6.08 Introduced the Audio Popping/Static to Mac players

[AsunaSaturn]

Hi, I am having the same problem. I tried the fix with Audio Midi setup that cbakas42 described here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...to-Mac-players

However after a while, the problem reappears again. It's very frustrating. I was enjoying good part of the Endwalker story too.

I have submitted a bug report already.

[Teena]

Hi, I am having the same problem. I tried the fix with Audio Midi setup that cbakas42 described here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...to-Mac-players

However after a while, the problem reappears again. It's very frustrating. I was enjoying good part of the Endwalker story too.

I have submitted a bug report already.

Mine did work initially work too but was gone again the next time I launched the game. I've not tested properly yet exactly what the trigger is to 're-fix' the issue (so it may even just be luck) because I don't want to break it again, but I reopened Audio Midi setup, fussed about a bit with switching between the rates and re-saving between the switches, went back to the one that worked before, rebooted the game and the static is gone again.

Hopefully that will work for you too and hopefully it wasn't just luck for me and is at least an interim workaround till SE fix it.

[cbackas42]

Mine's been moved to accepted if you'd like to reply to that one! Be sure to include your System Information available from the game launcher (the sticky should have info on how to get that).

Link

The problem there is that the "System Information" thing is not available in the Mac launcher. I suspected that might be why my report got tossed, but you'd think in that case it'd be "Insufficient information". And since I can't reply to it now I don't have anyone to ask what was wrong with it or point out that they may have made a mistake.

[cbackas42]

Mine did work initially work too but was gone again the next time I launched the game. I've not tested properly yet exactly what the trigger is to 're-fix' the issue (so it may even just be luck) because I don't want to break it again, but I reopened Audio Midi setup, fussed about a bit with switching between the rates and re-saving between the switches, went back to the one that worked before, rebooted the game and the static is gone again.

Hopefully that will work for you too and hopefully it wasn't just luck for me and is at least an interim workaround till SE fix it.

I confirm that after longer testing, raising the sampling rate only temporarily fixes it. For me the problem returned within an hour at 82khz, and within 2 hours at 96khz. Although in no case was it anywhere near as bad as at the default rates at least.

[veeika]

I'd just like to chime in, I play on PC on Win10 and I started having sound issues with 6.08. I will troubleshoot this more on my end later today, but I've never had this problem before.

[Roekrs]

The difference is that I'm still on Big Sur as I'm waiting for the patch notes to say Montenery is fully supported.

The SUPER BIG problem here is that I have yet to see any mention of proper M1 support. If/when macOS drops Rosetta 2 (bye Intel), we won't have a game to play. Yo dawg, we heard you like playing an emulated Windows game on emulated x86.

[Teena]

To follow up more (and I'm still testing this because once I fix the sound again I don't want to break it so I just have to wait till the next time it stops working) and I'm just mentioning this in case it helps someone else because the audio problem is like nails on a chalkboard for me..

The next time the crackling came back, I did all the things I did before - switching between the khz (and clicking on the game between switches so that I knew it was picking up the changes), plus I opened the System configuration, made a change, applied it, then changed it back - all in an attempt to persuade the game to see the change. Then Exited and rebooted.

And it didn't work. I tried various orders of poking sound/game settings and rebooting the game 4-5 times in fact, without any luck.

Then, I had a vague recollection that when I was doing all this yesterday that I actually had a 90002 hit when I was doing it. So I instead did a Force Quit (Command Alt Esc) rather than Exit and lo and behold, the crackles are gone the next time I launched the game.

It may be coincidence, but if poking the various settings isn't getting you anywhere, it might be worth a try to Force Quit as there may be something in the Exit process that's affecting the 'fix'.

[Utremi]

It's not new, but definitely worse. I had it bad when EW first dropped, would start within 10 mins of logging in but with the patches after it got better and would maybe take hours to happen instead.. and I went a couple weeks with it not happening at all - but with .08 it starts as soon as I load into a zone after logging in.

[Fiel_Tana]

Happening to me to since the patch this week. The Audio MIDI Setup workaround helped (it no longer starts every time at the title screen) but it still happens seemingly randomly in game and a restart does nothing. If I wait a while, sometimes it works again for a bit then back to getting scratches and pops. I'll try the Force Quit fix next.

I've checked activity monitor when it's happening and the computer doesn't seem under any unreasonable strain and doesn't feel overly hot, it always runs slightly warm in game but not worrisomely hot, no loud fan sounds or anything that it can do if I really push it.

Tried it after a complete mac restart and no other apps open, same problem came up in a short time so it doesn't seem to be an interfering app. Not seeing any error alerts so far, which I had before this patch occasionally.

MacOS Big Sur 11.6 (20G165) (Also holding off updating until patch notes give the clear, though with FFXIV not working now anyway... :/ )
MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)


Has anyone tried a clean FFXIV install?

Does it happen on Non-M1 macs?

[AsunaSaturn]

So support got back to me today.

They said they won't be fixing the issue because I am using an M1 Mac and they are not supporting that system yet.

I am so sad