Client loses sound randomly

[Ariellendera]

Hello Riardon,

I would like to suggest doing a clean re-boot. Launch FFXIV without anything else including web browsers in the background. If you could please keep track of the following things:

-Does not having firefox open make any difference?
-Where in the game are you located when the sound goes out?
-Are you actively using controls when the sound goes out or are you idle?

Hope to be of assistance

[Riardon]

Hello Riardon,

I would like to suggest doing a clean re-boot. Launch FFXIV without anything else including web browsers in the background. If you could please keep track of the following things:

-Does not having firefox open make any difference?
-Where in the game are you located when the sound goes out?
-Are you actively using controls when the sound goes out or are you idle?

Hope to be of assistance

It just happened again today. Firefox opened and browsing Twitter. A video was playing with sound on the Video player. The game was minimized. Returned to game sound was gone.
-I will test this more because I need time.
-I was in the The Lochs area when it happened.
-The game was minimized and switched to with ALT+TAB

Is it possible that the game thinks I'm changing sound device and stops the sound? I know this game does't support switching of sound devices on the fly without restarts and it goes back when you change the output device while it's open.
Maybe it's somewhat more sensible that it should and this is why it happens only on XIV but not on my Video players or Music players or the other games I play.
Will check some things more and report back again.

[Ariellendera]

It just happened again today. Firefox opened and browsing Twitter. A video was playing with sound on the Video player. The game was minimized. Returned to game sound was gone.
-I will test this more because I need time.
-I was in the The Lochs area when it happened.
-The game was minimized and switched to with ALT+TAB

Is it possible that the game thinks I'm changing sound device and stops the sound? I know this game does't support switching of sound devices on the fly without restarts and it goes back when you change the output device while it's open.
Maybe it's somewhat more sensible that it should and this is why it happens only on XIV but not on my Video players or Music players or the other games I play.
Will check some things more and report back again.

Thank you, keep us updated!

[Riardon]

Thank you, keep us updated!

I did some further testing all these days and here are my observations:

I reinstalled Windows 10 on my system again (performed a clean install with format).
Installed all latest system drivers. Did all my Windows updates.
Installed the FFXIV again.
The issue is still happening.
What I noticed though is that it happens with Firefox browser and not with Edge or Chrome (at least all this week that I did my testings).
It doesn't matter if I use my 2.1 rear IO panel system speakers or the front panel IO Headset it still happens.
Sound driver version doesn't matter. I tested 4 different audio drivers versions it's still happening.
Browsing through Firefox and ALT+TAB back to game causes my client to lose sound at some moment. This happens within an hour of usage. It can happen from 10 minutes to 1 hour.
With Chrome and Edge I didn't run on this issue this week. Or maybe it's very rare with those browsers. Other programs which play sound are unaffected. Be it another game, sound players, media players or sound coming from webpages on browsers.
I also asked Gigabyte for this and they told me it's a game issue and that only the game developer can solve this.
Some posts ago you asked me what I changed on my system and this happens more frequently now and I just remembered that I was using Firefox as my main browser the last 2 months.
I think that the game's sound engine is too sensible on sound changes and it crashes easily. I believe that Firefox or some webpages do something with sound that XIV doesn't like so the sound crashes/stops.
Plugging or unplugging audio jacks while the game is running can cause a game crash. That's another old issue but I think it's also related to the game's problematic sound engine.
After all I did the issue is persistent. I can reproduce it within an hour or so. (Note: I alt+tab a lot between my browsers and the game).
I think there is nothing more I can do. It's on devs hand to deal with this issue.

[drebbe]

I did some further testing all these days and here are my observations:

