Audio popping issue

[XenophineEX]

Well, I hadn't done it before because I was scared to sh*t of damaging my hardware, but I finally did it, and honestly, audio stuttering seemed even worse, happening more frequently.

So, explaining the situation: my AMD FX-8370E usually runs at 3.3GHz. I first changed it to 3.6GHz and it was no good. Right now I'm at 4.1GHz and no good again. I really don't intend to try higher speeds.

One maybe strange thing is that, although overclocked, my CPU Cores stays most of the time at 1.4GHz, even when playing the game, and occasionally, they change to 3.6GHz or 4.1Ghz.
Don't know if that's to be expected, or if some configuration from the BIOS is preventing it to run at maximum power (I disabled cool n' quiet).
Is this how it is supposed to behave, or is something not right at my environment?

The image below helps to illustrate the situation:

EDIT:
So, additionally to Coll 'n Quiet, I also disabled an AMD Turbo CPU (or something like that) option in the BIOS, and now, when overclocked to 4.1GHz, my CPUs don't stop at 3.6GHz anymore, they just switch between 1.4GHz and 4.1GHz.
It really seems that, when they are at 4.1GHz the stuttering doesn't occur, although, I can't be sure if it fixes 100%.
The problem is that, most of the time, me CPUs stay at 1.4GHz. I have even set Windows power options so that CPU minimum speed is 100%, but it still stays at 1.4GHz most of the time.
Although I fear for my CPU temperature, I would at least try to test how it would go if I could keep it at 4.1GHz for long time intervals, but I really don't know what to do...

Nope, keep turbo on, turn off cool and quiet, cool and quiet will throttle to reduce "noise". Turbo will boost to your maximum set over clock settings when they exceed system manufactured specs. Neither one of those options give you control of your fan speed which you really need to set to 95% to test any of this. Turbo only turns on when the processors hits max, so if you are monitering you may never see it get that high, that is because nothing has required it too run that high or running that high would shut your system off as a fail safe because of over heating.

Did you try msi command center?
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/970-...ver&Win10%2064

the one from msi is this
Title
Command Center
Version
1.0.1.27
Release Date
2021-09-17
File Size
23.43 MB

It says MSI but it works for both chips, intel and amd regardless of msi board... which is why they make it difficult to download.

For more specifics on msi command center...
https://www.msi.com/support/technica...DT_MSI_Utility

[TaleraRistain]

I have not had the audio stuttering bug yet, but I am still in post shadowbringers and fear it will become an issue in the future.

If you aren't getting it now, you probably won't get it. It's not limited to Endwalker zones. It's happening across the game.

[Providence_]

As a general tip to help folks cope with this until it's fixed - through trial and error I've found that, generally speaking, activating the immerse audio trial seems to fix issues outdoors and in content with lots of players, but causes much worse clipping in indoor areas (especially tiny instances like rising stones, red ruby office etc). I've been pretty much toggling it on and off to get through the game without issues - albeit occasionally getting caught out when an msq cutscene takes me indoors/outdoors somewhere without an opportunity to change settings.

my very uneducated guess here is that the spatial audio calculates sound bouncing off walls and stuff, which gets intensive in an enclosed space.

For the record I'm using an FX-9370 OC'd to 4.7Ghz.

[GutsyBoozetank]

What happens when the free trial runs out, such as mine did yesterday. I don't feel it's right that I have to pay just to have the audio be slightly better. I will say that the audio stuttering is even worse with the trial expired. They should make the spatial immersion free until they can fix their issue.

[Larirawiel]

Another option could be this:
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...965cd4dd0ac3af

Set all audio devices to 16 Bit, 44100 Hz.

Maybe it will relieve the propably too small audio buffers of the game. And the sound quality downgrade should not be noticable because 16 Bit and 44100 Hz sample rate already exceeds the abilities of a human ear by far.


Cheers

[Nommers]

Another option could be this:
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...965cd4dd0ac3af

Set all audio devices to 16 Bit, 44100 Hz.

Maybe it will relieve the propably too small audio buffers of the game. And the sound quality downgrade should not be noticable because 16 Bit and 44100 Hz sample rate already exceeds the abilities of a human ear by far.


Cheers

Sorry, but this is the very first thing Square Enix told us to try several weeks ago, and as far as I know it didn't work for anyone.

