Audio popping issue

[pastelbaphomet]

I've also been having this problem ever since Endwalker dropped. I've tried dx9, lowering bitrate, reinstalling the game, reinstalling my own drivers, setting low graphics, and lots of sound setting fiddling but I still get the sound stuttering. Dialog is timed pretty tightly so with the audio clipping on and off characters only get to say about half of their voicelines before moving on to the next line. Visually there are no problems, but I would really like to experience Endwalker in full, especially since the soundtrack is what drew me to the game in the first place.

Potentially relevant specs:

Motherboard: 990FXA Gaming MS-7893
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-6350 Six-Core Processor (6 CPUs), ~4.2GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

Let me know if further information would be useful in any way.

[GorthRedsteel]

I've also been having this problem ever since Endwalker dropped. I've tried dx9, lowering bitrate, reinstalling the game, reinstalling my own drivers, setting low graphics, and lots of sound setting fiddling but I still get the sound stuttering. Dialog is timed pretty tightly so with the audio clipping on and off characters only get to say about half of their voicelines before moving on to the next line. Visually there are no problems, but I would really like to experience Endwalker in full, especially since the soundtrack is what drew me to the game in the first place.

Potentially relevant specs:

Motherboard: 990FXA Gaming MS-7893
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-6350 Six-Core Processor (6 CPUs), ~4.2GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

Let me know if further information would be useful in any way.

Nothing you can do but wait for the fix from devs. Well, nothing except upgrading your prehistoric machine. lel

[Larirawiel]

Good news.


Cheers

[Puss_Kat]

the issue really has nothing to do with what windows is doing with the audio, or the driver for that matter, its all a performance issue / lack of engine optimization where more Sounds are being rendered than should be causing a process bottleneck where graphics and audio are competing for cpu time.

[rojimboo]

the issue really has nothing to do with what windows is doing with the audio, or the driver for that matter, its all a performance issue / lack of engine optimization where more Sounds are being rendered than should be causing a process bottleneck where graphics and audio are competing for cpu time.

Sure, but if there's no software resampling on the CPU, and the soundcard is matching the source samplerate, then the CPU does very little and there should be no/less stuttering. I imagine that's why I got it working in Linux with alsa (exclusive mode), and not the software resampling Pulseaudio.

I mean, it *could* be other reasons too, like CPU scheduler is better optimised on Linux, but then that wouldn't explain how switching to ALSA fixes it.

Regardless, if FFXIV doesn't allow exclusive control of the soundcard, there's no way to verify.

[Larirawiel]

It can be that Linux can handle the specialties of Bulldozer CPUs better and the issue does not occur very often. As i wrote, Bulldozer is very different to other CPUs. I can imagine that Microsoft will not support this CPU type explicitely because it is an old CPU and AMD could not sell many CPUs because Intel was way better at this time.

Cheers

[rojimboo]

It can be that Linux can handle the specialties of Bulldozer CPUs better and the issue does not occur very often. As i wrote, Bulldozer is very different to other CPUs. I can imagine that Microsoft will not support this CPU type explicitely because it is an old CPU and AMD could not sell many CPUs because Intel was way better at this time.

Cheers

It's possible. But I have a Ryzen 3700X zen2 processor, though.

Does the audio crackling happen to most people, or is it just for a fraction? And people with Bulldozer CPUs are all/mostly affected? Those AMD processors had notoriously poor single-thread performance, perhaps not dealing with CPU latency very well for audio.

[Puss_Kat]

It's possible. But I have a Ryzen 3700X zen2 processor, though.

Does the audio crackling happen to most people, or is it just for a fraction? And people with Bulldozer CPUs are all/mostly affected? Those AMD processors had notoriously poor single-thread performance, perhaps not dealing with CPU latency very well for audio.

I can replicate it under the conditions of having the SFX muted in various content using a xeon x5960 overclocked to 4.2Ghz,
but my living room setup with a xeon 1680v2 at 4.2ghz struggles to replicate the same increases of cpu usage (that said i was testing off-peak)

[AeroXaia]

I've had it set to allow exclusive mode and to give priority, with all other playback devices disabled all along, so no luck there.

For Linux to handle something game related better than windows is certainly a first for me though, really interesting. (Not to mention on a game built for windows!) Maybe the move off the sinking ship might be sooner than I thought.

[Grimno]

Actually encountered someone during Trial Roulette who was suffering from choppy audio to the point they had to mute their end and pausing to do so got them killed...