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I also have crackling/distorted sound in the main menu and in the game. I tried different settings for my Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi.

16bit/48 kHz
24bit/44.1kHz
24bit/48 kHz
SoundBlaster-Extensions active/inactive

Nothing worked for me.

Hardware:
ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
Intel Core i7 6700K
16GB Corsair DDR4 RAM
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD 1TB
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series, PCIe

Software/Drivers:
Windows 10 Pro, 64bit / Version 1803 / Build 17134.285
GeForce Driver Version 399.24
Creative SB-X-Fi Driver Version 2.40.15

Just to throw in my info - unplayable levels of sound distortion/crackle on Creative SB X-Fi
From the looks of this thread, it seems to be an issue for people with Creative.
Tried everything & all suggestions & still not working.

Game runs ultra/extreme beautifully at average of 52fps.
Have noticed the cut-scenes, the animation & audio seem a little out of sync. Whether thats to do with the distortion I wouldn't know.

Hoping this can get fixed asap so i can pre-order

Edited by user Sunday, September 16, 2018 5:10:56 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I tested with the audio outputs of my keyboard (tt challenge ultimate) and the sound came out perfectly, the problem is with xfi, I hope they correct this problem soon, I would like to play with my xfi.

X-Fi Titanium user and I have the exact same problem. Nasty crackling audio!

Please fix this, shamefully I have already pre-ordered and I'm told Microsoft wont refund it! The game may aswell be broken to me if the audio is in this state.

Same circumstances as others with Xfi, I have the fatality version with Windows 10 1803, xfi Driver Version 2.40.15.
Tried each of the quality options mentioned previously, but also went into the sound blaster control panel and disabled all processing (literally pass through mode).
Switching to my realtek on-board audio, it works fine, except for the quality option you mention here.
Anyway, thought i'd mention in better detail what i've tried to resolve it. Hope it gets fixed soon, as i can't play racing games well without audio feedback, but its also too bad to ignore entirely.

It's strange. Never had an audio problem with Horizon 3. Maybe they can look into that & see what the difference is

Same problem. Static in the audio, which seems to vary slightly with game load. Almost feels like a PCI-Express bandwidth hogging issue, but I haven't attempted to diagnose it further. I'm curious if limiting the graphics to 30FPS would alleviate the issue, but not curious enough to sit through another ten minute demo intro...

I also have a Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCI-E sound card, selecting a few different output modes did nothing to change the situation. Creative driver 6.0.240.15
Windows 10 Pro build 1709
ASRock Z77 Formula OC
i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz
32GB 2133MHz DDR3
Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 1080 @ Stock Clocks, 90% Power Limit and on driver 399.24
RAID 0 SATA SSDs, blah blah blah.

Mostly wanted to post here to let others know that it's not just them. I do not own any previous Forza products on PC and haven't encountered a similar audio corruption problem with any other recent PC games that I can recall.

Just as a follow up, I did reload the game and attempted a variety of fixes, none of which worked.
· Disabled Audio Enhancements
· Tried different bit rates, from 16/44.1kHz through 32/96kHz.
· Tried 2/2.1 speaker output, as well as 4/4.1 speaker output, and back to the typical 5.1 speaker output.
· Limited game to 20FPS, 30FPS and set to Very Low detail to eliminate GPU stressor & PCI-E traffic.
· Limited process to Very Low priority.
· Limited process to 1, 2 and 4 logical cores (vs 8).
· Tried windowed mode vs full screen mode.
· Disabled GPU resolution scaling.
· Disabled CPU processor state downclocking (minimum proc state 100% in adv power management)

It has to be something within the game's audio engine or the DirectAudio layer, whether the issue is with the game or with the way the X-Fi's drivers process the resulting audio I'm not sure. Any and all sound being played in parallel to FH4's staticky audio is played back with no issues whatsoever. I can run Winamp, MPC, watch Youtube videos or run a second game and the only audio being distorted is that of the Forza Horizon 4 demo. In thinking back, I want to say that the benchmark for Final Fantasy XV also had similar corrupted audio output, but I only briefly played around with that and never followed up or played the full game. Some light Googling left me relatively empty handed, aside from the prospect of trying one or two other driver sets, and since FH4 is the only problem I'm loathe to consider that.

Dunno. Hope someone at Turn 10 has an X-Fi...it's definitely a problem. If they want I'll mail them mine.

*UPDATE*

- STATIC FIXED -


After some more fiddling, I found a setting which seems to have worked to fix my audio static issue.




