Audio popping issue

[AeroXaia]

It has been reported by intel users as well, I wish people would stop saying it's an AMD thing. Even i7 has had it. I don't know why they're reported less, but it's not only AMD.

(And not only realtek, which some of us were previously suspecting. Sound blaster has also had it, and somebody tried buying a new sound card and had no luck.)

Edit: I tried disabling the "USB selective suspend" thing in power options, it also didn't fix it. DX9 makes it partially better but not fixed. Camera angle can definitely affect it (sometimes there's no good angle though).

[-BlueGreen-]

I've thrown everything I could think of at this, and nothing at all got rid of it. Some things certainly made the problem worse, but the best I managed to do was increase my FPS by around 50% (from ~100 FPS to ~150 FPS at least in the inn room, which is pretty cool, but did nothing for the sound issues).

I'll try to not go into too much detail, but here's the gist of what I tried (not in this order):

• Changing power settings (including the stuff from the Resheph's post)
• Disabling all Realtek hardware at the BIOS level that I could (both sound and ethernet in this case). I used a wifi card already installed to connect to the internet (I normally use the ethernet), and used a usb-based headset that counts as an external sound card for sound.
• Changing task priorities of both FFXIV and sound-related background services to both high and real time.
• Updated GPU driver.
• Updated Windows 10.
• Updated BIOS (I very strongly do not recommend anyone attempting this unless you're comfortable with messing with such settings. This reset some of my settings which made my desktop unbootable for a bit until I could restore the correct settings for my RAM).
• Switching from the Realtek HD Audio driver to the generic Windows one.
• Changing the sampling rate as officially recommended.
• Disabled virtual memory
• Changing vsync settings
• Changing refresh rate settings in game (setting it all the way down to 15 FPS mitigates it the most, but it's still there)
• Changing the listening position (though I recall this certainly making more of a difference before 6.01, it didn't seem to do much tonight)
• Disabled CPU throttling
• Reducing graphics quality (I normally run maximum or something very much like it, but I tested the standard laptop settings and noticed no real change other than the obvious leap in FPS)
• Using the DX9 client
• Disabling unused audio hardware (optical/digital audio ports and the GPU's audio driver that supports audio over the HDMI ports since I normally use analog speakers/headset)

I made some observations during my attempts:

• While stuttering seemed to happen in conjunction with FPS drops, after some of my earliest changes, the FPS drops no longer correlated with sound issues. I'd hear stuttering, but the system window would show FPS of >90 easily.
• For kicks, I re-ran the EW benchmark set to 1920x1080 Maximum and scored 8339 (High), which isn't bad for non-OC'd AMD FX-4100 (3.61Ghz) + GTX 1070ti combo. This certainly isn't a case of not meeting minimum specs for this game even after the update. (also, the benchmark had absolutely no audio issues)
• If the game was horribly stuttering and I logged out to the start screen, the start screen itself would stutter horribly all the way through choosing a character and waiting in queue. It's like it gets bogged down by something in game and likewise something in game will fix it from time to time, but the start/login screen seems incapable of impacting it.
• Even during the worst stuttering, all other applications (if I was running them concurrently during various tests) would sound perfectly normal. For instance, I was frequently carrying on a conversation over Discord with my wife during certain tests. I never heard any stuttering from the voice chat while the game stuttered away. I also tested playing some audio files which sounded perfectly fine, again even with stuttering from the game in the background.
• I even monitored CPU/GPU temperatures during some tests where I really played around with the in-game frame limit to switch between high/low frame rates while angling my camera such that stutter happened constantly and no matter the frame rate. I couldn't find any correlation between temperature and stuttering (just in case there was some hard throttling happening due to potentially exceeding thermal limits). I could get my system fairly hot, but not exceed the maximum operating temperatures, and clock rates remained at their expected values even at the highest temperatures I could manage to reach.

And for those hung up on "it's gotta be outdated/old hardware", here's a head scratcher: My wife runs a system with an AMD Phenom II X4 CPU and an even older GPU (iirc, a GTX 970, but I'd have to check to be sure). She hasn't had any sound issues at all even after 6.0's launch. As the usb-based headset belongs to her, she's even swapped between it and her speakers even with the game running (which, as I recall, used to cause sound to die completely before).

At this point, I've considered getting a discrete sound card to add to my system, but after testing the USB headset, that seems like it'd have no benefit as far as this particular issue goes. It's clear SE has made some change to the client that's causing this, and it's not because older/slower systems are suddenly bottlenecking on the latest graphics updates that came with 6.0, especially since any other audio will continue to play just fine alongside the stuttering game. What makes it illusive is that it seems to only happen to a specific set of hardware, not necessarily "older than X", like a problem with a specific CPU architecture.

