Audio popping issue

[Nonoliri]

We need to stress test everything to make sure.
Someone run Alexander and The Fourth Circle.

Oh... and try a Hunt Train.
If it can now handle a Hunt Train, we should be golden.

My sound has been stuttering and echoing and lagging since 6.0. I tried everything, running a virtual audio cable, DX9, lowering settings, changing listening position and the equalizer off and then back onto Standard, lowering the bitrate for my headphones, repairing the game files, just absolutely everything. Nothing ever worked, even the 6.05 patch that said it fixed it.

I ran World of Darkness today and noticed I wasn't getting it, so swapped all my settings back to normal (except for the virtual audio cable because I don't even know how to go about uninstalling that,) and it didn't come back. And to top it all off, I did a Hunt Train for 2 hours today with no stuttering. It seems like it's fixed for me at least, though I'm still worried about some people saying they're still having issues.

I plan to go back and rewatch a couple of cutscenes now that I can hear Soken's music in them and not just stuttering and dropped voice lines.

[miragedive]

Right. After endless fiddling and fidgeting with the settings, I think I may have found a temporarily fix/reduction. I tested this right in the middle of when the sound was stuttering literally every 5 seconds and had three clean minutes of sound on trial 2 + no stuttering in The Goblet or Radz-at-Han after. All of these fixes are necessary, I tried switching from FullScreen back to Borderless and the stuttering came back. This is assuming you've applied the fixes suggested in patch notes.

1. Switch to Fullscreen Display
2. Ensure that FPS is capped 1/1 or uncapped
3. Go to System Configuration -> Sound Settings -> Wireless Controller Settings, and set Speaker sounds to None. I reduced volume to 0 and muted for good measure.
4. If you use a gamepad/controller to play, either play wirelessly, or if you connect via cable, disable the controller as a sound device in your Windows settings. To do this, connect your controller, go to Sound Settings -> Device Properties -> Additional device properties -> On the General window, right at the bottom, change Device Usage to "Don't use this device (disable)"

This combination seems to work for me so far, but I'll feed back over the course of the coming few days if the issue comes back or if the issue remains fixed like this. At the moment I have my graphics reduced to mitigate, but if the fix holds I'll gradually increase. Note that this worked with a listening position of 50.

[Maeklos]

Chiming in after not playing for nearly a month. Sound issues seem to be fixed for me. I finally resubbed to give it a shot and spent 10 minutes running in circles in the Rising Stones casting Dyskrasia II. Normally, the problem would trip after 3-4 casts at most. Now, almost 10 minutes and nothing.

Yay for getting it fixed!

Boo for them ostensibly blaming us rather than investigating the problem before casting aspersions.

[rutilation]

Unfortunately for me, this patch didn't really fix the audio issue, it just made it... different. I got my hopes up when I saw a bunch of people here saying the issue was fixed on their end, and I was even happier when I walked inside the buildings in Great Work, which had always triggered the stuttering for me before, and didn't experience any issues. But when I started doing my roulettes, the issue came up again, and it was especially bad in the alliance raid I did. The best way I can describe it is that the stuttering effect in particular is gone, but the audio becomes very scratchy, laggy, and--for lack of a better term--bass-boosted. What's more, adjusting the camera while in combat doesn't alleviate the issue like it did before.

An update on this: since the problem seemed to have been fixed for most everyone else, I went looking for any possible issue that could have caused it on my end. Around the same time the audio bug cropped up for me, the dc jack on my laptop broke; it can power the computer, but it can't charge the battery. I overlooked it before because I couldn't imagine how the two could be related, and at the time I figured that the release of patch 6.05 had caused the problem. As it turns out, the faulty connection in there was causing the laptop to throttle the cpu--it was in a perpetual power-saving mode. Fiddling with the power settings couldn't fix it, but I downloaded throttlestop, unchecked the box labeled BD PROCHOT, and that fixed the issue for me completely.

[Grimno]

Just did The Fourth Circle and trial roulette, as well as ran around the gold saucer doing Leap of Faith, ran around ishgard, and even did my leve quests.
Not a single pop and have had audio distance at 70/100 and Immersive turned off.
It feels so good to be back to normal play again.

[polyphanes]

Just coming back to report: no more audio issues, and it feels so good to not have to use the Immerse Gamepack anymore with its extremely uncomfortable spatialization! And I get my treble boost back, no less!

[Geirr]

So if you bought a car and something on it turned out to be broken (unknown to you or the dealer at time of sale), are they obligated to discount the cost for you, or fix the problem for free? I've been dealing with this sound problem myself since the expansion dropped, but I'm not crying like a child (not saying you are) over the minor inconvenience it presented, that's all it was M I N O R.

They owned it, they fixed it, that should be enough. They already compensated like 21 days or something of playtime because so many people were unable to access the game at all due to server queues, to ask for any more is absolutely ridiculous. That reimbursement happened because they were unable to provide the service that was paid for.

And as far as your "broken piano" comparison, the same thing applies, if it turns out to be broken, its fixed for free or replaced, not financially compensated. Unless of course you return it to the seller, then you're back where you started with no piano. Is that what people want to do? Return Endwalker and not have access to its content?

Actually, something like that is covered by what is called lemon law under the car analogy. If the developers changed the minimum requirements? Posted a reasonable sunset date of 6 months or a year? That's one thing. This wasn't that. The developers made a mistake on their QA by not doing QA on a wide variety of older systems. This wasn't something they anticipated or did on purpose.

If you lost access to your bank account because your bank or credit union decided to update their ticketing system, and you weren't notified and they didn't know it would happen, how would you feel? How about if you start missing obligations like bills? Couldn't buy birthday presents or go to dinner with friends? I imagine that is close to how people feel who wanted to run content with their friends during EW. People in good standing, paying their sub, and this happens to them to the detriment of themselves and their friends.

I sincerely hope SqE will refrain from introducing major technical changes simultaneously with big content patches. Would be much better to patch in and test these systems at the end of expansions or in-between content gates.

[TaleraRistain]

FX-6200 and no audio stutter, lag, or FPS drops that I've been experiencing since 6.0. The game plays exactly as it did before that patch now.

I ran Fourth Circle which is always absolutely horrible and it was clear as a bell. Flow on the Orchestrion in my inn room is another where I always had issues and it was perfect. Music is an essential part of the experience of XIV for me and I am so happy that the experience is complete again.

[Ecto478]

I so happy when saw the audio issue is being fixed on patch 6.08, but my game still stuttering on every battle instance, its lessen than before but definitely sucks that i cant hear any bgm properly in game, i know my laptop is old, but it's has been working properly ever since sb, until endwalker is released and even after patch its not fully fixed, i hope it's resolved on 6.1

[GutsyBoozetank]

So far so good! I didn't hear any stuttering or any other audio issues yesterday. The Radz-at-Han BGM was a stuttering mess, even more so if the game window was not active. Now the music is perfect even when the game window isn't active. Thank you!