Audio popping issue

[HyoMinPark]

I played all through Early Access without experiencing any sort of audio problems, but after the emergency maintenance a couple days ago, now I notice it all the time. Battle effects stop working, boss skills/AOEs don’t play, skill sounds from us or other party members don’t play, character voices cut in and out. Background music seems fine—it’s the only thing that doesn’t cut out for me. Sometimes the sounds come back within a few seconds. Other times they stay broken.

I tend to have the bug where my sound all cuts out except the background music—and interestingly enough, my character wasn’t performing the animations for the actions when the sound was cutting out. I checked my VPN and did not see any packet loss or other ping spikes that could have caused the issue instead, since I know lag will cause animations not to play sometimes.

Sadly, the only remedy I’ve found is closing the game completely and restarting it. Simply relogging did not fix it. And sadly that’s not a great fix given the state of the queues in this game. It only really works if you do it in the late night/very early morning hours when queues aren’t thousands of people. :c

I hope this is fixed because it’s incredibly jarring. And I rely on sound queues in battle with regards to certain mechanics, so it’s kind of messing with that a bit.

[Larxene]

Putting my 2 cents in as well... I know there was some discussion that it might be related to older parts but I just got this PC and am experiencing the same issues.

The issue started for me the FIRST mini-boss during the first EW dungeon. The audio cut out completely, and I was able to get it half back by setting the equalizer to standard (it was set at logitech initially)-- however, my battle effects were gone and anytime I pressed a skill action I'd hear an annoying clicking. The MSQ lacked voice acting as well and it's incredibly frustrating as other fixes suggested in the thread have done nothing to help.

As it is, I can only get BGM and some system sounds-- but even the BGM will pop every so often. This isn't playable. I was so ready to enjoy this expansion fully but after spending a week in queues to get another barrier I'm not sure I'll even try to play for a while.

My PC:
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600x
OS: Win 10, latest updates


EDIT: I relogged the next day just to see if it got better and I haven't had the issue since-- the only change I've made is not using my headphones, and keeping the sound settings to CD quality.

[Sekigawa321]

any news from SE regarding this?

[AsheNabuddis]

Only news we've got is the acknowledgement of the issue in "know endwalker issues" in the news, and the Sound Director's tweet about knowing about it and trying to fix it.
No real ETA so far.

[KnottySloth]

So since its over 20 Pages full of Ideas and Feedback around the Sound Poppoing Error i thinks it's time for an overview about tries and errors and possible fixes, who are overall, still not finally able to solve this error.

Here is the Error and how its comes to light

Here is a list, which more or less many user tried, with more or less, mostly less, sucess:

• Deactivate DirextX 11 and go back to DX9
• switch graphical adjustmenst (down, up etc.)
• Reinstall audio and gpu drivers
• install third party audio
• reinstall FFXIV
• check about CPU usage and adjust
• changing priority in CPU settings
• change from Logitech Wireless to cablespeaker
• changing equalizer mode in FFXIV to standard (and back)
• change sound mixer game output into dxmode
• change listening position in FFXIV to 100
• closing realtek audio manager
• enabling audio add-on as trial
• turn spatial on or off
• it returns after restart.
• switching GPU ^_° gives an "improvement"
• LINK config settings which adjusted into better
• borderless Window etc didnt help
• LINK Official Statement about the Soundbug
• some weird ticket with reinstall IE etc. whcih didnt helped at all
• changing the fps to 165 did make it better for 1 evening, and after restart it got worse again
• Go to control panel, hardware and sound, power options, and set your power plan to "Balanced" if it's set on "save power" (nope)

Well, i hope some of these will help you for a short time. As Elliah-Serahart pointed out here there might be a problem when FFXIV is starting /loading, so that resolves the restart - error back feature.

best of luck to all of you. Stay healthy

Bump for first page

[FunkyBunch]

Bump for first page

what worked for me was disabling sound to the controller, then changing audio device in windows to also not the controller . sometimes FFXIV makes windows change the preferred audio device to the controller.

[minopoki]

I finally gave up on this. After installing the game to an SSD and that changing nothing, there's nothing more I can try.

I was thinking, if the cause of this problem was a change to the audio driver, all they needed to do is add an option for changing back to the old driver and maybe everything would be fine. Or would Endwalker new stuff really not work with the old driver?
Although that change would require an update of the client, I think it could pretty much be implemented at anytime, it shouldn't have to make us wait until the 21st.

Honestly, I'm kinda afraid that whatever fix they intend to add in 6.01 ("if any adjustments are needed") might really not work for everyone, just like some fixes that have been proposed by the community work for some people but not for most of them.

It really seems SE sees this as a minor problem, even though there are about 30 threads on this issue here on Lodestone, this one having over 200 comments and a few of them around 40-60, not to mention Reddit, YouTube etc.
Even though it's not really acceptable that we have to wait until the patch, it doesn't seem we have much choice.

If by the patch this isn't fixed though, I'll just have to leave the game…
It's very disappointing that'll have to abandon a game that's so special to me and did so good to my mental health through the last 2 years for such a stupid reason.
Even if I could afford a computer newer (and more expensive) than the one I currently have (which would only be possible for me like 6 months to 1 year from now), it would be such a waste to spend money on it only for the sake of Final Fantasy XIV, while most games I'm interested in still work in my current PC.
Which means that if this issue doesn't get fixed soon, it would probably take years for me to be able to return to the game…

[Stormhold]

I tend to have the bug where my sound all cuts out except the background music—and interestingly enough, my character wasn’t performing the animations for the actions when the sound was cutting out. I checked my VPN and did not see any packet loss or other ping spikes that could have caused the issue instead, since I know lag will cause animations not to play sometimes.

Sadly, the only remedy I’ve found is closing the game completely and restarting it. Simply relogging did not fix it. And sadly that’s not a great fix given the state of the queues in this game. It only really works if you do it in the late night/very early morning hours when queues aren’t thousands of people. :c

Pray tell, if You have several "Output" devices, including DS4 controller (OR DS5). For me game tends to output different sound "layers" in separate devices and I fixed it by disabling those devices in Windows settings.

[Jadilus]

Just wanted to chime in that I had also been having the same audio issues to the point it was basically unplayable unless completely muted. I tried pretty much all the suggested quick fixes but the only one that actually made a difference for me was enabling the spatial audio. I downloaded the trial, set it up, and although it didn't completely eliminate the issue, (it still pops up somewhat randomly) it made a dramatic difference. It essentially went from audio stutter and cracking every 10-15 seconds to happening maybe a few times in an hour and not so terrible I had to mute the game. Hopefully they completely resolve the issue in 6.01 but for now that was the only thing that helped in my case.

[OmniusOmnium]

Well, I can show you a video if you want. There's is an absolute 100% 1:1 correlation with zero delay whatsoever when I change that setting. You can IMMEDIATELY see it cause the sound issues or resolve it (as long as it's not a big battle), in real time, without hurting the FPS much until you go too low. It disproportionately affects the audio.

Again, I can record a video and show it, it's not a guess or theory. It affects it instantaneously and I've been switching back and forth as I play to have less broken sound in dungeons and trials, and going back while waiting in queues, so I don't have excess heat and fan noise. The moment I click it, the sound instantly changes, and the FPS remains good either way.

Edit: Also, just to add more detail, the CPU usage doesn't seem to ever go too far past 50% in any case anyways, according to windows task manager.

So what is it you are suggesting? Go into power options and down throttle the cpu manually? I will try and see if it works for me.

EDIT: Throttling the CPU down made no appreciable difference for me, in fact the lower I throttled it the worse my issue got.