Audio popping issue

[AsheStrachan]

Well,I've filled out ANOTHER bug report,and talked to customer service,and still nothing

[edit] and the audio is STILL @#@#!ing stuttering,how is the acceptable

[Tessmarin]

Can't say for others, but I'm not asking that they fix it by tomorrow.

We're simply asking that they acknowledge it. The "audio problems" they claimed to have fixed on 6.01 is a completely separated issue with a completely different cause.

The only replies we got here on this thread implied we were trying to run the game on a toaster, except AMD-FX8350 is above not only minimum but even recommended system requirements. They called it "old hardware" but AMD-FX is younger than FFXIV.

They announced system requirements. They made a benchmark avaiable. People have every right to be mad when a company sells them a software telling them it would run on their machine, only for the software to not run on their machine. This is blatant false advertising.

And yes, I do know they have content to relase and all that, but I also know any company should understand that anything that could possibly warrant them a lawsuit takes precedence.

Except this post here of it happening on a PS5.....so...I don't think this is a Windows or PC Hardware issue on our end. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...o-problems-fix

[Larirawiel]

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.

With "real soundcard" i mean a soundcard which processes the audio with specialized hardware. The not so cheap Soundblaster-cards are such soundcards. External (USB) soundcards do it via driver in software because it is cheaper. But it utilizes the CPU.


And why it worked in ShB and it does not work in EW anymore that is a thing i cannot tell you because i do not code the client. It can be a newer software development toolkit with newer programming language compilers etc. And they have increased the minimum system requirements. This could also be a reason and EW needs more CPU processing power and this triggers this audio issue etc.



Cheers

[RevanNight]

After ALL the work arounds and level adjustments AND getting the new audio it is STILL popping and ruining my cutscenes. I cannot enjoy them at all. PLEASE fix this devs! I can totally understand why people are canceling subs. We should NOT have to buy new hardware and spend more money to make this playable. The responsibility is with the devs. Period.

[Tessmarin]

They're implying that you have to buy Immerse Spatial Audio to get sound to work, but it doesn't fix the stutter for everyone who tries it (or switches it from combat to cutscenes or some ridiculous BS like that) and most users report it drastically reducing overall sound quality anyway. Like all the "fixes" for this problem, it's not 100%, and I for one don't want to see Embody make a cent off the mess they helped make here.

I am not buying this product no matter what. An ear print is an unique as a fingerprint. And at a time when everyone is wearing masks...masks can break facial recognition but ears are still visible. Who is Embody selling that data to? Who owns them? Who really owns them? Is it using binaural beats - which are known to modify peoples brain waves and used to alter moods? Did folks have to sign a waiver with this program? What's in those terms? Happy to read those if someone wants to post them. So not a chance. I'd rather stop playing if they cannot fix it. The whole thing was sketchy, last minute and odd. The only thing I can think of was some trade off maybe for servers, funding or something. The silence on this may be a contractual one - but its concerning and odd with this many people clearly having issue. To be clear I don't think the FF team meant any harm, but I don't know Embody and I have no reason to trust them - or the timing of this. That's just my reasoning. Folks can do what they want.

[XenophineEX]

I am not buying this product no matter what. An ear print is an unique as a fingerprint. And at a time when everyone is wearing masks...masks can break facial recognition but ears are still visible. Who is Embody selling that data to? Who owns them? Who really owns them? Is it using binaural beats - which are known to modify peoples brain waves and used to alter moods? Did folks have to sign a waiver with this program? What's in those terms? Happy to read those if someone wants to post them. So not a chance. I'd rather stop playing if they cannot fix it. The whole thing was sketchy, last minute and odd. The only thing I can think of was some trade off maybe for servers, funding or something. The silence on this may be a contractual one - but its concerning and odd with this many people clearly having issue. To be clear I don't think the FF team meant any harm, but I don't know Embody and I have no reason to trust them - or the timing of this. That's just my reasoning. Folks can do what they want.

You want to talk head gear? play as a bunny girl, nothing works.

[Larirawiel]

There is another thing you could try: use the Vulkan API instead of DirectX 11. The Vulkan API is less CPU consuming than DirectX 11.



