Audio popping issue

[thissean]

I've tried everything under the sun to fix the directx error. I've had it since i started playing in March, 2021. It wasn't so bad before; I'd just log in and continue. But with the queues, its more detrimental. I have a new computer, too. The directx error problem seems to have worsened with Endwalker.

[Ariel_Valmont]

THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE should be the most important thing you read on this thread. The whole picture of your ear thing is mind blowing. And they seem pretty confident they can get away with it.

Wait, what? They want you to give them an ear print to use the embody software? That’s dystopian af.

[Grimno]

Wait, what? They want you to give them an ear print to use the embody software? That’s dystopian af.

Yeah I have to use the spatial audio in order to make the game "playable" as the choppy audio is vastly reduced with it, but the fact they want a picture of your right ear is creepy af.

thats awesome they they at least mention it there, it's not hard so why can't they just put it on the freaking lodestone. instead, it looks like theyre advertising some other audio software (no, seriously)

I'm relieved that in some way they confirmed that yes, the choppy/static/popping audio IS indeed an issue and we aren't just left twiddling our thumbs. Look if they're willing to acknowledge it's an issue, even if a fix may be a month away, I'm willing to wait.
I've waited and worked with it since December 3rd, I can wait longer if need be.

[HeavenlyBrush]

I'm glad we got this from support team at the very least. My next billing date is in two and a half weeks, i guess we'll see if anything new comes up by then.

[RinKaenbyou]

So, I have some info that might be helpful or at the very least might be enlightening if nothing else. Firstly, the reason the benchmark had no audio issues or anything was because it was still using the pre-EW audio engine/codecs. Secondly, as part of EW's audio engine changes, they actually switched from using XAudio like in pre-EW to using WinMM which is, apparently, some some black magic legacy stuff from WinXP. As a side note, DX9 mode still uses XAudio according to a friend of mine. Thirdly, the reason some people have no audio issues, some have minor ones, and others have completely unplayable levels of audio issues is cause mixing lengths can behave differently on different systems. The audio issues possibly come from insufficient buffers due to the changes they made. Also, from my understanding due to what a friend of mine talked about as they were looking into this problem, XAudio tended to make buffer management simplistic, you set up a playstream event and were done while WinMM is more involved when it comes to buffer management. Also according to my friend, in 6.01 they adjusted the buffer length down. Fourthly, apparently the Spatial Audio stuff is Stereo Only and according to my friend, there is no reason to be using WinMM to employ the spatial audio.

[Grimno]

So, I have some info that might be helpful or at the very least might be enlightening if nothing else. Firstly, the reason the benchmark had no audio issues or anything was because it was still using the pre-EW audio engine/codecs. Secondly, as part of EW's audio engine changes, they actually switched from using XAudio like in pre-EW to using WinMM which is, apparently, some some black magic legacy stuff from WinXP. As a side note, DX9 mode still uses XAudio according to a friend of mine. Thirdly, the reason some people have no audio issues, some have minor ones, and others have completely unplayable levels of audio issues is cause mixing lengths can behave differently on different systems. The audio issues possibly come from insufficient buffers due to the changes they made. Also, from my understanding due to what a friend of mine talked about as they were looking into this problem, XAudio tended to make buffer management simplistic, you set up a playstream event and were done while WinMM is more involved when it comes to buffer management. Also according to my friend, in 6.01 they adjusted the buffer length down. Fourthly, apparently the Spatial Audio stuff is Stereo Only and according to my friend, there is no reason to be using WinMM to employ the spatial audio.

So what you're saying is...
It's not our hardware that is a 10+ year old problem.
Their new audio system is the 10+ year old problem.

[RinKaenbyou]

Well, hardware is still part of the issue in the sense that the intensity of the audio issues or complete lack of any of the audio issues on a person by person basis is likely due to the fact that mixing lengths can behave differently on different systems. The cause of the issue itself though is almost certainly 100% the audio engine changes they made and thus the game itself. Also, sadly, they likely can't revert the audio engine stuff to pre-EW because they have a contract with the Immersive Audio company. As a note, my friend is still doing tests as we speak to try and help. They just reproduced the audio stuttering while doing the Heavensturm Event Fate and found it occurred if they had SFX and Ambient turned off but turning either on the sound became normal for them.

[Lagunow]

Well, hardware is still part of the issue in the sense that the intensity of the audio issues or complete lack of any of the audio issues on a person by person basis is likely due to the fact that mixing lengths can behave differently on different systems. The cause of the issue itself though is almost certainly 100% the audio engine changes they made and thus the game itself. Also, sadly, they likely can't revert the audio engine stuff to pre-EW because they have a contract with the Immersive Audio company. As a note, my friend is still doing tests as we speak to try and help. They just reproduced the audio stuttering while doing the Heavensturm Event Fate and found it occurred if they had SFX and Ambient turned off but turning either on the sound became normal for them.

Assuming they can't revert the engine and are contractually bound to embody, and they've already tried messing with buffer length to no avail, does your friend think there is anything else they could do about it or are we doomed?

[Nommers]

This is certainly interesting info. Can you tell us how you or your friend figured out about Endwalker using WinMM? The most relevant thing that Googling the two phrases gets me is a bunch of Japanese bug reports from 2017. If DX9 mode uses XAudio then WinMM is still not the entire cause of the issue because DX9 still had stuttering for me.

I'm also finding it hard to believe their contract with Embody would prevent them from offering the OPTION to roll back, especially since the system doesn't technically require it in the first place. I suppose it's certainly possible but that would just be awful if it's true.

EDIT: Your friend's findings on muting things is consistent with what we know about how the game mutes audio. The sounds never actually stop playing - the game's actually constantly stopping them from playing. (EDIT2: I see you removed your update on that but I hope this is still helpful information) The cause and potential remedies for the stutter have already been outlined here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778799 Your info is another interesting layer on top of that.

[RinKaenbyou]

They found out using Process Explorer and have been doing tests using it to see where CPU Usage spikes happen in combination with the sound issues. WinMM appears in the Thread stack while Xaudio no longer does when viewing the properties of ffxiv_dx11.exe via Process Explorer. As for DX9 stuff and XAudio, I'll have to get some answers for you on that when I can!

Speaking of which, further tests from them have found that muting sounds is actually raising CPU Usage which is something that shouldn't be happening. Their tests found that in Limsa with Ambient on and SFX off, CPU usage on the function likely causing the issues was 2.90%. With Ambient AND SFX Muted, CPU Usage on the likely offending function jumped to 7.36%. And with Ambient Muted and SFX Unmuted, CPU Usage for the offending function dropped to 1.55%.

Edit: Also yeah, removed the info from above post and put it here for better visibility and cause it was more relevant to the above message than in the original post.

Edit 2: A theory from my friend on CPU usage increase while muting audio. The audio effects are rendered even when muted, but then the engine has to selectively filter them out consuming a lot of extra cpu instead of just not rendering the sounds.

Edit 3: Got some DX9 info from my friend. They said that they are not sure about dx9. They've poked it a bit and it's not loading xaudio but its also not experiencing the issue. They said that it could be using WinMM and that there might be a bug in some function they've written that causes it to behave inversely on 64bit builds. Also, they shared the CPU Usage variables for Limsa they got while doing DX11 tests with sound muting which are as follows.

1.5 - 2.12% with nothing muted
1.5 - 3.4% with only Sound Effects Muted
1.3-2.75% with only Ambient Muted
6.0-7.5% with Ambient and Sound Effects muted.