EA_Kent
Community Manager
Community ManagerRe: Issues with apex and using an audio interface as the audio device
Got it, thanks!
Are you only hearing the issues in Discord? If you use in-game voice chat does the same thing happen?
/Kent
Forum Discussion
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Yes, the issue persists in the in game chat as well
- @BigBoiPeggers Hi! I found many people with scarlet audio interfaces have similar issues. this could be how scarlet interface drivers manage latency by setting the default buffer size too low. I've found multiple posts on other forums including discord official ones, that many scarlet users experience with mic crackling. Try to fix this by going to Focusrite settings, which is the driver for your interface, set input buffer size higher, until the pops and cracks in the discord audio test disappear.
Adding on to this, if changing buffer size works, we should make a post for all Focusrite scarlet audio interface users that apex may have updated to eat more audio processing power. which they add up according to how many applications are generating audio events to the driver. for example in ASIO drivers with any DAW opened, one track of any software instrument VST under buffer size 32 should be okay with no crackling and popping. but 5 of them will definitely make it pop and crack. just turn your buffer size to a reasonable place covering all your audio needs and with the lowest latency. (buffer sizes directly influence audio latency.)
Oddly enough, this apparently just hadn’t caused any issues for me with anything else through blind luck or something, so I just didn’t even consider that could be a problem, but as it turns out this entirely fixed it, thanks for the tip lol
- @BigBoiPeggers gotcha! I suffered from audio popping and crackling before, although not really in-game but WASAPI thing from my operating system. I tried every possible solution but it's still broken now unfortunately XD
- EA_Kent
Hi, I came here to see if I could find any info on how to fix the same issue. I tried to decrease and increase the buffering size but I still have some crackling/robot noise problems when I boot up apex and have discord open while in a call. Any other things you would recommend to fix this? Wanted to point out I have played this game in the past and never have had this issue come up.
- @BlockishBore Hi! Normally this should fix it but I have no idea whether the correct procedures were taken. I just purchased a Scarlett 4i4 for testing this problem out and trying to solve it by myself. Later I will post a in depth tutorial about this as well as a YouTube video demonstrating how to fix this. But for now you can check if you changed the right type of buffer size I was mentioning about, which is not the buffer size of asio driver but system buffer size used for direct sound and wasapi.
I actually didn't think I was gonna get a response from anyone haha. Thank you. Honestly most of this seems complicated to me but if you have a youtube video coming out to fix it then I will definitely check it out. Its weird how this only happens to Apex. I have the 2i2 3 gen btw.
I also had a friend with the same issue and simply changing the sample rate from 48 kHz to 96kHz in the focusrite software fixed the issue for him
I did not try that but i will give it a shot. Thank you for all of the help.
- @BigBoiPeggers Interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing this. It could be that discord and apex is also reaching for some crazy things from the driver resource pool that might killed some buffers, could be something related to in game overlay? Turning up sample rate will usually push the buffer even harder in normal cases. But we don’t know if Scarlett driver also change the buffer size bigger to maintain that sample rate. I will post some of this stuff when I figure out the whole thing on Scarlett drivers to focusrite and hopefully they can do something to this glitch. This could be lead by many possible ways from a driver failure: didn’t reset device lock state, sample rate are required differently from applications... native instruments’s audio interface suffer from these types of stuff and they don’t provide auto close on asio which made everything even easier to break.Yamaha ur-c series drivers are the ones that I loved the most. It supports auto close and never had issues on driver side. But my ur 24c had some issue in hardware so I’m going for a Scarlett 4i4.
So I'm guessing its not my setup or my audio interface but just some driver problem/communication error between the system and the game?
- @BlockishBore It's probably how they designed the driver. but it will work eventually when I figure out exactly how it was broken.
- @BlockishBore Hi! I just got my Scarlett audio interface and set it up. Tested with discord and yes! it does make popping and crackling noises on default. I address only changing the buffer size and it does reinitialize the device for discord and it works! even if I turn buffer size all the way DOWN to 16 and it still works. that explains why simple applications like voice chat will have pops and crackles. the problem here is not the buffer size not set correctly BUT the Device is not opened or accessed by discord correctly. this is a problem about exclusive or how Focusrite makes their software mixer work. I will upload this situation to Focusrite for them to make their driver more perfect. For now, you can try to go to the windows sound panel, double click on Focusrite audio device, and go to Advanced - uncheck both checkboxes under Exclusive Mode to see if it doesn't break the device access.
Sounds good. I will try this out. I hope it works. Thank you for all of the input.
Ok so...I tried doing all of this. It seems like when I changed the buffer size only to 16 it worked. Tho if I tabbed out of my game. My mic reset and went back to crackling. I did it again and it seemed to work. Tho like i said if I tab out then it resets
Ok so its been longer time now and it seems to be working for the most part?
It seemed to continue working. Thank you for all of the help. If you do have a youtube channel or something please let me know. You deserve a subscriber or something man. You put time into helping out. Thank you for that.
- @BlockishBore You're welcome! 🙂
I will post the tutorial video on my youtube channel as soon as I made it, and it will take a few days actually. I'm quite busy recently due to test papers and exams. Will notify you in this post when I finish the whole thing. Have fun in the game! Was gonna say, I have noticed if I switch to full screen it resets something in game or with my audio interface which brings back the crackling. Tho the buffer size stayed the same I had to change it, then change it again back to 16, then switched it back to borderless window mode, and only then did it fix itself and the crackling goes away. I can live with borderless tho its annoying when there is screen tear and all of that. Im curious on why full screen messes with the mic.
Well I managed to somehow breaking it. I guess tabbing out or even restarting the game breaks it all.
I managed to fix it again. Not gonna touch anything. Tho there is still some slight hiccups here and there. Kind of annoying im just gonna stop messing with it.
- @BlockishBore Do you have any command-line options?
I wont lie, I got no idea what you are talking about. lol.
- @BlockishBore Ah. no problem. this is more likely to be a discord problem.
i tested with many other chatting software, only discord act like this.
