Audio popping issue

[Lagunow]

Adding to those digging into the CPU troubleshooting, I'm running an AMD FX 9370 (8 core @ 4.4ghz each). I also, like everyone else here, had no issues until 6.0. Installing the spatial audio did help in my case-until 6.01, which made things worse. Another user graciously mentioned that immerse (the spatial audio software) did release an updated version. Installing this again did help in my case, but of course, the audio still becomes broken for (insert the hundreds of causes) after a while.

The only system adjustment that made a difference (I tried pretty much all of them listed in various places in this thread) was adjusting power settings. I never realized I was in 'balanced' mode, likely because it's never been an issue until now. So to anyone else that may have a similar setup to mine, enabling the spatial audio and creating a new power profile setting helps with the stuttering not occurring as frequently.

I'm currently using a combination of adjusting power settings, setting task priority to high on task manager and using DX9. It's annoying to have to do this setup everytime I log into the game, but has made it somewhat playable for me so far.

It's no miracle solution obviously, audio still gets choppy on combat sometimes, so I'm definitely not doing any endgame content until the devs sort it out, but at least I can now watch cutscenes without the crackling and static ruining the mood and experience, so I'm finally going to finish msq this holiday.

Then I'm going to wait for an official fix, because honestly, I'm exhausted of looking for solutions. My trust on SE was broken and I'm never preordering anything from them again until I'm 100% sure they're not going to announce any gimmicky feature.

[Timidity]

Adding to those digging into the CPU troubleshooting, I'm running an AMD FX 9370 (8 core @ 4.4ghz each). I also, like everyone else here, had no issues until 6.0. Installing the spatial audio did help in my case-until 6.01, which made things worse. Another user graciously mentioned that immerse (the spatial audio software) did release an updated version. Installing this again did help in my case, but of course, the audio still becomes broken for (insert the hundreds of causes) after a while.

The only system adjustment that made a difference (I tried pretty much all of them listed in various places in this thread) was adjusting power settings. I never realized I was in 'balanced' mode, likely because it's never been an issue until now. So to anyone else that may have a similar setup to mine, enabling the spatial audio and creating a new power profile setting helps with the stuttering not occurring as frequently.

Hey there, I've got the same setup, and exactly same issue occurrence. Only thing that did completely annihilate the stutter for me was playing or rather is playing in DX9. Graphics are underwhelming but you might wana give it a shot!

Also to add additional things I've tried : In the end I opted for a complete OS reboot, factory settings, I've completely reinstalled windows, the drivers, etc. Did not help at all, just in case somebody wants to try that, so you know that most likely it will not work.

[Jadilus]

Geez you really went all out with a reformat and all huh? Well thanks for sharing what helped, it's so sad that we have to resort to all this but I'll see if DX9 makes a difference, Cheers!

[AsheStrachan]

The start of EW Early access,I haven't been able to play the game I am paying for..This sucks,but I'm pretty sure they are going to be adding more free time cause of the MANY problems

[Zelarned]

Hey, I had a few issues like this too. Sometimes My audio randomly just cuts for a few seconds and then recovers. Thankfully I don't really mind that stuff, jankyness has always been something I tolerate often and well. But there's this one time where the audio just simply flat-out stopped working during a roulette I was doing. All sounds, be it Music, SFX, voices and voices simply just stopped. I had to pull a hard reset to just to fix it- which is definitely something I don't want when the queues are hundreds of players long.

[hasuyaki]

I've been lurking this thread for a while and this is my first post on the forums so...apologies if I mess up something..

But after having no issues until 6.0, and no change for better or worse with 6.01, I wanted to provide a possible alleviation that happened for me (not a total solution, because I still get stutters maybe 5% of the time, when it used to be like 95%...so I'll take it!)