I reinstalled Windows 10 on my system again (performed a clean install with format).
Installed all latest system drivers. Did all my Windows updates.
Installed the FFXIV again.
The issue is still happening.
What I noticed though is that it happens with Firefox browser and not with Edge or Chrome (at least all this week that I did my testings).
It doesn't matter if I use my 2.1 rear IO panel system speakers or the front panel IO Headset it still happens.
Sound driver version doesn't matter. I tested 4 different audio drivers versions it's still happening.
Browsing through Firefox and ALT+TAB back to game causes my client to lose sound at some moment. This happens within an hour of usage. It can happen from 10 minutes to 1 hour.
With Chrome and Edge I didn't run on this issue this week. Or maybe it's very rare with those browsers. Other programs which play sound are unaffected. Be it another game, sound players, media players or sound coming from webpages on browsers.
I also asked Gigabyte for this and they told me it's a game issue and that only the game developer can solve this.
Some posts ago you asked me what I changed on my system and this happens more frequently now and I just remembered that I was using Firefox as my main browser the last 2 months.
I think that the game's sound engine is too sensible on sound changes and it crashes easily. I believe that Firefox or some webpages do something with sound that XIV doesn't like so the sound crashes/stops.
Plugging or unplugging audio jacks while the game is running can cause a game crash. That's another old issue but I think it's also related to the game's problematic sound engine.
After all I did the issue is persistent. I can reproduce it within an hour or so. (Note: I alt+tab a lot between my browsers and the game).
I think there is nothing more I can do. It's on devs hand to deal with this issue.

I'd try these things:
-Disable hardware acceleration in Flash.
-Disable flash player in Firefox (Chrome uses its own Flash version)
-Try an old version of Firefox.
-Try to sandbox FFXIV with a virtual audio cable driver.
-Run DPC Latency Checker and see if there are high spikes when you alt+tab. A long pause could possibly cause the driver to reset.

[hynaku]

lost sound today but it was from hdmi cable got unplugged and when gets plugged back in have no sound till you exit out and login again.

[drebbe]

I understand your frustration...

I've written an application that reproduces the issue but I don't want to post it and get banned from the forums. I'd have to have Ariellendera's permission first. If Ariellendera can elevate this to a software developer I've pretty much pinpointed the code (as much as I can without actually having access to the code) that is the issue.

SE is using XAudio 2.7 as the audio backend. When the sound card device becomes unavailable for any reason you need to reinitialize all of the XAudio backend after catching IXAudio2EngineCallback::OnCriticalError() or you result with no audio playback.

The other solution is to move to XAudio 2.9 and windows 10 which obviously isn't a solution because it removes support for anything older than Windows 10.

[Ferth]

Is there a chance that this is a physical connection issue? Something where your sound card or playback device loses power for a split second, and ffxiv loses sound entirely because of how poorly the game adapts to audio hardware changes?

[Riardon]

I understand your frustration...

I've written an application that reproduces the issue but I don't want to post it and get banned from the forums. I'd have to have Ariellendera's permission first. If Ariellendera can elevate this to a software developer I've pretty much pinpointed the code (as much as I can without actually having access to the code) that is the issue.

SE is using XAudio 2.7 as the audio backend. When the sound card device becomes unavailable for any reason you need to reinitialize all of the XAudio backend after catching IXAudio2EngineCallback::OnCriticalError() or you result with no audio playback.

The other solution is to move to XAudio 2.9 and windows 10 which obviously isn't a solution because it removes support for anything older than Windows 10.

I have absolutely no knowledge on this but if the issue is this then the whole thread is pointless. Although this agrees with my belief that the issue lies with XIV and its inflexible and prone to crashes audio, I can't prove it. I tried to post my observations as much detailed as I could. It's something that was bothering me many years but this time it crossed my limits of patience and understanding thus I took it on forums. I think SE knows what might be the issue on their end.

Is there a chance that this is a physical connection issue? Something where your sound card or playback device loses power for a split second, and ffxiv loses sound entirely because of how poorly the game adapts to audio hardware changes?

How am I supposed to know this? I'm not a hardware engineer and even If I was I doubt I could check this at home. Whatever the issue is it happens only with XIV. In other games I have absolutely no such issues. I got same issues over the years on two completely different systems. I seriously doubt it's a hardware thing. Digging in Reddit saw many others reporting such issues similar to mine.

[drebbe]

How am I supposed to know this? I'm not a hardware engineer and even If I was I doubt I could check this at home. Whatever the issue is it happens only with XIV. In other games I have absolutely no such issues. I got same issues over the years on two completely different systems. I seriously doubt it's a hardware thing. Digging in Reddit saw many others reporting such issues similar to mine.

If you have speakers in your monitor and its HDMI, disable everything else and use audio through HDMI.