Audio popping issue

[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.

[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.

[hasuyaki]

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.

ah yeah...that's another thing, mine wasnt 5.1 or 7.1, it's quadraphonic(?) ...i should try setting it back to stereo and see what happens

[Maeklos]

ah yeah...that's another thing, mine wasnt 5.1 or 7.1, it's quadraphonic(?) ...i should try setting it back to stereo and see what happens

Sound also breaks with quadraphonic sound. Tested it just now.

It took more casts of Dyskrasia to break the sound (8), but it still broke. I've taken to logging out in the Rising Stones, just to make testing iterations easier.

[Timidity]

Aight, decided to give this a go too since i saw it. Changing to quadraphonic, and having my sound format settings at the lowest I could get 16bits, 44100hz (CD), while also having disabled the spatial audio managed to remedy stuttering almost entirely for me!

When I say almost, its really strange when it stutters. After doing many job tests including Sage since I've seen few people mentioning it before, both EW trials (normal and EX), various dungeons and raids from roulette and one hunt train. 0 stutter,
HOWEVER only when I'm inside my house trying to open retainers, or even interacting with the summoning bell, causes immense stutter. I got no idea whats going on, but yh wanted to share this

[Raikaris]

Man, I had hoped to find some kind of a work-around fix but the ones found so far don't work for me for various reasons. It sucks because I didn't have the sound issue until the 6.01 patch reportedly 'fixed' the audio issues too.

[Timidity]

Man, I had hoped to find some kind of a work-around fix but the ones found so far don't work for me for various reasons. It sucks because I didn't have the sound issue until the 6.01 patch reportedly 'fixed' the audio issues too.

Yh, sucks hard man, I know quite a few people that have actually started having issues since the update to 6.01.

[GorthRedsteel]

Man, I had hoped to find some kind of a work-around fix but the ones found so far don't work for me for various reasons. It sucks because I didn't have the sound issue until the 6.01 patch reportedly 'fixed' the audio issues too.

At least you had the opportunity to play for close to 3 weeks without your ears bleeding! ;^) I wish most of us here had been so lucky.

[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!