Audio popping issue

[Elliah-Seraheart]

1. Realtek High Definition Audio (6.0.9.132.1)
2. Stereo Headphones AND 5.1 Headset
3. Audio stuttering on BGM, Sound Effects, Atmosphere, Voices
4. NVidia GTX 1070 Ti

[AsheNabuddis]

I've got a theory.

Can ya'll list:
1. What driver + version you are using (Control Panel -> Hardware&Sound -> Sound -> Device Properties -> General -> Properties -> Driver)
2. Type of Device Stereo/Quadraphonic/5.1/7.1 Sound -> Configure -> Test out and set it correctly.
3. Scope of issues experiences

I've found a post from a year ago that tricks FF14 into outputting surround sound to stereo headphones.
Apparently, when FF14 starts up it checks whether your audio device is stereo, 5.1 or 7.1. Depending on that, it decides to output surround or stereo. The post in question tricked FF14 by manually assigning their stereo device to 5.1 or 7.2, then starting FF14, then switching it back to stereo.

As an aside, people used to experience the exact same issues of popping/stuttering audio, or missing audio altogether. This is the exact same thing we are experiencing now. For them, it happened when they if they used MSI or other third party surround software, that didnt play nice with FF14.

I also know that FF14 doesnt actually use the windows audio driver, but comes with its own driver.

All of this leads me to believe, that with the Introduction of Endwalker and crucially, Spatial Audio, we are now having issues with FF14 falsely detecting our audio capabilities. Whenever audio is "cutting out", it's trying to feed us surround sounds our drivers/devices cannot actually output (similar to test feature in Sound/Configure). Hence why we then hear messed up audio interfering/overlayed on the stereo audio. This also makes sense with the obstruction theory - since audio that is obstructed is surely modified in some way by surround/spatial. I'm not yet sure how DX9 / DX11 play into this - since I don't understand how rendering and tessellation works - but I believe the way things are rendered may make a difference, since the audio needs to know where things are in relation to the listener and what the environment looks like, to know what it has to do with the spatial/surround data.

Sure, can't hurt to try.
1. High Definition Audio Device - Microsoft. Driver Version: 10.0.19041.264
2. Stereo
3. Stuttering audio randomly, but most prominent when in combat/highly intensive graphical areas. Killing every other program running does have some small effect on the issue's appearance rate.

[DaBigDorf]

I've got a theory.

Can ya'll list:
1. What driver + version you are using (Control Panel -> Hardware&Sound -> Sound -> Device Properties -> General -> Properties -> Driver)
2. Type of Device Stereo/Quadraphonic/5.1/7.1 Sound -> Configure -> Test out and set it correctly.
3. Scope of issues experiences
4. GPU (since NVidia 1080 and 1070 seem to have trouble with atmos)

1. Realtek High Definition Audio 6.0.1.6873
2. 2 speakers and subwoofer made by Insignia
3. sound and slight graphical lag/stuttering in combat
4. Radeon Rx 550
also might be relevant: OS: Windows 7

[RobTheFrog]

It's a processor affinity issue introduced a few months ago by windows 10... It's not going away anytime soon. (Even with windows 11) Really doesn't help that the game exe still runs as a 32 bit program. (and we pay a monthly subscription for this)

[Annihilism]

My gf has had this issue for past 2 days and we fixed it today, here is what we did. Turn off spatial audio such as dolby atmos and windows enhancements such as bass boost. Launch a separate game before launching FF14 (in our case it was outriders on steam), launch ff14 client and turn off DX11 before logging. Static was gone and she can now hear all sounds instead of just BGM and crackly SFX.

Imo the embody sound pack screwed up the already shoddy sound code that FF14 has, before this bug her sound would go out on 14 when changing literally anything audio related. As a sidenote the embody addon is a gimmick, it does not enhance spatial audio at all, I am glad I got the free trial and found this out before hand. Going to test her sound with dolby atmos enabled but I have a feeling turning of DX11 should help in most cases and allow us to turn all enhancements back on.

[Elliah-Seraheart]

My gf has had this issue for past 2 days and we fixed it today, here is what we did. Turn off spatial audio such as dolby atmos and windows enhancements such as bass boost. Launch a separate game before launching FF14 (in our case it was outriders on steam), launch ff14 client and turn off DX11 before logging. Static was gone and she can now hear all sounds instead of just BGM and crackly SFX.

Imo the embody sound pack screwed up the already shoddy sound code that FF14 has, before this bug her sound would go out on 14 when changing literally anything audio related. As a sidenote the embody addon is a gimmick, it does not enhance spatial audio at all, I am glad I got the free trial and found this out before hand. Going to test her sound with dolby atmos enabled but I have a feeling turning of DX11 should help in most cases and allow us to turn all enhancements back on.

I wholeheartedly agree on the embody sound pack. STRANGELY, using it FIXED EVERYTHING for me, and a lot of other people. There's definitely something janky going on with how audio is handled, very much related to this. It at least gives me 25 days of playtime to wait for any actual fix. I hate how everything sounds with it - and I'm not willing to buy a 20€ sound mod. I already bought Endwalker and pay a monthly subscription. Not paying for a sound mod on top of it, just to get the game working to a satisfactory degree.

[Rukongai]

I've solved mine somehow.

I went through and killed some processes and services. I couldn't tell you which one it was.

I killed all my razer/synapse processes
I stopped and disabled the Connect User Experiences and Telemetry
I killed the Realtek Audio Manager

I'm fairly certain it was one of those. I suspect it was disabling the service. It's behind the CompatTelRunner.exe process, which was consistently eating a chunk of my processor

[AluneTempest]

i don't know if this has to do but after this patch my game has used a lot of CPU, it didn't happen before the patch was released, i think this increase in CPU usage may have something to do with this sound problem.

did anyone else notice if CPU usage increased?

[MediArgentum]

Having the same issue here. Switching to DX9 helps a little but it's still there and it's still super annoying. Happens every time I use attack actions in combat.

Tried other proposed solutions too, but to no avail. No such issue was present before Endwalker. Have they acknowledged this bug yet? I was hoping for a hotfix or something, as I seem to have exhausted solutions from my end.

[GorthRedsteel]

I won't lie, this feels awful. Imagine having time to play, and queues not being an issue as I can be a night owl - but then you are still unable to play thanks toaudio problems. I'm coping it's gonna get resolved with a patch before the official release but deep down I fear the worst outcome.