Temporary workaround for audio crackling

[Axeon]

I think it's been pretty much confirmed by other topics and comments that audio crackling in cutscenes is only a problem for people with external DACs / audio interfaces, myself included. So here's a decent workaround that I found that can help while we wait for an official fix (hopefully sooner rather than later).

While not using an external audio interface in the first place is an obvious solution, for a lot of people like me whose entire audio setup is based on it - that's simply not an option. So after some more digging I have discovered that the amount of crackling is somehow linked to how cranked the graphics settings are. And I don't necessarily mean performance, I have a 3950x and a 3080 at 1440p ultrawide, cranking everything doesn't put a dent in FPS but makes the audio unbearable.

With that said, I found that if I leave the render scale at 100% and set the FPS limit to 60 (leaving everything else maxed) gets rid of like 90-95% of crackling for me, while not really sacrificing any visual fidelity. There's still some coming through in cutscenes sometimes, but it's no longer overpowering the actual audio and is at a level and occurrence frequency that's perfectly playable, not distracting and hardly even noticeable. I can not guarantee that it will work for everyone though, so try playing around with your graphics settings if it doesn't do it for you.

TL;DR - Try leaving the render resolution at 100% and set the FPS limiter to 60. The amount of crackling seems tied to graphical settings, so play around some more if it doesn't do it for you.

[J-&Dre]

You got the latest version of the bios for your MB too? I use external audio interface and play in 4k 120 fps. I tried 3 different interfaces. No audio crakle. Although i use 100% scaling. . Make is Asus and 11th gen i9.

[Axeon]

Originally posted by J-&Dre:

You got the latest version of the bios for your MB too? I use external audio interface and play in 4k 120 fps. I tried 3 different interfaces. No audio crakle. Although i use 100% scaling. . Make is Asus and 11th gen i9.

It should be fairly up-to-date, it's an older x570 board so BIOS revisions aren't frequent. I would say that it's highly unlikely that BIOS is involved here given how not uncommon this issue seems to be for audio interface users, but considering we're already dealing with graphics settings somehow affecting audio - nothing would surprise me anymore.

[Hawk]

I'm also using external DAC and haven't noticed any audio crackling on 150% scale 120fps cap. Have you tried adjusting sample rate to see if it changes anything because i've had that cause audio crackle issues in the past on other games.

[Annus]

for me what fixed it was a combination of 115FPS limit in RTSS along with 200% scaling (I've a 4090)