This won't be a problem if you're one to take care of your computer properly...but I'm a gremlin...Today, I vacuumed the innards of my computer because I needed to move it and it was dusty as hell and not cleaned in years. Cleaned out the fans and used a brush to knock loose caked up dust. After I set it up again...barely any audio issues. I used to have unbearable stuttering 100% of the time in PVP and combat situations, and 70-90% of the time in dungeons, overworld, cutscenes

Now I only experienced a couple seconds of very mild stuttering during PVP. My other roulettes, overworld, and in-town went fine. I havent gotten to do any cutscenes, and have yet to try the infamous P4N raid, but I'm very glad so far (too bad I already played thru MSQ on mute half the time...)

I will note that the other change I did was changing my sound settings to surround sound since I had the speakers for it but left it on stereo mode. (no change since pre-6.0) I don't really think this made a difference but I'll just put it out there...

UPDATE: very short and mild stutter in P4N. Changing settings back to stereo resulted in no difference (I have used these speakers from 5.0 so the only thing changed was the settings. The rear speakers do not emit sound from FFXIV regardless.) which means the only difference was me cleaning the computer x_x

Here's my specs as well, from the launcher config bc I dont really understand it:
windows 10 64 bit
intel core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz (8CPUs) ~3.1GHz
RAM 6 GB
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

I'm also on DirectX11 because DX9 caused me to D/C too often, which was unfavorable because of queues.


TL;DR if you havent cleaned your computer in years, try vacuuming the dust out, it might help?? There's definitely still an issue on their end because I get the occasional stutter but this alleviated like 90% of the instances

[Maeklos]

I will note that the other change I did was changing my sound settings to surround sound since I had the speakers for it but left it on stereo mode. (no change since pre-6.0) I don't really think this made a difference but I'll just put it out there...

This is probably what helped for you. From what the audio experts picked apart earlier in this thread and others, it seems as if the new sound engine is built entirely around surround sound (because of that stupid third party audio plugin). Which means that anyone running in stereo because they're using stereo speakers or a headset or something other than surround sound speakers gets the bug full blast. All because SE coded the sound engine to *only* do surround spatial audio.

[hasuyaki]

is it possible to set to surround regardless of what device you have? my sound stuttered regardless if it was on speaker or earbuds (the cheap $20 kind I use for my phonecalls) , but now it works regardless of speaker or earbuds

[Maeklos]

is it possible to set to surround regardless of what device you have? my sound stuttered regardless if it was on speaker or earbuds (the cheap $20 kind I use for my phonecalls) , but now it works regardless of speaker or earbuds

That is what I was going to do when I stumbled across the Windows default Spatial Sound setting.

Setting speaker output to surround 5.1 OR 7.1 does not fix the problem.

[Maeklos]

I did an interesting experiment.

I went into the settings for my speakers. (Right-click speaker icon in the bottom right of Windows -> Sounds -> Playback -> Selected my speakers -> Properties)
The very last tab at the top of the properties window? Spatial Sound. I turned this on (and had to restart FF, because of course I did). When I got back in game, the sound was muted, muddy, and sounded "underwater". I normally play with FF's Master Sound at 30 and my PC sound at 40% (because my speakers get -loud-) With the Windows Spatial Sound turned on, I had to crank FF's Master Sound all the way up to 100% as well as crank my PC sound up to 70% just to get an equivalent sound level. (For comparison, before I fired FF up again, I unpaused the video I'd been watching on Hulu. The sound level was exactly the same *after* I turned on Spatial Audio as before, which indicates that the issue with spatial audio is in FF, not anywhere else.)

I went to the Rising Stones and fired off Dyskrasia. It definitely took more casts than normal (7-8 instead of 2-3) to break the sound engine. But it still broke.

What's perhaps most interesting to me is that Windows comes equipped with a Spatial Sound option that exactly mimics what people have said that the stupid third party plugin does: muted sound, muddy sound, underwater sound.

Funny that SE would push us to buy a plugin that Windows comes with for free, no? Especially if they both mess up audio in the exact same way.