Audio popping issue

[Kyocchi]

Are you guys sure it's not wise to bring this issue to Yoshida or Soken? Surely they have a busy schedule, but they're in charge of the game and we've been getting the silent treatment for a while now.

[Larirawiel]

OK, you could try one thing. Start the game, then start the task manager, click on the "Details" tab, search for ffxiv_dx11.exe, then right click on it, then click on "Set Affinity" and then unselect all CPU cores but leave two cores selected.


Cheers

[HeavenlyBrush]

OK, i have read ~50% of the thread.

It seems that the vastly majority of people with that problems has an AMD Bulldozer CPU. The problem is, this CPU architecture is very ... special. The cores of these CPUs are not full fledched cores. Many units are halved and then shared between them. An "8-core" Bulldozer has only 4 floating point units. And if the floating point unit is busy then one halved "core" has to wait etc. And 3D-games utilize floating point units of a CPU a lot because all 3D-scenes are calculated with floating point numbers.

OK, this is propably not so easy to fix and i guess they will need some special code only for Bulldozer CPUs. Increasing the sound buffer could soften the problem but you could also notice some sound delay. Another fix could be installing a real hardware sound card.


Cheers

People tried using external sound cards and it didn't fix the issue for them.
I'm not tech savvy so can you explain to me why i had no issues with sound during shadowbringers? If bulldozer is so uniquely bad with floating core whatevers but it worked fine in shadowbringers it means they changed something about the way the game uses those floating core points right? Why are other games i play have no sound issues? And most bizarrely, why is camera facing the front side of my character completely fixes the sound stuttering? What is the game trying to calculate with those floating core points but only when the camera is facing the back of my character?

I dunno, to me personally it seems like they broke something in the audio engine they use with endwalker patch. It's broken for everyone, but it's only noticeable for people with certain cpus. In which case instead of giving us bulldozer specific fix they should optimize their audio engine so it doesn't tax floating core points so much or whatever. Just like other every other game including final fantasy 14 from a november that sounded perfectly normal.

[Nommers]

OK, you could try one thing. Start the game, then start the task manager, click on the "Details" tab, search for ffxiv_dx11.exe, then right click on it, then click on "Set Affinity" and then unselect all CPU cores but leave two cores selected.

I am too angry to sleep so I gave this a shot. First try, my game locked up and then crashed. Second try, my game lagged the heck out and the audio started stuttering even worse than usual, then it locked up, and it kept going back and forth until I killed it with task manager. Third try, the game burned down, fell over, THEN sank into the swamp. I hope it works for someone out there, but I'm done chasing wild geese. It's not on us to fix this.

[XenophineEX]

So Elliah, you have my support for these ideas, if you need anything translated from/to Japanese, I can try to help too.


If you join discord, we could even create a discord server with more people to discuss that matters.
Or we could get in touch by e-mail or other method you prefer that.
Again, my discord is minopoki#6195 , if you don't know how to use it, just install the software, create a profile for you, and search for an option "Add a friend" to message me.


Anyway, I have other ideas to try to call SE attention to this, but I'll leave to a second post.

trying to spam this issue away by flooding it with hundreds of thousands of posts will only see the issue ignored. Perhaps you haven't noticed that this particular director doesn't buckle under floods.

Nor should he.

A investigation should be commenced of all audio output, mainly aimed at all new sound effects and combos effects introduced in this latest expansion.

Furthermore all sound affected by this new paid plug-in and all changes made to all sound channels need also be investigated.

What I have suggested alone will take the team 3 months to finish. They also have other duties introducing new parts of the latest expansion. They have to work along-side, and surpass the updates that will be coming for the story.

This isn't an excuse, rather than an explanation as to what is going on and their thoughts going forward. They will not be delaying the new expansion pack story to fix this, it all has to be done along side and past it.

Therefore it would behoove all involved to try to fix or mitigate the issues the best they can on their end until the source is corrected. I.E. overclocking your AMD processor, enabling virtual ram on separate drives other than the one running FFXIV, Making sure you aren't watching or streaming anything while playing.

for me on a msi 960 board; AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor 3.50 GHz, I get it to stop stuttering when I overclock via msi command center as follows... (ratio) 21.5/ (base clock) 201.00 with fans running at 95%

that brings it to 4.1 - 4.5 ghz it will fluctuate if on a msi board to demand.

[ClaraKitty]

I wish I trusted myself to know what to overclock my CPU at. I'm always so timid/scared I'll screw it up and brick my PC or something.

[XenophineEX]

I wish I trusted myself to know what to overclock my CPU at. I'm always so timid/scared I'll screw it up and brick my PC or something.

If you have an AMD it is easy.

If you have an Intel cpu, I cannot help you. No one can.

The worst thing that happens when you overclock an AMD is that your pc turns off, then resets back to base values. Then you try again.

For my processor, with the side of the case off, and laying down so all heat radiates up out of the exposed part, it is 21.5/201.00 for ratio and base clock

I would post a picture of it but it seems to be blocked on these forums.

Though FFIV ready memes would likely ensue in the aftermath haha...

[Nonoliri]

What I have suggested alone will take the team 3 months to finish. They also have other duties introducing new parts of the latest expansion. They have to work along-side, and surpass the updates that will be coming for the story.

This isn't an excuse, rather than an explanation as to what is going on and their thoughts going forward. They will not be delaying the new expansion pack story to fix this, it all has to be done along side and past it.

While I agree that it takes time to fix issues, and there's a finite amount of resources to go around and all that, I have two issues. First, it's now been over a month since the sound issues started, with very little recognition. There were and are login issues, lobby errors, etc., and those were all handled well, with the team saying they were working on them and were compensating players due to the game being unplayable for so many. The sound issues, which have existed for just as long, took over a week to acknowledge they even existed, and all we were given was a few lines at the end of another announcement.

Second, and this ties closely into the first point, it doesn't take that much time or effort to put out some kind of statement saying the issue is being worked on. If there was a lodestone announcement, or a tweet from the official FFXIV account, or something at all saying they were aware of the audio issues and were looking into them and doing their best to fix it and we just needed to be patient, I personally wouldn't be nearly as hopeless about this as I am. But currently the entirety of the response to the sound issues is a Notice from December 9th that was updated on December 20th (over two weeks ago) saying "The issues we had announced before Dec. 9, 2021, have been addressed in Patch 6.01." The 6.01 patch notes list the audio issue as "Resolved", even though that patch introduced audio stuttering to people that didn't have it before. And then, when patch 6.05 came out, there is no listing of any kind of audio issues in the "Known Issues" section. This heavily implies that Square-Enix has considered the issue to be fixed, and is no longer working on it.

While I won't claim to speak for everyone on the forums or that's having issues with the sound, I think that a lot of people that are pushing hard not to get the audio stuttering actually fixed, but just to have it acknowledged. Why should anyone be willing to wait 3 months for a potential fix if the company they're waiting for a fix from said the issue was resolved, doesn't list it as a known issue, and remains oddly silent on it when asked? As I said, I can understand them not having a fix ready by now. What I don't understand is why, when so many people are asking if it's actually still being worked on, they won't answer.

[ClaraKitty]

I do!

AMD FX(tm)-4300 Quad-Core Processor - 3.80 GHz

Probably crap, but it's not that old.

[Ariel_Valmont]

Hey, we did get a stripper pole this patch though!