Combat Sound Effects Distorted

[Nisava]

Really hurts to see them just straight up act like it's fine to our face. It's disrespectful to the teams who worked extremely hard on the music, sound effects, voices, etc, for Endwalker, and it's disrespectful to the paying customers. I've tried anything I possibly could to no avail, and so has pretty much anyone else with this problem, because we deeply care about this game and really want to play through the team's vision. It really has made me lose faith in the FFXIV team, which I had been convinced was pretty in touch with their customers & cared about the problems. Apparently not, as evidenced by the fact it's worse now for tons of people, and even people who didn't have trouble are having trouble. And we haven't even gotten a lick of acknowledgement that it's become more dire.

It's super embarrassing. They won't get another dime from me until they either figure it out or release a legacy audio option, like another thread suggested. If their goal was to alienate half their playerbase, good for them I guess. They truly nailed it.

[EnkiduAwakened]

This is steadily getting worse for me as I play through the MSQ. Before it was distorted during times of heavy player skill use. Now it's full-on happening during cutscenes. If this continues, I'm going to cancel my subscription until SE has confirmed it to be fixed.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

I'm getting a bit frustrated already... Did you guys notice that the distortion is directional? You can find one spot that have normal sound if you spin the camera around a bit - one cardinal will have normal sound, the rest will blow your eardrums. Now I'm curious if that "Immersive Spatial Audio" have something to do with this bug.

So far I tested all the "fixes" in all the posts and absolutely nothing works - my game is a fresh install in a fresh win10 and still have it. Any combat action can (and will) cause the issue and sometimes it affects cutscenes.

[ShadowedStranger]

Now I'm curious if that "Immersive Spatial Audio" have something to do with this bug.

Oh yeah, most definitely.
Whoever came up with idea of implementing support for a paid audio downgrade deserves a medal.

[Xerkrosis]

It wouldn't be such a big deal, if they hadn't tempered with the original audio system in the first place! If their paid audio was separate or adding on the already existing audio system, there shouldn't be any problems. But it seems like they changed the system itself and included that thing somewhere inside. At least that's my only explanation.

[TheWylld]

It's definitely the Immersive Spatial Audio. I installed the trial to check after trying all other "fixes" I'd found online and the stuttering stopped. Sadly though now everything sounds just awful. I have no idea what that program does but using it makes everything sound like I'm playing underwater

Playing in DX9 helps the sound a lot for me but it also makes my game crash and freeze in busy areas. I really hope this gets sorted soon as it's really damaging my experience with EW

[Xerkrosis]

Has there been any updates from the devs on this? Just read recently regarding the audio stutters, so was wondering if anyone heard something that would address the distorted combat sfx.

[Yin]

Hi, yes, this is a official post from this forum and can be found here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...35#post5797835

[Xerkrosis]

That one addresses the sutter/popping issue, not the distorted sound effects. I still don't hear the successful combinations-sounds or at least any difference to a failed combination.
I don't tend to look after my combo-buttons, because I know how they play out, but when you suffer from lower precision (either debuff or lower level), it's easy to get a miss, which was reflected to a flattened sfx.

[Puss_Kat]

That one addresses the sutter/popping issue, not the distorted sound effects. I still don't hear the successful combinations-sounds or at least any difference to a failed combination.
I don't tend to look after my combo-buttons, because I know how they play out, but when you suffer from lower precision (either debuff or lower level), it's easy to get a miss, which was reflected to a flattened sfx.

the distorted sfx and lost sounds have the same root cause as the stutter and popping.