Audio popping issue

[Jizu]

Did all this, went to Rising Stones and cast Dyskrasia. Took 5 casts to break the sound engine instead of 3. Possibly an improvement or just random.

Yes, it definitely took a little longer than before but nonetheless, once it started it's here to stay.

[Ariel_Valmont]

Just wanted to come and add my voice to this list. I too have been experiencing these sound issues since the release of endwalker, and had previously experienced no issues before then. Its absolutely ridiculous that this has went on this long, and that their solution in the patch notes was to lower sound quality (which did not work). Has anyone used the 3rd party sound app they are trying to sell you to see if that fixes things? It wouldn't surprise me that the pay option fixes it... These sound issues have pretty much removed all joy from playing the game.

[EvilKiwi]

GPU AMD Radeon(TM) RX 560
AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor 3.50 GHz
8BG RAM
64 bit
I somewhat fixed this issue before, with lowering sound to 16bit 41Hz, going dx9, putting sound to character 100 and lowering ambience. There still was stuttering, but only very very rarely. For example I did lvl 83 trial, and I think the sound stuttered only twice. However, this means the audio in game is VERY POOR. This is not a fix in my eyes.

Let me preface that I restarted my sound setting to normal (so 24bit, 48hz) and my sound setting for FFXIV is the same as the main sound settings (so the input and output for my speakers are the same), and I'm playing on DX11, with nothing in background being on. I am trying to see if the advice Square put up works.

I logged in, and the first thing was stutter sound in the INN ROOM while doing nothing. I switched to dancer, did a few aoes and it got bad. Switched to whm and spammed a few holies and heals - that did nothing.
I went outside the inn room in Sharlyan and was met with more stuttering. That's fine, its loading, whatever. I tried the first fix. Putting the settings to standard desktop. Stuff seems ok, nothing major, ran around the market board and nothing happened.

Dungeons I did with these settings:
1. Battle of the Bridge as a WHM. Stutter a few times, but solid. My sound effects are around 50 and still there are the boss sound effects that just overpower everything.
2. Alexander 4 - absolutely nothing, again sound effects from bosses are loud for some reason. I am not sure if it's because the position of listening is on character 100.
3. Went to an area in Endwalker, and just stood next to a quest. I hear some crackling, but nothing major. I attack a mob as a bard and immediately it starts. Switched to WHM and its not as bad. Attack again as a dancer a mob and its back again. I put the game on High priority, but nothing majorly changed. Weird. Staying in one place doing nothing also gives audio stutters.
4. I get The Aery and try something. I lower the audio listening to camera to about 30%. Immediate audio stutter on mobs. Put it back up to 100 and its fine. After the first boss the audio stutter starts again and its on and off. Not too often. One example: During Niddhog fight, when the attack Sable Price was finished, the sound effect was really loud, more than any other audio and it stuttered. At this point I try to reduce the number of characters and objects being shown, but you can guess it does nothing.
5. In Paglth'an I get stutters on first two major pulls as an astrologian, first boss is alright, the big pulls after first boss nothing happens and same with second boss. Moment the tank gets the mobs after second boss it starts to stutter. I move my camera as that helps sometimes, and notice if I keep my camera on the background and not on the mobs it completely stops. The rest of the dungeons is without problems.

I am utterly baffled as what is happening. I know my PC is old, but never have I had these problems in any of the expansions.

went to dx9, high priority, lowered to 16bit41hz. - still stutter while standing and killing mobs but severely reduced
WOD - small stutter when joining ,small sutters around the sound effects, but bgm is good, atomos - small sutter with bgm too, small audio stutter while standing before the last boss doing NOTHING.

I know I went to too much detail, but I have really really no idea what to do other than having the audio be utterly bad, which is not a fix SE. I am tired. So I hope this at least helps.

[Maeklos]

Has anyone used the 3rd party sound app they are trying to sell you to see if that fixes things? It wouldn't surprise me that the pay option fixes it... These sound issues have pretty much removed all joy from playing the game.

From what I've gathered, using the fancy new spatial audio plugin lowers the quality even more, even for people who aren't experience general sound issues because of 6.01.

[Lagunow]

No, spatial audio plugin doesn't fix it. It's the other way around actually, activating it instantly triggers the glitch.

[Maeklos]

After I broke my sound in the Rising Stones, I did a few roulettes. Having set FF14's process to Realtime in Task Mananger seems to occasionally fix the sound. I was able to do Brayflox (normal), Cape Westwind, and Labyrinth of the Ancients with minor issues that corrected themselves (similar to 6.0). But when I did my 50/60/70/80 roulette, I got Sunken Temple (Hard). On the very first fight, the sound broke all the way with massive, headache-inducing G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G constantly so I had to turn it off. Halfway through the dungeon, I turned sound back on and it was G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G still.

This is frustrating. And still no word of them working on it. Le sigh.

[ArcheusWren]

Just chiming in as another person experiencing this issue. I know there are other people out there with this problem that haven't visited the official forums or logged a support ticket - so SE probably doesn't have a true understanding of the impact of this. <500 of players posting in this thread is less than 1% of their guessed playerbase. Unfortunately they are probably going to continue to try and shift the blame to the players hardware even though it was a software change they have made that has caused all this.

My hardware configuration hasn't changed since before Endwalker released, and the issue has occurred since Endwalker release. No other game suffers this issue. SE, this is an issue you have caused, not the players. Step up and do something about it.

[Ariel_Valmont]

On the previous page there was a quote with some things to try changing the power options and a couple other things, they seemed to have lessened the issue but it still persists.

[Nisava]

I've sent a few emails about the audio issues, but the copy paste replies that don't relate to my inquiry don't give me much faith. In fact, with every passing second I feel like I'm losing faith in the team... usually they're so good about keeping in touch with their community. Strange that when their paid service they didn't warn us about releases and screws up everything, suddenly they're quite quiet. Tried some more fixes today (including the one on the last page) but I'm convinced I'm just wasting my time.. it isn't an issue on any of our parts. Purely Square Enix, and I have this upsetting feeling in my gut they just want to convince us it's ours. It'd be nice to be proven wrong, but..

It's just hard to keep positive with how they've acted thus far. Just wanna play the game I paid 75$ for OTL. Would send in my specs but I play on the computer equivalent of a Gameboy, so I imagine they'd just say some nonsense about my hardware. 3-5 fps + slower movement/client speed + constant lag, and I still never once had issue with audio during my time playing since 2019.. until that Spatial Audio nonsense dropped! The audio was usually smoother than the game itself for me!! Now it's the opposite. Straight up embarrassing on Squenix's part; fix what you broke. Seems like my Gameboy has more respect for the audio aspect of Endwalker than the company who created it.

[Lagunow]

Had a full play session in DX11 without issues last night. I think the most important things here were steps 2 and 3, which prioritize audio processes and allow for more power draw respectively.

I also have Graphics on High Desktop and the Equalizer set to Standard. I don't have the fancy AI sound thing installed and certainly don't intend to even try it after all this.

I just tested your solution. It does not completely fix it, as I can still hear some minor chopping, but there is definitely some semblance of normalcy now. At least, I'm currently spamming spells on rising stones and it didn't break the sound engine so far. If it keeps like this it could possibly be a temporary solution to make the game somewhat playable before SE fixes the engine.

I'm going to do some msq now and do some dungeons, then I'm going to update if it keeps working.