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.
I can confirm that these settings worked for me as well.
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
These settings also worked for me, to mitigate lowered volumes when mixing up to 7.1 from 5.1, I told it to configure as 7.1 then unchecked the side speakers so the volume mix is appropriate and you don’t end up “missing sound” because of the lack of these channels. Instead windows will mix in to the rears and fronts for these missing speakers, while still providing the 7.1 “Mix Fix” until Forza 4 is patched/fixed. Good luck! (I’m at 24bit 96Khz)
Spikeypup
Well, I’ve noticed that sounds which come directly from the side are almost not there. A good place to test this is in front of the autoshow at the festival side. Place your car so that the stage is to your left (or right) and look straight ahead. Normaly you should hear the music coming from the side. But I almost hear nothing.
I told Windows to use 7.1 but without the side speakers. Still sounds differently than a regular 5.1 because of the missing side speakers. Not very happy with it.
Perfect! (Well, as perfect as a quirky roundabout fix can be…)
Yup, confirmed - I have an X-Fi Titanium and changing my speaker config in the Creative Audio Control Panel from 2/2.1 to 7.1 resolved the issue, thanks for the tip and work around!
That said, upon entering Winter, once the truck lands on the ice, the music crackles and it’s just awful to listen to (but this is a separate ‘crackling’ issue, almost like there’s too much bass or something, like when you blow a speaker or a sub kinda thing).
I was curious if it was just me, but even the IGN demo from June has this issue: https://youtu.be/dGl00hItvbw
Grrrr … MOST frustrating, getting right into the game/music and then it’s like … ew.
Ensure your settings are for 24-bit 96Khz if you are experiencing slight distortion or crackling, as well as the 7.1 configuration.
This worked for me, Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro (seriously Creative?)
It worked for me, too. But the sound loses a bit of quality, because I use 2.0 boxes. I hope this problem is corrected as soon as possible.
Yuhuuu!!! After long search and trying i found your solution which works for me too! Thank you very much! Sorry Mircrosoft, but soundissues in the year 2019? Seriously?
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
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.thewindowsclub.com/audio-router-windows-pc
3rd party program that accomplishes the same, if you’re on a different build of Windows: GitHub - audiorouterdev/audio-router: Routes audio from programs to different audio devices.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL…
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.
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.
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.