---> SELECT 24BIT/96KHZ AND 7.1 OUTPUT IN THE WINDOWS SPEAKER CONFIGURATION <---
(32Bit/96kHz in 7.1 configuration also worked for me)


As to why this fixes the issue, I'm not sure. My guess is that the game is attempting to output audio to the "highest" available mix setting, which in the case of my system is a 7.1 configuration. As I am only using a 5.1 configuration, it might be attempting to downmix 7.1 to 5.1 and failing at it miserably. It may also be attempting to output audio designed for an Xbox One, and outputting at 24/96 and leaving any mix downsampling to vendor drivers, such as Creative's wonderful X-Fi software.


Let me know if this fix works for anyone else.

---> One important detail. You must change the output format FIRST, and then set the speaker configuration SECOND. When you change the bitrate/frequency, the speaker configuration will automatically change back to 5.1 and you'll have to reselect 7.1. At least it did on mine. Once set, it will stay.

I don't know if this has any detrimental effect during gameplay, eg sounds not playing positionally due to lack of physical side speakers.

Screenshot showing settings: https://imgur.com/a/6pmEaTE

I can confirm this works for me too. Thanks a lot for sharing!!

In Forza Horizon 3 (PC) i always had to change speaker settings to 7.1 (although i have a 5.1) to get surround sound, on the 5.1 setting there was just stereo sound. Seems like the audio is a bit different to other games.

Thank you very much for the information, it worked perfectly, at least now I can play with my xfi until they launch a correction.

Haven't tried this yet but it looks very promising so thank you Slash333333 for helping out! Really appreciate it.
Hopefully they'll make a fix for all the people with Creative that either haven't tried the demo or don't know about the forums.
Hopefully this info helps the devs out.

{UPDATE} It works. Awesome job Slash333333

Edited by user Tuesday, September 18, 2018 9:07:43 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

changing to 7.1 and 24-bit/96hkz didnt fix it for me. im not sure what else to do. my crappy onboard works perfectly but sounds horrible. hopefully they fix this soon

I looked at your original post - are you still getting no audio at all when running FH4? It seems like some others and myself were having a different issue. We'd get audio, but it'd sound incredibly distorted. Do you have multiple audio devices active at the same time (eg, onboard as well as X-Fi both enabled)? It's possible that FH4 is routing to the wrong audio device. You might be able to double check this by disabling the onboard audio via the BIOS or check your system's Manage Audio Devices panel to ensure that the X-Fi is set to be the default output device, along with being set to 24/96 and 7.1.

One other trick you could look into is the selective audio output app built into Windows 10's 1803 build version. It lets you specify the output device and volume on a per-application basis. So you could both verify that it's outputting to the X-Fi and if it still gives you problems, simply tell Forza Horizon 4 to always use the onboard audio. You could just have a set of headphones plugged into it dedicated to the game. The good news is that you do have that onboard audio to fall back onto, even if it doesn't sound the greatest, as you mention. Better than racing in silence. :)

Info on the Windows 10 audio routing panel: https://www.thewindowscl.../audio-router-windows-pc

3rd party program that accomplishes the same, if you're on a different build of Windows: https://github.com/audiorouterdev/audio-router

Did not work for me either.... They need to fix it ASAP

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this but I am also having this static issue on Xbox One X. After awhile of playing the audio from vehicles becomes incredibly distorted and crackly. If my memory recalls correctly this was an issue in a previous Forza game.

Edited by user Thursday, September 20, 2018 11:30:35 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL...

I can confirm that these settings worked for me as well.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium

If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid. :)

I think it's a better temporary fix for them than switching speaker jacks around every time they go to play FH4.

The fix to put on 7.1 worked, but the audio from the engine gets low, I hope they will fix the problem in the final version.

Have an Xfi and can also confirm the settings provided fixed the static.

Didn't work for me and the new demo patch still has no fix for it, REALLY hope full game won't have this issue.

same problem, crackles and distortion.
48/16 works for me.

onboard sound card on a gigabtyte 990fx mobo.

Edited by user Sunday, September 23, 2018 11:10:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Nothing I've seen fixes it. My head set (Razer Kraken) doesn't have the option for 24 bit sound, so I can't try that with it (and using earbuds and 24 bit doesn't help.

I want to buy the game, but if the sound doesn't work, I don't want to waste my money.

I use Realtek audio when not using the Razer.

Same problem here... crackling / stutter every few seconds in the forza horizon 4 demo... changing the speaker setup and audio bitrate didn't work for me. Changing graphic options from ultra to high, medium or low doesn't change the sound problem either (and the game runs fine at 60 fps on every setting). Driver seem to be all updated. Really annoying...

CPU: Intel i7-3770K
RAM: 16 GB
Resolution: 1920x1080
Graphic: Geforce GTX980
Sound: Sennheiser 3D G4ME1

EDIT: It is working now after a restart... setting is 24 bit, 96000 Hz (Studio Quality) and 7:1 setup. So if you tried the solutions above yourself don't forget to restart your computer after it.

Edited by user Thursday, September 27, 2018 12:01:37 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified