Hello!
I had the same problem, very painfull to the ears indeed and unplayable...
I needed to fix this so I searched for fifa 23 fixes, and saw something. The players who had the same problem had a focusrite, so i think the problem lays with both fifa and focusrite. I see you have the exact same headset as me so I figured you have also a focus rite. I found a sulotion on reddit, so i'll post the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EASportsFC/comments/12ho0kf/fifa_23_constant_audio_stuttering_focusrite_2i2/
If you dont trust this link I will post the solution below. I will hope this will fix it for you, it did for me.!
Hi everyone, I think I've found a fix for this. I did quite a lot of research into what caused it and tried a bunch of things. Then I realised that if I had a low buffer size on my audio interface, FIFA would cause my whole audio to dropout, and my audio interface would auto restart and work fine for a few minutes again, before dropping out again. However, if I had a high buffer size on my audio interface, the audio wouldn't dropout completely but it would start stuttering and glitching like mad eventually until you manually restarted the interface. This led to me to suspect the buffer size is the issue. Therefore, the fix is to increase our buffer size higher than the maximum that our audio interface provides by default.
We can think of an audio buffer size like a water pipe but for audio data. (I'm using ChatGPT to help here):
If you have a large buffer size, it's like having a large pipe. This means that a significant amount of water can flow through the pipe before it reaches the container. In this case, the computer or audio interface receives a larger chunk of audio data at once, which reduces the frequency of data transfers between them. This can help ensure that the computer has enough time to process the data without interruptions or glitches. However, the downside is that there will be more delay because the water (audio data) takes longer to reach the container.
Conversely, if you have a small buffer size, it's like having a small pipe. With a smaller pipe, the water reaches the container more frequently, but in smaller amounts. Similarly, a small buffer size means that the computer or audio interface receives smaller chunks of audio data more frequently. This can reduce the delay or latency since the audio data is processed and transferred more rapidly. However, it can also increase the risk of audio glitches or dropouts if the computer is unable to handle the real-time processing demands.
So, the problem is that for some reason, FIFA seems to be doing something like ignoring how small our "audio pipe" is to our audio interface, and then overwhelming our PC with much more audio data than it can handle.
Therefore, we need to increase our buffer size higher than the 1024 limit of our Focusrite card (My 3rd Gen Scarlett Solo has a max buffer size of 1024)
To do this, we can use Voicemeeter which is a virtual software audio interface. So instead of our computer audio going from FIFA, straight to our 1024 samples Audio Interface, we are instead going to make it go from FIFA to the Virtual Audio Interface at 1024 samples, then send that to our 1024 samples Audio Interface. I believe this fixes it as it makes the audio 1024 + 1024 = 2048 samples total which stops a "traffic jam" of audio which broke everything for us.
The fix
Set your Focusrite to use the max buffer size, 1024. Right click the focusrite icon in your windows system icons tray. Click "[Interface name] device settings." Then you'll see a buffer size setting, set that to 1024.
Download and install Voicemeeter
When you open it, at the top right you will see an "A1" box with a triangle arrow under it. Click that, and set it to "Focusrite USB ASIO" (or "Focusrite Thunderbolt ASIO" if your interface is plugged into your PC's USB C port). If you get a Bad audio driver warning when you open Voicemeeter, you should be able to ignore it.
Make sure under "Virtual Input" the circle labelled "A" is green. This means that whatever is sent to Voicemeeter will be unmuted to the output called A. We just set A to our Focusrite USB ASIO, so our audio from voicemeeter won't be muted to this output.
In Voicemeeter, click "Menu" at the top right of Voicemeeter, and click on "System settings / Options..."
In the new window the pops up, you'll see a setting called "Buffering ASIO" which allows us to change the buffer size of Voicemeeter before it goes to our audio interface. Click on it, say OK to the warning, and then set it to 1024 samples. I think this would gives us the effective buffer size of 2048 samples.
Now, we need to make all our PC audio go through Voicemeeter. Click the Windows Start button, and click on Settings.
In Windows Settings, click System, then Sound on the left sidebar. Scroll down in the Sound options and click on "App volume and device preferences".
You'll see an "Output" selection on this screen. Change it from "Default" or "Focusrite USB Audio" to Voicemeeter Input (VP-Audio VoiceMeeter VAIO).
Now if you play FIFA, you shouldn't have any audio glitches.
In the future, whenever you launch FIFA, what you'd need to do beforehand is:
Open Voicemeeter
Make sure your Focusrite buffer size is back at 1024 (only relevant if you changed it yourself since the last time you played FIFA.)
Set your Windows audio to output to Voicemeeter Input (VP-Audio VoiceMeeter VAIO).
Then when you're finished playing FIFA, you can close Voicemeeter and set your audio to go back directly through your Focusrite interface again. You could also just keep Voicemeeter as your default audio device at all times, but that would mean you'd need to keep the Voicemeeter software open on your PC all the time in order to hear sound. Also for audio production / games where audio latency matters more, it's better to set it back to just use your Focusrite directly and lower the buffer size. Luckily FIFA doesn't require incredibly low latency audio in order for it to be playable, so this solution fixes it while adding a tiny amount of delay to the audio. It adds a miniscule amount of delay, maybe <20-40ms, it isn't very noticeable on FIFA but would be on rhythm based games etc.
Also, you may think "Can't we set just FIFA to use Voicemeeter, and leave everything else playing directly through Focusrite?" Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work - if you do this, it fixes the FIFA audio, but when the audio glitch thing happens, it breaks all the audio coming out of your Focusrite while leaving FIFA coming out of Voicemeeter working fine. So it looks like we have to set the whole PC to output its audio to Voicemeeter when you play FIFA.
TLDR: So overall, I think this works because when you play FIFA, it overwhelms our audio interface somehow with too much data. Therefore we have to put something in between it (Voicemeeter) to slow down how much audio data is being sent - this fixes our audio at the cost of about 20-40 milliseconds of audio delay.
