Cut scene voice issue

[shiraxyuki]

Good day I'm having some an issue with cut scenes voices and I'm not sure how to fix it, I've looked through some other posts and haven't found a fix. My issue is I can't hear the voices and when I can hear them it's a quiet echo that you can just barely hear. how to fix this would greatly be appreciated thank you

[Nobak]

Well, I was in your situation until not so long ago. Specifically, voice used to work then stopped working right. After that, it behaved exactly how you describe it.

In my case, it turned out to be a pretty stupid problem and completely unrelated to the game.

I identified a nice cutscene for testing - scene 2 of the quest "The path of the Righteous", from back in 2.4. I liked that one because in my case, although voices wouldn't work right, the echo that came with that voice could be heard somewhat more clearly.

Here are different things I've tried, which at least helped me narrow it down:
* Made sure my drivers were up to date.
* Tried starting the game after renaming the folder in "Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn". The folder contains every setting, so renaming the folder caused a new one to be created with every default setting. This allowed me to eliminate manual settings changes as a potential cause.
* Tried with a different audio device. This did not work either, but I believe that is a separate issue.
* Reinstalled the whole game, just in case something patched wrong or some such. No dice.

If you've read other threads, you may have read about a potential issue when your system is set to surround sound but your audio device is not.
My issue turned out to be something different but related to that. My system was setup for surround sound, but my device was also supposed to support it (I think this is why the other device I tried with did not work either, though).
It turns out that my volume balance was out of whack, and the center channel (which is used for the voice-overs) was really really low, which caused the really faint voices.

I was able to diagnose the problem via a "Configure speakers" option in Windows' Sound window (by right-clicking on my device in the list that was shown there). This allowed me to test each channel separately.

I'm using a Razer Megalodon, and the volume settings seem to be stored directly in it, so it's easy to not notice that you've messed something up by mistake.


I don't figure the odds of this helping you are all that high, but it's worth a shot considering the symptoms are so similar.