1. Download DXVK, the dxvk-1.9.2.tar.gz from https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v1.9.2

2. Open it with 7-zip or another tool which can open tar.gz-files.

3. Navigate into the x64-folder.

4. Copy the files: d3d11.dll and dxgi.dll into the FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game directory of your FF14 installation

5. Restart the client

Maybe it helps, maybe not. If you want to uninstall DXVK then delete both files.


Cheers

[XenophineEX]

Gonna go on a limb here, and say thanks,... but no thanks.

Might be useful info for those that feel bold.

If you are using a modern version of windows you are using dx12, not 11. Despite the program looking for said product it is dx12 providing it.

Modifying ones graphics for the sake of sparing minimal cpu load to make sounds not stutter is... not needed and not even relevant to the fix.

This type of fix would only work on a pc built in 2002.

If you have an amd processor the game is not using all your cores, and is bottlenecking itself. Easy fix is too overclock your cpu till the official fix comes through. Luckily for AMD even if something is only using 2 cores, if you over clock enough you can get as much throughput as using all of them. To test this, try setting affinity to 2 cores in the game. Watch magic happen and stutters fade away... (till the credits... the credits always stutter... apparently a black screen and a woman singing is too much) (the flashy fight that rings of god of war not so much... smooth sailing... its the credits... the true killer of enjoyment.)

And I hope this helps.

p.s. : to set your processor affinity press ctrl +alt + del, and within task manager goto ffxiv, right click and goto services, in services right click and set processor affinity, play around with that to you liking. Generally dual core seems to work the best, just make it a console and poof it works. f-n japanese and consoles. (its like they are just now picking up what we had in the 80's... like 40 years ago...)

[minopoki]

There is another thing you could try: use the Vulkan API instead of DirectX 11. The Vulkan API is less CPU consuming than DirectX 11.

Tried, made no difference.
(video looks different though)

If you have an amd processor the game is not using all your cores, and is bottlenecking itself. Easy fix is too overclock your cpu till the official fix comes through. Luckily for AMD even if something is only using 2 cores, if you over clock enough you can get as much throughput as using all of them. To test this, try setting affinity to 2 cores in the game. Watch magic happen and stutters fade away... (till the credits... the credits always stutter... apparently a black screen and a woman singing is too much) (the flashy fight that rings of god of war not so much... smooth sailing... its the credits... the true killer of enjoyment.)

Tried, setting to 2 cores made video heavily lag, can barely control character. Setting to anything between 3-8 made no difference to stuttering at all.

Don't know why I even try anymore.


======================

For those theorizing about CPU stuff, an information I don't know you're considering is related to CPU temperature. Someone posted an explanation before here I think, they called it CPU throttling or something.
For me, when CPU temperature gets to 75ºC or above, it's most guaranteed to stuttering to occur, then after a few seconds (I think the system makes CPU reduce speed or something to reduce temperature), stuttering stops and temperature lowers to 70-72ºC.
That's a situation where, for me, stuttering is guaranteed to happen, but it can happen at pretty much anytime too, even in lower temperatures.

[AeroXaia]

There is another thing you could try: use the Vulkan API instead of DirectX 11. The Vulkan API is less CPU consuming than DirectX 11.

I tried it out, in short it seemed maybe slightly better, but it didn't fix it and had other issues. Loading things for the first time caused delays, like when first starting the game, using spells for the first time, loading character for the first time, etc.

The sound issue still happened, although it was a little more weird, being a little less consistent. Hard to explain, but still happening from the same sorts of things, but it felt like it was varying more in how bad it was, even from the same triggers. I didn't look deeply into it though, since it was having the other weirdness and wasn't better.

Really interesting that you can just slot that in like that though, Linux gaming must really be coming along.

Edit: Also, playing with the core affinity stuff only made things extremely worse, where I could barely move. Turning it to realtime softlocked me, where the music was still playing but I couldn't do anything past the ctrl alt del screen, I was just stuck there and couldn't even reboot without turning the power off entirely. (I tried to open task manager, and left to go eat, when I came back it was still on that screen and just pressing the power button normally was unresponsive.)