Hello, the sound issue is a known bug and has been reported in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...und-stuttering Note that it's not just a topic about sound stuttering but issues with the audio not always playing when it should. To verify that your audio does work before lining up in a long queue, go into the options screen from the title menu and test each audio type particularly ambient noises and character voices.

For your second concern, when you see "???" during login and/or your character does not load, that happens when the login server is overloaded with users and isn't a bug since it needs your character data from the server which it can't obtain because of congestion. Does that make sense?