Whenever Merriam audio plays the sound distorts and shudders and the game slows down regardless of setting. My PC is old but it meet the base resentments. At first I thought it was dude to being installed on an external USB3.0 HHD but then moved it onto an SSD to have the same issues.

So let me preface this first by saying that what I'm about to describe is probably unrelated to your issue based on your description. Unreal Engine games since at least UE3, have had a weird sort of memory leak that doesn't always pop up. I really don't know what causes it. It affects games I've played by both indies and big publishers. Many games avoid it entirely; nobody I've ever been able to talk to has been able to lick it. Doesn't seem to affect all computers either, so I'm guessing there's a broad hardware/OS combo that's facilitating the problem. The upshot, and why I'm even mentioning all this, is that it causes sort of what you're describing. As the memory leak gets worse, the game starts to stutter, slow down, the audio gets chunky, and after a while it gets to a point where you need to close the game and restart it(or failing that, it'll crash on its own eventually). I have never found a workaround or blanket setting that can stop it in affected games. Again, I don't know if that's what's happening to you, I'm just about to install the game myself. I never ran into it playing the E3 demos though.

Thanks for the feedback but considering it's only related to when particular audio plays (in most cased related to Merriams voice) I doubt its a memory leak. The game seems to otherwise run fine.

I found a temporary solution and that was simply turning off the voices by turning down the audio volume to zero. Also tried switching the voices to Japanese but I still had the same issue. Oddly it's only Merriam's audio.

Update: it seems by installing the Galaxy version of the game fixed all the issues. I assume the classic download doesn't include the day one patch.

I updated to the latest version (1.04) and the issue is still there (with Miriam's voice)

I do have the same problem, but only if my laptop runs on battery.

Unfortunately reinstalling the game was only a temporarily fix for the issue.

I just read that for some reason the Saves from the Beta version have been know to cause the audio issue with some users according to gamehelp24-7 I'm also trying tweak a few settings in NViDIA Control Panel. Turning off Vsync in game for example and overriding it with NVIDIA. As per the suggestions on the steam forums

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692850/discussions/0/1638662230384386149/

Hopefully there is a patch to stabilize this

Well, doesn't work... My low spec PC could be the problem, but it's really only when Miriam's voice files are accessed/played that the game slows down and the audio gets distorted. Sent an "official bug report", waiting for a reply-

̶h̶o̶p̶f̶u̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶f̶i̶x̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶x̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶.̶

EDIT: NEVER MIND. the problem came back form some unknown reason.

I have this same problem. It pops up most often when Miriam is talking in a conversation scene with text boxes, but also often when absorbing a shard for the first time, or attacking. No amount of tweaking the settings appears to remedy it.

I'm having the same issue. My PC meets the recommended requirments. I've tinkered with settings to no avail. Did you get ahything to work?

Since for me it works on adapter but not on battery, it could be power management related.

unfortunatly the latest patch 1.09 still hasn't fixed the sound issues.