Repeated, Frequent Audio Glitches & Graphical Lag/Stutters following 7.0 update

[7th7th]

Since logging into FF14 this morning, I've encountered a number of visual/audio issues, and I can't seem to figure out why they continue to happen.

The two most noticible issues are repeated audio glitches, and frequent graphical lag & stutters, both during gameplay and in cutscenes.

The audio glitches consist of brief, but frequent bursts of distortion and audio lag in the audio of the game, both in the music and vocal tracks, lasting from a short stutter, up to two or three seconds long in each burst. They are almost always accompanied by a graphical stutter as well, skipping frames for as long as the audio distortion lasts.

The graphical issues themselves are mostly bursts of lag/stutters, a loss of frames in time with the audio issues. However, the average FPS of the game in general has tanked considerably since the update, rarely hitting double digits in more populated areas. I haven't gotten to a part of Dawntrail with combat yet, but I anticipate the issues to persist or be exacerbated by more active gameplay as well.

While I've suffered from internet connection-related lag in the past, I've rarely, if ever had any visual or audio issues like this when that's happened, as far as memory serves, so I don't think that's the issue, but with the recent update, I can't be sure of course.

My GPU is on the lower end of the recently updated Recommended Specs sheet for FF14, but by no means on the absolute bottom of the list.

I also use a Dualsense controller to play, but while I've seen older support articles elsewhere on the internet suggesting that disabling the controller as an audio device may help with audio stuttering, so far I haven't been able to disable that aspect of the controller while FF14 is running without it diabling the controller as a whole- I suspect that, as you need to have audio for PS5 controllers enabled in order to use the enhanced rumble features PS5 controllers have in FF14 (which also isn't working for me), they now forcibly link the functionalities together.

Regardless, if there's any advice anyone can offer, or if this sounds more like an issue with my hardware, or perhaps a bug that I ought to post in the bug forums, I'd love to hear from folks. Thank you!

My PC specs:
CPU: Intel i7-6700K
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1070
Running Windows 10 64-bit
32 GB RAM
Game stored on an SSD

EDIT: A reboot seems to have resolved this issue for now, though I don't know what caused it in the first place, so I can't say with confidence that it won't come back up later. Fingers crossed though!

[Votraftur]

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