FFXVI demo - sound problems

[porina]

Just downloaded and trying to play it. Emphasis on trying.

 

Speech seems broken for me. As default it is so quiet I thought there wasn't any, except I recall them showing off the voice actors. After turning the music and sfx right down, I could barely hear something. The voice even at max was still very quiet, and might sound a bit hollow and echo-like. If anything, it kinda reminds me a bit of "karaoke mode" where processing removes the voice.

 

If I assume the game does work, then that leaves the TV and PS5 sound settings. I tried turning off Dolby Atmos on the TV, no difference. I tried the 3D audio setup thing on the PS5, and set it to stereo. Again, no help. I haven't tried headphones yet as I didn't have any near at the time. Oh, the sound problems were only in cutscenes and scripted parts. The random NPC speech when exploring sounded ok.

 

Apart from that, it does look nice I suppose, but it is more cutscene than gameplay. I've never been one for action combat so it is unlikely going to be my thing. 

 

When panning the camera fast, there is a weird effect going on. Posts on Twitter (yes, it still exists) were calling it motion blur, but it didn't look like that to me. More like a broken form of TAA. Let's see what DF say about it.

 

Edit: forgot to say, TV is LG B9.

[WereCat]

Not sure about PS5 but yes, the game is mainly story driven RPG. 

The story is absolutely awesome but it takes a lot of commitment to get trough it and also it takes a while for it to pick up pace as most of it is just an exposition after exposition at the beginning

[porina]

10 minutes ago, WereCat said:

The story is absolutely awesome but it takes a lot of commitment to get trough it and also it takes a while for it to pick up pace as most of it is just an exposition after exposition at the beginning

I'm used to the FF formula. Significantly played 7 (original), 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. I think it died for me with 15 as I didn't get into action combat at all, and 7R/16 is maintaining that direction. While not a single player game, 14 is probably one of my top 3 most hours spend in game.

 

Anyway, with XVI I thought I should at least check out the demo myself before I totally write it off, but the sound not working for me isn't even making that easy. My suspicion is some surround processing between PS5 and TV might be the cause, but I have other games as higher priority before digging further.

[porina]

After more trial and error, it seems like the setting that resolved the voice over level for me was making sure 3D sound was turned on in PS5 settings. I don't recall turning it off previously, and have not had any problems with any other games. I can now reset the in game levels to default and it works fine.

 

I had suggestions of other things to try from elsewhere, as well as brute force trying any setting sound related I could find, but none of them had a major impact. This included turning Atmos on/off on TV, and changing the output format from PS5 between Linear PCM and Dolby. 

 

Also I had a further look at what others are calling "motion blur". I'm now more sure it is some form of bad TAA. I almost wish I could vidcap it to have a closer look at the frames. The quality on areas drop like a rock when you have fast moving disocclusion. Simply there's a lack of data there for it to reconstruct a quality output. The most common example that I'm aware of this effect is FSR2, but I don't know if it is in use in this case.