There's some kind of connection between sound crackling and DirectX11 crashes. The game crashes when sounds are played, either doing spells or being in a raid. First I thought it was some issue with the graphics overloading something in the game and crashing the game, but after a reboot and starting the game once it doesn't crash, however, the sound starts crackling and it feels like it's about to crash but it seems to stay stable. Playing the game with sounds turned off also seems to increase stability, and they've added new sound settings to the game which might be a reason why more people have issues with the audio even if you don't have the options turned on. I've tested a lot with different audio devices and so on and either using a dedicated soundcard, not the motherboard's soundcard, and not using any USB or wireless headphones have mitigated almost every crash. WITH THAT BEING SAID! I still get audio crackles and the game almost freezes when it happens but it doesn't go far enough to crash the game. The game really need an update for these issues, all the threads on the forum is either being ignored, ghosted by the forum admins. They NEED to take these issues seriously, even if they just say that they need more info from the players to be able to figure out what audio/graphical issues people have but these issues have been coming and going for years! And now they are being reinforced because the servers have no grace period for people who get these crashes and they have to requeue.

Please Square-Enix! If you need more info there are hundreds of people on the forum that can give you all the information you would ever need! Stop with the auto-replies because it's always the same answer and they NEVER work!