t fix the issue, they are well aware of the problem. They can\\'t publicly acknowledge it for legal reasons, mainly for those already seen in this thread. People demanding refunds, suing, etc. They are in the right to remain silent and retain council.

Well this answer wasnt for u. i just wantet answer Toji cause he ask who has a newer pc and has proble.s well i have soundissues alrdy on the startscreen on direct x 11 but can soundlag free on direct x9 but crowded areas mage me lag hard and freeze from time to time on direct x9. its nice for u that overclocking work for u but i am to scared about it

[Nonoliri]

They aren't responding to it for legal reasons.

It's not outside the realm of possibility. It's just... odd to me. The audio issues and the server issues started on the same day. Their response to the server issues was to do a lot of emergency work, publicly apologize multiple times, compensate people with free game time, mention it heavily, and go so far as to prevent sales of the game and people from making trial accounts.
Their response to the audio issues, which have been around for just as long, was to say they would need 2 weeks to patch them, released a patch that didn't fix them and by some accounts have made them worse, and then claim the issue was resolved.
I just can't figure out why they'd stay quiet for legal reasons for audio issues, but be so vocal about server stability and login issues at the same time. The server issues were so bad they gave everyone 3 weeks of playtime, to me that would have seem to be more important to keep quiet about. Staying quiet for legal reasons just doesn't explain the two very different reactions to the two issues to me, personally.

My only hope is that there's still a thread in the Accepted Bug forums about the audio stutter, and that it hasn't been moved to the Resolved Bug forums yet. That is, so far, the only indication from SE that there's still an audio issue.

[Lagunow]

trying to spam this issue away by flooding it with hundreds of thousands of posts will only see the issue ignored. Perhaps you haven't noticed that this particular director doesn't buckle under floods.

Nor should he.

A investigation should be commenced of all audio output, mainly aimed at all new sound effects and combos effects introduced in this latest expansion.

Furthermore all sound affected by this new paid plug-in and all changes made to all sound channels need also be investigated.

What I have suggested alone will take the team 3 months to finish. They also have other duties introducing new parts of the latest expansion. They have to work along-side, and surpass the updates that will be coming for the story.

This isn't an excuse, rather than an explanation as to what is going on and their thoughts going forward. They will not be delaying the new expansion pack story to fix this, it all has to be done along side and past it.

Therefore it would behoove all involved to try to fix or mitigate the issues the best they can on their end until the source is corrected. I.E. overclocking your AMD processor, enabling virtual ram on separate drives other than the one running FFXIV, Making sure you aren't watching or streaming anything while playing.

for me on a msi 960 board; AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor 3.50 GHz, I get it to stop stuttering when I overclock via msi command center as follows... (ratio) 21.5/ (base clock) 201.00 with fans running at 95%

that brings it to 4.1 - 4.5 ghz it will fluctuate if on a msi board to demand.

Can't say for others, but I'm not asking that they fix it by tomorrow.

We're simply asking that they acknowledge it. The "audio problems" they claimed to have fixed on 6.01 is a completely separated issue with a completely different cause.

The only replies we got here on this thread implied we were trying to run the game on a toaster, except AMD-FX8350 is above not only minimum but even recommended system requirements. They called it "old hardware" but AMD-FX is younger than FFXIV.

They announced system requirements. They made a benchmark avaiable. People have every right to be mad when a company sells them a software telling them it would run on their machine, only for the software to not run on their machine. This is blatant false advertising.

And yes, I do know they have content to relase and all that, but I also know any company should understand that anything that could possibly warrant them a lawsuit takes precedence.

[XenophineEX]

Well this answer wasn't for u. i just wanted an answer from Toji cause he asked who has a newer pc and had probable sound issues as well. I have sound issues already on the start screen for direct x 11 but am sound-lag free on direct x9; but crowded areas lag hard and freeze from time to time on direct x9. It's nice for u that overclocking work for u but I am to scared about it

I am mostly sound lag free with whatever version of directx windows 10 comes with on a nvidia gtx 960. Overclocking helps immensely on the sound stuttering. Although during credits it is still unavoidable, all 3 credits for the main campaigns I completed.. Heavensward, Stormbringers, Shadowbringers, stuttered to the point I had to skip them. The end fights were good though especially the end of Shadowbringers... very flashy... zero lag from the gpu and cpu always at 40% usage.

Gpu was at 100% though. I find it odd this game never does peg out my processor... and that may be the culprit here.

Hence why over clocking works so well... it is expanding the areas the game is using, particularly for sound. It doesn't seem to want to use all the cores for a AMD processor.

I would follow up with screenshots but this forum doesn't allow it, and I can understand why. But the processor is always at 40% for this game. Even set to real time, So I fear something is amiss in processor scheduling. And that is no easy fix.

As a odd counter to the cpu lag, a few games I play are through bluestacks 5, simple enough android games and I have them running at 80% processor.

[ScarlettSwyrwyb]

In order to document this issue, I have recorded a gameplay video of the current state of the audio for me on a single Duty Roulette run. Please find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfW74sQtF5I

I'm afraid that I've personally cancelled my sub until this is resolved, I look forward to being able to play again.