Audio popping issue

[veeika]

As someone suggested much earlier in the thread, I tried to half all of my audio settings - for some reason it was a huge improvement. I do hear a crack here and there but it's definitely much less. When I turn it back on to my usual settings (meaning something like vfx or performance lower, bgm and voice high while master being around 10), the crackling shows up again. So it would appear having the individual audio settings too high will cause the issues, at least in my case. No idea what it actually means since I know next to nothing about audio, but I thought writing it down might be useful to somebody.

[Desiree_Chev]

Greetings,

Thanks again to everyone who submitted detailed information regarding the ongoing sound-related issue. Rest assured, the bug reports that were moved to the Duplicate Bug section have been also passed down and have been helpful in our investigation.

While it has taken some time to narrow down the conditions of the issue, we were able to reproduce it on our end.

We discovered an anomaly in the calculation process within FFXIV's game sound driver where the number of digits is not being adjusted correctly. Due to this, some CPUs with certain characteristics are unable to keep up with the calculation processes and have a high possibility of encountering the issue.

As mentioned previously, we noticed this primarily occurs on older CPU models that are around 10 years old, but have also confirmed cases on some of the latest CPU models.

We are continuing to investigate the matter and are working on a resolution to ensure that CPUs with these characteristics will be able to handle these processes correctly. Our current plans are to conduct pattern tests and release an additional fix in the next patch.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work towards resolving this issue.

I'm glad to hear that they have been working on this issues, but i do have one question if it is a problems with cpu on our end why is the problem fixed when i downloaded and ran the Free trial of the Immerse Spatial Audio that was added to the game? Seems to me my cpu would still be doing the exact same thing it was doing before and the problem is with the optional software that was added in to "improve" the sound quality. I was not happy with the immerse spatial audio at all and would not want it, but why would enabling an optional item fix a problem that is supposedly originating on the players end?

I also want to add I have never had sound problems with the game at all until this last patch 6.08

[Interrossiter]

Amazed to hear my PS5 must have an 'older CPU'?
Is the problem on PS5 also being investigated I wonder, in general play sound is fine but in combat scenes it has been like playing in a tin can since Endwalker released.
Please simply just revert all game audio to pre-Endwalker (which was known to be working perfectly) until the issue can be fully resolved as none of the attempted patches thusfar have achieved anything whatsoever.

[Fiel_Tana]

Greetings,

Thanks again to everyone who submitted detailed information regarding the ongoing sound-related issue. Rest assured, the bug reports that were moved to the Duplicate Bug section have been also passed down and have been helpful in our investigation.

While it has taken some time to narrow down the conditions of the issue, we were able to reproduce it on our end.

We discovered an anomaly in the calculation process within FFXIV's game sound driver where the number of digits is not being adjusted correctly. Due to this, some CPUs with certain characteristics are unable to keep up with the calculation processes and have a high possibility of encountering the issue.

As mentioned previously, we noticed this primarily occurs on older CPU models that are around 10 years old, but have also confirmed cases on some of the latest CPU models.

We are continuing to investigate the matter and are working on a resolution to ensure that CPUs with these characteristics will be able to handle these processes correctly. Our current plans are to conduct pattern tests and release an additional fix in the next patch.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work towards resolving this issue.

Would you please be able to tell us if by "but have also confirmed cases on some of the latest CPU models." that the upcoming fix also includes the M1 Macs that have had this issue since 6.08?
Thanks for keeping us updated <3

[miragedive]

Just a heads up to some people in replies above, the initial response from Zhexos saying that there's a fix in progress was before 6.08 release. As of right now, we have no indication of a fix being in the works for audio issues appearing/continuing as of 6.08 release. Please file official bug reports with your system information as this is most probably the best way to draw attention to the issue, especially if your system information is very different to others' (e.g. if you're on Mac, or on PS4/5). We haven't had any feedback from anyone about this since 6.08 came out and for the first time since this issue started for me (6.0), I'm starting to be a little concerned about whether or not we're getting a fix at all :/

[unearthly]

Unfortunately, not fixed for me either. It was specifically the crackling from ambient sound that I had, and it stays half noticeable with music on and ambient sound at half. I tried to turn it up earlier and remembered quickly why it was so low.

intel i7-6700k / gtx 1070 / 32gb ram, temps remain normal.

[Symirel]

I am seeing this too, very frequently and intensely since 6.08, on an Intel iMac. 4.2 GHz quad core i7-7700k, 32 GB RAM, Radeon Pro 580 8 GB.

I tried replying to bug reports but I wasn't able to post there. This did not occur for me prior to 6.08 but I pretty much run into it every session now, if I play long enough (within an hour or two of starting).

[Dustorm]

Same. 6.0.8 broke audio for me. The audio makes up so much of the experience I just do not like doing content without it.

[Qwertyprophecy]

Similar issue here. Since 6.0.8. I started getting terrible audio cracking at random times (during questing, in the middle of a cutscene, in the title screen...) that will not go away until I quit the game. Relaunching once or twice will restore the audio back to normal, but that's awkward in the middle of a duty or cutscene.

I have not managed to track down what starts it to any specific cause; no spikes in lag or CPU or memory usage as far as I can tell. Sometimes it does seem to be triggered by other programs like my display automatically turning to night mode, but just as often it happens seemingly out of nowhere.

I'm on a MacBook Pro 2017, 2.9 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 18GB RAM, Intel HD.

I really hope this issue gets fixed soon. It was much nicer to play when I didn't have to be constantly quitting the game multiple times per session.

[fireflydreamer]

I'm finding some issues too on a late 2013 Mac Pro (coffee pot type) running MacOS Big Sur 11.6.4 . I mentioned this in another thread but adding it here.

I run FF14 in windowed mode and on start-up all is fine but frequently after tabbing out of the game to the desktop or another Application, the sound suffers from a crackling oscillating distortion which is incurable till the game is completely restarted.

I tried changing the audio sampling options using the Audio MIDI Setup utility as suggested elsewhere. At the 44.1 kHz default I was getting this distorted crunchy oscillation on the sound. Altering to 96 kHz just intensified the nature of the distortion, when it occurred, to a more intense revving sound.

However, I have found that if I launch the Audio MIDI Setup utility and keep it actively running all the time while playing FF14, then it prevents the problem from occurring even with frequent tabbing out.

I have no idea why that works for me, but at least it is a sort of a workaround for now. I've left the sampling at 2 ch 32-bit Float 96 kHz on my Line Output to speakers.

Maybe that helps someone with a similar version of this issue

System details:
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
16 GB 1866 MHz DDR3
AMD FirePro D700 6 GB