I’m just getting back into the sim after a year away. Last I played was on SU4.

I’m running into massive stutters with audio drop outs and static that I’ve never experienced before. It starts when just loading into the world from the main menu where it makes me cringe. Then periodically during a flight it happens again and again - probably when any scenery loads. I have a 4090 and 9800X3D with 64 GB and never experienced this before now (Sim update 5). In the past, FPS would take a hit and you may get a visual stutter when landing at an add-on airport but I never experienced audio issues.

What’s going on? Is this new to SU5 or just my imagination? Does SU6 beta help?

Am I the only one with this issue? I wonder what I'm doing different.

Edited July 28Jul 28 by Virtual-Chris

10 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Am I the only one with this issue? I wonder what I'm doing different.

I had a similar problem when I put too many NVME drives in my system that it dropped my PCI lanes to only 8x instead of 16x. I took out one of my NVME's out of my motherboard and it returned to normal.

13 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I’m just getting back into the sim after a year away. Last I played was on SU4.

I’m running into massive stutters with audio drop outs and static that I’ve never experienced before. It starts when just loading into the world from the main menu where it makes me cringe. Then periodically during a flight it happens again and again - probably when any scenery loads. I have a 4090 and 9800X3D with 64 GB and never experienced this before now (Sim update 5). In the past, FPS would take a hit and you may get a visual stutter when landing at an add-on airport but I never experienced audio issues.

What’s going on? Is this new to SU5 or just my imagination? Does SU6 beta help?

If you use the nvidia app, go into graphics tab>global settings for fs2024, scroll down to 'shader cache' click on where is says default.

In the top right corner, click on the three vertical dots, click clear cache and then compile cache, these steps should only take a few seconds. Close nvidia app.

Then go to windows search bar and type in 'disk cleanup', in the disk cleanup interface box, select your drive where FS2024 is installed, click ok.

A list of items is presented. Tick the box that says DirectX shader cache and untick everything else and click ok.

Lastly, delete the rolling cache .CCC file from your sim. If you have the Steam version, it's in C:\Users\%yourname%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. not sure about microsoft version location.

Reboot computer and see where that takes the sims performance.

I perform this routine after every sim upgrade or graphics driver upgrade.

Hope it helps

Stu

Also make sure you do not install the HDMI Audio Driver from nVIDIA when installing the driver. Then, also make sure that you have your primary sound playback device selected within the MSFS menu, not using the "default device" option.

Nahamic and Realtek processes spring to mind when I was trying to fix a similar problem.

2 hours ago, AnkH said:

Also make sure you do not install the HDMI Audio Driver from nVIDIA when installing the driver. Then, also make sure that you have your primary sound playback device selected within the MSFS menu, not using the "default device" option.

Here comes all the witchcraft about shaders etc....

The nvidia driver is perfectly fine. And if you use a sound bar, you have no choice but to use that driver anyway.

Edit, for context, I had this issue last year, didn't use the sim for many months, re-used it after it had updated and the issue went away. I didn't change anything on my high-end system other than a new Nvidia driver, and updated MSFS2024. So, the culprit has to be one of those two. I suspect it is just MSFS24, as I did previously have the issue with it. Among many other issues with it, but that's a new rabbit hole.

Also, if you do a quick google search, sound popping msfs2024, you will see it is a long standing issue that affects many users and has many possible resolutions.

Edited July 29Jul 29 by Ianrivaldosmith

50 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Here comes all the witchcraft about shaders etc....

I seriously wonder how you can jump to above conclusion by citing my text about the nVIDIA HDMI Audio driver component? And why you tear the single sentence out of context? In MY case, when NOT installing the nVIDIA HDMI Audio Driver, the audio menue of Windows itself shows just the one sound card I have as primary (and only) playback device and as such, I have no sound issues in any game I play, not only MSFS. There are plenty of posts about a potential correlation with not selecting the proper playback device within MSFS resulting in sound stutters/cracking. Whether or not they apply here is to be tested, no? I never implicated with a single word that what I wrote is 100% sure the solution. You even conclude your statemen yourself with "has many possible resolutions", so why you now accuse me absolutely unneccessarily of claiming my idea to be THE one solution? Geez...

6 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Here comes all the witchcraft about shaders etc....

The nvidia driver is perfectly fine. And if you use a sound bar, you have no choice but to use that driver anyway.

Edit, for context, I had this issue last year, didn't use the sim for many months, re-used it after it had updated and the issue went away. I didn't change anything on my high-end system other than a new Nvidia driver, and updated MSFS2024. So, the culprit has to be one of those two. I suspect it is just MSFS24, as I did previously have the issue with it. Among many other issues with it, but that's a new rabbit hole.

Also, if you do a quick google search, sound popping msfs2024, you will see it is a long standing issue that affects many users and has many possible resolutions.

It does seem to be a wide-spread issue with all kinds of potential fixes.

In my case… The first few days I flew last week I don’t recall any stuttering issues. But then I loaded up a couple airport and city scenery packs. It seems to me that in the past, loading a third party addon scenery would cause a visual stutter and a temporary drop in FPS. I could easily ignore that. But now loading scenery seems to also cause an audio pop or crackle which is impossible to ignore.

If it’s just the main thread taking a hit on scenery load, I’m not sure what I can do about that short of not using any add-on scenery.

From searching and consulting Google Gemini it sounds like Asobo made things worse for stuttering in SU5. I was hoping others might have noticed the same issue when updating to SU5. And I was also hoping to hear that SU6 beta improves things, but no comments on either so far.

This used to happen to me when I ran the sim with FPS unlocked and had virtualization on the BIOS for the CPU. I have since turned off all virtualization and set a frame lock. The frame lock is the biggest culprit, the sim under heavy loads skips a frame and it causes the stutter and audio pop.