Audio popping issue

[rojimboo]

I have "Allow apps to take exclusive control of device" selected, but not "Give exclusive mode apps priority" and DO experience stuttering. I'll tick the priority option as well and try it out this evening.

it opens a shared session only.

Damn, that's unfortunate. If FFXIV doesn't take exclusive control, then this fix doesn't work on Windows one last thing to try would be to disable all other sound devices with those two tickboxes on. Having multiple sound devices on, FFXIV might not activate exclusive mode (if it ever would).

Regardless, exclusive mode means no other app can produce sound, or take input. So no discord voice chat whilst gaming for example. It doesn't bother me, but it would many. So the fix is definitely welcome and luckily will come soon!

[Puss_Kat]

the issue really has nothing to do with what windows is doing with the audio, or the driver for that matter, its all a performance issue / lack of engine optimization where more Sounds are being rendered than should be causing a process bottleneck where graphics and audio are competing for cpu time.

[rojimboo]

the issue really has nothing to do with what windows is doing with the audio, or the driver for that matter, its all a performance issue / lack of engine optimization where more Sounds are being rendered than should be causing a process bottleneck where graphics and audio are competing for cpu time.

Sure, but if there's no software resampling on the CPU, and the soundcard is matching the source samplerate, then the CPU does very little and there should be no/less stuttering. I imagine that's why I got it working in Linux with alsa (exclusive mode), and not the software resampling Pulseaudio.

I mean, it *could* be other reasons too, like CPU scheduler is better optimised on Linux, but then that wouldn't explain how switching to ALSA fixes it.

Regardless, if FFXIV doesn't allow exclusive control of the soundcard, there's no way to verify.

[Larirawiel]

It can be that Linux can handle the specialties of Bulldozer CPUs better and the issue does not occur very often. As i wrote, Bulldozer is very different to other CPUs. I can imagine that Microsoft will not support this CPU type explicitely because it is an old CPU and AMD could not sell many CPUs because Intel was way better at this time.

Cheers

[rojimboo]

It can be that Linux can handle the specialties of Bulldozer CPUs better and the issue does not occur very often. As i wrote, Bulldozer is very different to other CPUs. I can imagine that Microsoft will not support this CPU type explicitely because it is an old CPU and AMD could not sell many CPUs because Intel was way better at this time.

Cheers

It's possible. But I have a Ryzen 3700X zen2 processor, though.

Does the audio crackling happen to most people, or is it just for a fraction? And people with Bulldozer CPUs are all/mostly affected? Those AMD processors had notoriously poor single-thread performance, perhaps not dealing with CPU latency very well for audio.

[AeroXaia]

I've had it set to allow exclusive mode and to give priority, with all other playback devices disabled all along, so no luck there.

For Linux to handle something game related better than windows is certainly a first for me though, really interesting. (Not to mention on a game built for windows!) Maybe the move off the sinking ship might be sooner than I thought.

[megamino]

Yes, this is probably a bit off-topic, but here goes briefly. It's literally just pressing the big 'Play' button in Steam, so it's super easy. And for the standalone version, it's 'fairly' easy if you're willing to copy paste some commands into the terminal But it's possible not everything will go smoothly.

However, if you do get it all working, there's the added benefit of no crackling sound bugs already! Also possibly better performance on most rigs, but this should be nominal and YMMV.

(you don't have to reply this but giving it anyway to ended the discussion)
Mine live in the region that doesn't have FF14 on the steam unfortunately, but i hope i can work it out using the standalone... but that's for another day, thank you for sharing it ^^

Also back to topic at hand... i wanna give an update that if you put the settings to low and follow some recommended options that the community manager put in this thread plus use DX9, mine having low chance of stuttering issue, might be helping for some players here that wanna try... my CPU is i5-8265U and Intel UHD 620, so there's the information for you guys... hope it helped

[Puss_Kat]

It's possible. But I have a Ryzen 3700X zen2 processor, though.

Does the audio crackling happen to most people, or is it just for a fraction? And people with Bulldozer CPUs are all/mostly affected? Those AMD processors had notoriously poor single-thread performance, perhaps not dealing with CPU latency very well for audio.

I can replicate it under the conditions of having the SFX muted in various content using a xeon x5960 overclocked to 4.2Ghz,
but my living room setup with a xeon 1680v2 at 4.2ghz struggles to replicate the same increases of cpu usage (that said i was testing off-peak)

[AlexValmano]

I also have the popping issue on FFXIV. Im on fx-8350 and rx580.
Just a funny thing i wanted to tell.
I get exactly the same popping/audio stutter on FFVII remake on pc.
Luckly on that game it is possible to solve the issue opening dev console
and using the command au.SetAudioChannelCount to some lower value and then everything works fine.

[Narissa]

asked the Legend Soken directly himself on twitter and he responded saying they are planning to have this fixed BEFORE 6.1. As frustrating as this issue is, i have nothing but respect that a lead developer goes out of their way to respond to people personally like this. Crossing my fingers this gets fixed asap

https://twitter.com/SOKENsquareenix/...54502893629443

hopefully this helps alleviate fears

Oh thank fk.. playing this game with no sound has been rather annoying and very boring