Quote Originally Posted by Maeklos View Post
I did an interesting experiment.

I went into the settings for my speakers. (Right-click speaker icon in the bottom right of Windows -> Sounds -> Playback -> Selected my speakers -> Properties)
The very last tab at the top of the properties window? Spatial Sound. I turned this on (and had to restart FF, because of course I did). When I got back in game, the sound was muted, muddy, and sounded "underwater". I normally play with FF's Master Sound at 30 and my PC sound at 40% (because my speakers get -loud-) With the Windows Spatial Sound turned on, I had to crank FF's Master Sound all the way up to 100% as well as crank my PC sound up to 70% just to get an equivalent sound level. (For comparison, before I fired FF up again, I unpaused the video I'd been watching on Hulu. The sound level was exactly the same *after* I turned on Spatial Audio as before, which indicates that the issue with spatial audio is in FF, not anywhere else.)

I went to the Rising Stones and fired off Dyskrasia. It definitely took more casts than normal (7-8 instead of 2-3) to break the sound engine. But it still broke.

What's perhaps most interesting to me is that Windows comes equipped with a Spatial Sound option that exactly mimics what people have said that the stupid third party plugin does: muted sound, muddy sound, underwater sound.

Funny that SE would push us to buy a plugin that Windows comes with for free, no? Especially if they both mess up audio in the exact same way.
I figured I'd try this, bcs I'm grasping at straws. I also tried the quadraphonic sound.
In world FATEs still triggered it BAD. Once it started I even the sound menue was broken for way longer than usual. I loaded into a Trial to see how it goes with other players in a smaller instance. Ended up with Shiva (Hard) and it happend a few times. Less than usual (maybe I'm just huffing copium) but still noticably annoying. Once I loaded back into the world it stuttered again. I wasn't in combat nor next to other players.

I've not been playing for the past week+ only logging in to test someones newst idea to fix it. Not only is it that much worse since 6.01 but I have the feeling it's getting worse everyday. (Whilst I felt in the time from 6.0 to 6.01 it got better everyday.)