For reference, my system:

• Motherboard: Asus M5A97
• CPU: AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core (3.61 Ghz)
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
• RAM: 16.0GB DDR3 (1866 Mhz)

Edit: I just pulled the specs from my wife's system (remember, audio works perfectly for this one):

• Motherboard: msi 970A-G43
• CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.40 Ghz)
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
• RAM: 8.0GB DDR3 (1333 Mhz)

I also ran the benchmark on her system at 1600x900 Maximum and it scored 6049 (Fairly High).

[Jizu]

Kudos for everyone going all the way with trying everything to find a solution the user can use to fix the issue.

I'm sincerly in the believe now that it's nothing we can change, we have to wait for a reaction on SE's part.

I just wish I didn't, for the first time, buy a 3 Month sub in anticipation of EW...

[Orbek]

Oh yeah, this issue is really getting under my skin now.

The fact that they released a patch yesterday addressing sound problems but we still see lots and lots of posts from ppl having this issue (myself included) worries me.

Just like all the new trials, the raid fights have been bad on the sound bug, in particular the last fight which is so bad i can barely struggle to play it without sound completly desabled.

Its a massive bummer for me! I really enjoy the fights and music.

[Oakster]

I hoped against hope I would be able to find something, anything to fix this issue. I held out hope the first patch for Endwalker would iron the problem out, but it wound up being worse than before somehow.

I'd read that camera positioning has something to do with it, and having your camera "obscured" by models or particle effects exacerbates the issue. It sounded completely ridiculous, until I did a dungeon and a random particle effect spawn blocked my camera and caused the stuttering, staticy audio issues. I moved my camera out from behind it to find it relieved, then moved the camera back to find it started again.

A simple temporary workaround in theory, but in close quarters in any combat situation, especially as a tank, it's unfeasible most times to find a camera angle that stops it. I heard nothing but audio glitch for the entirety of a run of Eden last night.

At this point I'm forced to resign that this is a SquareEnix problem, and while I have no intention of demanding anyone upend their entire lives to solve it, I would love some acknowledgement that they know the issue exists and they're working on it.

Additional things I have tried to solve this problem:
-Adjusted my audio device Hz multiple times
-Muted Ambient Sounds
-Muted Performance sounds just in case that somehow worked
-Adjusted my listening position to be entirely character-focused (slider to 100)
-Muted BGM
-Played content in first person mode
-Attempted to play content from a top-down view

At best, I managed temporary reprieve through camera positioning, but not in a way that's feasible in every or even most situations.

[miragedive]

For the sake of comparison with everyone else, and just so nobody thinks their hardware is to blame, I just ran the benchmark on maximum settings and scored 10,653 (High). With the graphics settings I normally use in game, I scored 15,538 (Extremely High). By all accounts, my hardware is more than capable of running the game. It's genuinely frustrating, because it used to only be in cutscenes (which severely hindered my experience of the story but oh well), but now it significantly impacts raids and the associated FPS drop from the audio process spiking in CPU usage results in some very unwelcome issues in raids.

I really hope someone takes this seriously enough to give us a genuine fix or solution. I played XIV only hours before early access maintenance and it worked perfectly, even in a very very very crowded hunt train. If we don't hear about this over the coming couple of days (since I'm away from home), I'll do a full reinstall of FFXIV and report back with any changes that might result in.

[ShiroLialeth]

The audio stuttering became more frequent since patch 6.01, it's especially bad when playing as Dancer or Reaper.

Another problem that wasn't fixed at all for me is random pops of the "crowd chatter" ambience sound that you usually hear in the starting cities. I hear them everywhere, even when I'm completely alone. This also means that I don't hear the normal soundeffect while being in a city. Sometimes these pops last longer, that's the reason why I was able to hear where it is coming from. Turning off the ambience stops it.

[Au-ro]

Reducing the in game frame rate has stopped the frame rate shifts associated with the stuttering for me. The audio is still bad, but I don't fall to 5fpa as of now. Will update later if it changes. Gunna try some msq and try not to be disappointed.

[AluneTempest]

What's more frustrating about this whole situation is that this is totally a problem on square side, so we can't by themselves find a temporary solution to the problem.

Depend purely on square do her job is the most frustrating part

[Maeklos]

For kicks and giggles, I had two instances of FF14 running - my normal account and a Trial account I'd made a year or so ago. Both running at the same time, 60fps on whichever one I had pulled up at the moment. No lag, nothing. As per usual. (Previous to Endwalker, I was used to running FF14 plus another game like Bannerlord or Rimworld concurrently with zero issues and no fps drop.)

So, I go to the Rising Stones on my level 86 SGE and proceed to break the sound engine by spamming Dyskrasia. I break the sound engine by the second cast, getting stuttering and chopping.

Swap back over to my trial account. No sound issues at all.

Swap back to main account. Sound still broken to the point of BGM and ambient sound being choppy.