Audio popping issue

[Grimno]

I'm a time traveler from the future and bring you the official response from Square Enix regarding this sound issue:
"just stop being poor and buy better hardware lol"

"Do you guys not have ̶p̶h̶o̶n̶e̶s̶ money?"

[Rannzyr]

For those with RealTek chipsets on their motherboard you can get a marginal improvement by installing the latest drivers for your sound chip.

It still happens but in my anecdotal experience it is less severe, however your mileage may vary.
https://www.realtek.com/en/component...odecs-software

What it sounds like is happening is the new spatial sound engine is processing some kind of after effects on the sounds. in single instances this is fine, however it seems like the FX series has an issue with processing these sounds, either its cache is too small or some quirk of its architecture. either way this is unacceptable, you should have the choice to revert back to the old sound engine, they keep in DX9 after all and literally nobody uses that anymore.

I hope Immerse gave them a heavy bag of money.

[Maeklos]

For those with RealTek chipsets on their motherboard you can get a marginal improvement by installing the latest drivers for your sound chip.

It still happens but in my anecdotal experience it is less severe, however your mileage may vary.
https://www.realtek.com/en/component...odecs-software

What it sounds like is happening is the new spatial sound engine is processing some kind of after effects on the sounds. in single instances this is fine, however it seems like the FX series has an issue with processing these sounds, either its cache is too small or some quirk of its architecture. either way this is unacceptable, you should have the choice to revert back to the old sound engine, they keep in DX9 after all and literally nobody uses that anymore.

I hope Immerse gave them a heavy bag of money.

Two or three days ago, I installed a Virtual Audio Cable to take over instead of using RealTek (whose drivers I keep up to date, anyway). The only difference was that instead of choppy audio garbage, the sound would constantly mute out. Not an improvement.

[Rannzyr]

Two or three days ago, I installed a Virtual Audio Cable to take over instead of using RealTek (whose drivers I keep up to date, anyway). The only difference was that instead of choppy audio garbage, the sound would constantly mute out. Not an improvement.

So the VAC did actually stop the stuttering?

If thats the case it may be a problem with FX chips and their motherboards onboard audio. unfortunately its something I cant exactly test because who has sound cards anymore?

I'm stumped to be honest, I just cant believe that its not been addressed when its been reported thousands of times.

[XenophineEX]

Seems like a weird fix to install a driver made 4 years ago to fix a problem in 2021/2022

Realtek Driver:
Vista, Windows7, Windows8, Windows8.1, Windows10 Driver (32/64bits) Driver only (ZIP file) R2.82 2017/07/26 427 MB

it is so old it is downloading at 40kb a sec. It will be done in 4 hours, despite already having it on my system as windows installs a newer version, i'll try it none-the-less.

40.0 KB/s - 15.6 MB of 417 MB, 3 hours left (not exaggerating)

[ChilledApple]

For those with RealTek chipsets on their motherboard you can get a marginal improvement by installing the latest drivers for your sound chip.

What it sounds like is happening is the new spatial sound engine is processing some kind of after effects on the sounds. in single instances this is fine, however it seems like the FX series has an issue with processing these sounds, either its cache is too small or some quirk of its architecture. either way this is unacceptable, you should have the choice to revert back to the old sound engine, they keep in DX9 after all and literally nobody uses that anymore.

And thats where i doesn't add up. I am having this issue most in single instances like the rising stones and every inn room. With the spatial audio pack activated i just have to enter those instances and wait a few seconds until the audio breaks. However with the pack activated combat is fine. If i deactivate the audio pack it is exactly reverted. Single instances are fine unless i am not using any Skills, but combat sound is broken.

[ChilledApple]

So i just created a profile for the forums so that i can bump this one up. Already filed a bug report today and responded to the twitter message of Embody. I tried now everything that there is. I am suffering from this issue since day one, i had plenty of time to troubleshoot and try different things, nothing worked so far. Although i downloaded the audio pack today and created a profile. At first ... no diffrence. I then started to play a little bit with my settings. I changed the audio quality to 16 bit 44100 Hz, capped my fps to 60 and set listening position to 0. That "fixed" the stuttering for the most part. Previous to those changes i got constant stuttering in certain dungeons and dutys. The last turn of the new Raid was espacially bad.

But the real problem here is: why the hell do i have to get that audio pack, for wich i have to pay, just to be able to play the game? And altough it "fixes" most of my stuttering problems now, the audio pack itself is utter garbage. The quality is so bad, just as everyone stated, it sounds all muffled and off.

I just hope that Square realises sooner than later, how many people are actually affected.

*edit* Ah and i still can recreate the issue in the rising stone instance. I have no idea why its so bad in there but just standing still in the instance makes the audio stutter. If you spam a few AoEs it goes totally crazy.

[Maeklos]

I just hope that Square realises sooner than later, how many people are actually affected.

Yeah. I still don't understand why they pulled down the entire working sound engine from Shadowbringers to do this. If this were, say, a new graphics layer for updated shadows or lightsourcing or something, you can guarantee that it would be an additional option, not a complete rework of the entire graphics engine for one new feature. Especially if that feature is something sold by a third party developer. I've never worked in software design, but I have worked for almost two decades in business and sales, and the one thing you absolutely, positively never want to do is to tie the success of your product onto a third-party product. Because if that third-party product fails or compromises your product, all of your hard work is for nothing. Your work is screwed over, all because someone outside of your company screwed up or didn't put in enough due diligence.

[Midare]

I've been following this thread since my first post and the responses have been... disappointing, specially as it's starting to remind me of certain other company which I used to consume products from and it's leaving a real bad taste in my mouth.
I get the situation it's different, in this case this info, I imagine, doesn't go unfiltered to the devs due to the language barrier, but clearly, those who are filtering seem to be filtering a little too much.

I've been pondering a lot about this, the responses, the "fixes" (which I still attempt from time to time even if I know it won't work), and during one of those moments of pondering I remembered about the situation SE dealt with at the beginning of this year with a different game: Nier Automata.
I don't know how many here know or heard of this incident, but when the glaring flaws of this game's PC port became more evident due to it being released in the Game Pass, there was only one thing that pushed SE to fix the PC port. I'm implying this rather than outright saying it because, well, this is literally my second post ever here (I wasn't expecting to even make a forum profile to begin with) so I don't know about what I can say but yeah, this is just an idea that came to mind. Perhaps a similar thing will be more helpful than any bug report at this point.

[Maeklos]

I've been following this thread since my first post and the responses have been... disappointing, specially as it's starting to remind me of certain other company which I used to consume products from and it's leaving a real bad taste in my mouth.
I get the situation it's different, in this case this info, I imagine, doesn't go unfiltered to the devs due to the language barrier, but clearly, those who are filtering seem to be filtering a little too much.

I've been pondering a lot about this, the responses, the "fixes" (which I still attempt from time to time even if I know it won't work), and during one of those moments of pondering I remembered about the situation SE dealt with at the beginning of this year with a different game: Nier Automata.
I don't know how many here know or heard of this incident, but when the glaring flaws of this game's PC port became more evident due to it being released in the Game Pass, there was only one thing that pushed SE to fix the PC port. I'm implying this rather than outright saying it because, well, this is literally my second post ever here (I wasn't expecting to even make a forum profile to begin with) so I don't know about what I can say but yeah, this is just an idea that came to mind. Perhaps a similar thing will be more helpful than any bug report at this point.

One thing to remember: FF14 and Nier Automata aren't created by the same companies. Square Enix is the big corporation, yes but Creative Business Unit III does FF14, while PlatinumGames does Nier.