Client loses sound randomly

[Riardon]

Thank you for the update Riardon,

I have a few additional questions regarding your issue:

1) Does the audio drop only when you use ALT+TAB? Or does it happen at random?
2) Are these crashes caused by the same thing? Only when using ALT+TAB? Do you notice any pattern to them otherwise?
3) What kind of audio device are you using? Are you using speakers through a 3.5mm jack? Or perhaps a USB device?
4) In the bottom right corner of your desktop, you will find the system tray. Click on the volume control and select Playback Devices. How many options do you have and have you tried switching between any of them?
5) Do you have any other sound devices on your PC (i.e. microphones, headphones, etc.)?
6) Have you installed any programs that may utilize the sound drivers such as sound mixing or recording software?


We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!

1) It drops randomly. Sometimes in-game during a dungeon or boss fight and sometimes when returning back to game after ALT+TAB.
2) I can't really tell. Seems like something breaks the audio engine of the game but what I cannot tell
3) I'm using my on board audio. My motherboard is Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 (Realtek® ALC1220 codec & ESS9018Q2C chip)
4) I have disabled everything else and now I have only 2 devices. Speakers High Definition Audio Device and 2nd Speakers Audio Device (the 2nd is the motherboard's front panel IO).
5) I have a headset connect to the front panel IO. XIV doesn't allow for on the fly switching of audio output device. The game is using the default playback device as set by Windows. In order to change it a restart of the client is required.
6) No. My Desktop PC is boring. No programs or overlays are installed. Nvidia's GeForce Experience overlay is also disabled. No Fraps, DPS meters, MSI Afterburners or anything else is running while XIV runs. I have only a browser open and ALT+TAB between that and XIV. The sound drop issue happens even when not ALT+TAB. Specific programs cause it to drop the sound when launched such as Discord. This is why I use Skype atm. Firefox browser also causes it to drop the sound though I cannot tell when. Using Chrome or Edge seems mostly OK but again I cannot tell because it happens at random. Most of the times the game does not crash with an error message. It just loses sound.
Again this issue is very old. I had this with my old PC since 2.0 launched but it wasn't so frequent.