Audio popping issue

[Jizu]

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.

I figured I'd try this, bcs I'm grasping at straws. I also tried the quadraphonic sound.
In world FATEs still triggered it BAD. Once it started I even the sound menue was broken for way longer than usual. I loaded into a Trial to see how it goes with other players in a smaller instance. Ended up with Shiva (Hard) and it happend a few times. Less than usual (maybe I'm just huffing copium) but still noticably annoying. Once I loaded back into the world it stuttered again. I wasn't in combat nor next to other players.

I've not been playing for the past week+ only logging in to test someones newst idea to fix it. Not only is it that much worse since 6.01 but I have the feeling it's getting worse everyday. (Whilst I felt in the time from 6.0 to 6.01 it got better everyday.)

[Maeklos]

Ended up with Shiva (Hard) and it happend a few times. Less than usual (maybe I'm just huffing copium) but still noticably annoying. Once I loaded back into the world it stuttered again. I wasn't in combat nor next to other players.

Shiva and other ARR trials do seem to be alright (I had Shiva myself last night with no problems), so long as you aren't playing a melee class. If you're playing a healer or caster and standing at the edge of the fight, you might notice that it doesn't shutter much (if at all). I think that's because ARR trials were basically just empty arenas with next to zero visual clutter, nothing that could cause positional audio issues. Which is why I think I've had zero problems in Shiva and Ifrit, but Tsukoyomi and other post-ARR trials I've had have broken from the outset.

Now, if you're playing a melee class with abilities firing off all around you, or playing in a later trial, then the problem explodes.

[minopoki]

The fact this was tweeted

"The Community team will be AFK until Jan. 4, 2022! Person running
We've got some posts lined up and helpers keeping an eye out for issues... but we'll probably still pop in from time to time anyway!"

has me believing a lot of Square will be closed for the Holidays for a while, which I mean, that's expected.
But this I assume means it'll be a week or so more before we hear of anything if we do hear of anything...

While that was posted on the English language account @FF_XIV_EN, there has been no such tweet on the Japanese account @FF_XIV_JP.
While, as far as I know, christmas isn't even a holiday in Japan, it might indeed be possible that they take up to a week off around Jan 1st, but I don't think anything like that has been announced yet.
All we know is 6.05 is coming out on the 4th.

[Maeklos]

While, as far as I know, christmas isn't even a holiday in Japan, it might indeed be possible that they take up to a week off around Jan 1st, but I don't think anything like that has been announced yet.
All we know is 6.05 is coming out on the 4th.

Christmas is a holiday, but I think more in line with how the US and Canada celebrates our respective Thanksgivings. A time for the family to get together, relax, and eat KFC.

[GorthRedsteel]

While that was posted on the English language account @FF_XIV_EN, there has been no such tweet on the Japanese account @FF_XIV_JP.
While, as far as I know, christmas isn't even a holiday in Japan, it might indeed be possible that they take up to a week off around Jan 1st, but I don't think anything like that has been announced yet.
All we know is 6.05 is coming out on the 4th.

I apologize for being a pessimist but there is a zero chance that it's gonna be fixed at 4th. Don't get your hopes up or you will experience the same anger and disappointed as with the last patch. Perhaps in 3 months we will get our audio repaired.

[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.

[Teiren]

So more interesting results, all with these settings: Listening Position 62, Party Effects-Limited, Others Effects-None, Object Quantity-Low.

I got zero audio stuttering at all in the first three floors of the new raid. Then in the fourth floor, I got the normal amount; changing Listening Position to 100 reduced its frequency greatly but did not eliminate it 100%, just like what happens in other duties that have stuttering. The stuttering in the fourth floor didn't seem to coincide with any special skills or events either. Hell, it happened even while the boss was only casting a simple raidwide attack with no special floor effects active or anything. Perhaps healers and others were casting several reduction abilities that I couldn't see because of Limited Party Effects, although you can still HEAR those effects, so I'm not sure if that setting is really doing anything, but it felt like it might have had an effect in Alliance Raids.

I really am at a loss here. It's like there's almost no consistency. It's crazy that it varies so much not only between people but for a single person as well.