There was another tweet from Soken yesterday promising that fixes will be included in "the next version." https://twitter.com/sokensquareenix/...792569867?s=21 I sincerely hope he doesn't mean 6.1 because that is months off. The post-6.05 Known Issues post on Lodestone mentioned that they wanted to have the two listed issues fixed by the weekend. One's already been fixed. Maybe there will be another patch today fixing the other one that also attempts to address the audio. I don't exactly have my hopes up but I guess we'll see.

EDIT: There's also been a post by a community rep over on the Japanese forums: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5797104

DeepL translation:

Hello, I've been working on this for a while.

Thank you very much for contacting us with detailed system information and reproducible conditions regarding sound-related problems.
Thank you very much for providing us with detailed information about your system and the conditions under which the problem occurred.

It took us a while to narrow down the conditions under which the problem could be reproduced, but thanks to your help, we were able to reproduce the symptoms.

The symptoms this time are
In the calculation process in the FFXIV game sound driver, there is a point where the adjustment of the number of digits is not performed correctly.
We have found that this is likely to be caused by the characteristics of some CPUs, which cannot keep up with the calculation process.
Although most of the affected CPUs are older than 10 years old, we have confirmed that some of the latest CPUs are also affected.

Based on the characteristics of these CPUs, we are continuing to investigate and fix the problem so that it can be handled normally.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we would like to release an additional fix after verifying the pattern for the next patch.
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we would like to release an additional fix after we have verified the pattern for the next patch, so please wait a little longer for the fix.

Together with Soken's tweet, this is very good news. The post immediately following this also mentions that FX series CPUs are a rarity in Japan. Given the apparent inconsistency in how the bug affects other hardware configurations I suppose it makes sense that the issue would take a long time to track down. I'm still praying for a Lodestone post so that we don't have to dig through twitter and filter forum posts through the language barrier. Still, here's hoping this is fixed sooner than later.

[minopoki]

Both Soken and the Japanese rep mentioned the next patch. As far as know there aren't fixed dates for the next patches yet (as there were for 6.01 and 6.05), there being just the information that 6.1 is gonna be out before the end of the first quarter (so, by the end of March, probably).

For those who have been here at the beginning of other expansions, is there a chance of being an extra patch before 6.1 (like a 6.08 or something)?
Or for all other expansions, has it always been X.01, X.05 and then X.1?

[RicaRuin]

There still is the issue with Floor 2 of the current Savage and Shields, so we have another Hotfix scheduled sometime.

[Larirawiel]

Both Soken and the Japanese rep mentioned the next patch. As far as know there aren't fixed dates for the next patches yet (as there were for 6.01 and 6.05), there being just the information that 6.1 is gonna be out before the end of the first quarter (so, by the end of March, probably).

For those who have been here at the beginning of other expansions, is there a chance of being an extra patch before 6.1 (like a 6.08 or something)?
Or for all other expansions, has it always been X.01, X.05 and then X.1?

I guess they are able to pull out "emergency patches" when they are needed. Patch 6.01 was also an ad hoc patch because of this disconnect thingy every 15 minutes and 30 seconds. I can imagine that they could make a 6.06 patch or something very fast when they have a solution.


And the informations from the japanese forums are very interesting. But they are too vague and i can only speculate what the reason for the sound issues is. It seems to me that they have accidently or intentionally chosen a data type for sound processing which is calculated very slowly on some CPUs. It is comparable to when you calculate 64 bit values on a 32 bit CPU. A 64 bit CPU will be faster because it has 64 bit registers and can calculate 64 bit values directly. A 32 bit CPU must split the 64 bit value into two 32 bit values an then make the calculation twice for every 32 bit value. And this is a very simple view on this. You have also to consider things like addition carry over and if you do multithreading then you have to atomic lock the whole calculation because "tearing" could happen etc. This makes 64 bit calculations on 32 bit CPUs way slower.



Cheers

[Nommers]

And the informations from the japanese forums are very interesting. But they are too vague and i can only speculate what the reason for the sound issues is. It seems to me that they have accidently or intentionally chosen a data type for sound processing which is calculated very slowly on some CPUs....

I might be totally off-base on this, but this seems to line up with what RinKaenbyou was saying here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5794011