Home Page Forums MAME Non-Windows MAME Support Cracking sound since Aaron's sound changes

I have observed that the sound quality has deteriorated a wee bit since Aaron moved sample rate changes to core. I have rate set up to 48000 and latency to 3 - default. My sound chip is Intel HDA compliant. Is it supposed to work that way? I know I could increase latency a wee bit, but this introduces more lag. Such a choice was not necessary with earlier versions. Anyway, what latency do you people use? Cheers.

Don't sync to vblank - the major impact of Aaron's changes is that if the game's frame rate is not less than or equal to your monitor's it'll cause sound breakups if you sync.

Thanks, I'll try. I have a laptop LCD here btw, which is running at 60 Hz, I presume.

ETA: I have waitvsync disabled. The games that crack are mk2, boogwing, mvsc, among others.

ETA2: I remember problems with sound cracking in pSX. Maybe it's just ALSA that sucks? Anyway, I wonder why there was no cracking before these changes, which I understand were necessary to improve accuracy.

I do agree that ALSA sucks, but I don't get crackling in any games (otoh, I'm using an emu10k2 card).

Well, emu10k2 is definitely something better than hda-intel. Could you try SDLMAME on a laptop by any chance? (Unless you have a mobile SB Audigy)

As far as MK2 goes, I think most Midway DCS sound (at least as I remember from the pinball side).. if you set your volume to say, above 28 or so in the game's NVRAM - you'll most likely encounter crackling sound while playing.

Also, trying 44100 as a base rate in your MAME.INI might improve matters too. I always thought the default 48000 was overkill

Tafoid

EDIT: I just tried with MK2 - and cranked my NVRAM volume setting to max - restarted... I got all sorts of crackle. You might try lowering the volume down some.

48000 is actually optimal for SB Live, Audigy, and newer 24-bit on-board audio (like, ya know, Intel HDA). It avoids the hardware doing a resample, so you get the purest MAME output possible.

Well, the problem seems to be a wee weird, as the -wavwrite option outputs perfect audio, no matter the latency. On the other hand, cracking can be heard even if is increased to 30. It is especially “visible” (hearable?) on the CPS QSound logo. Anyway, this has to be somehow connected with aforementioned changes, as I'm sure the problem was not present before.

edit: Well, I just compared 0.112u2, 0.112u3 and 0.115, and I must admit I was wrong - all three crackle a bit. The problem must lie elsewhere then. I remember having some SDL->alsa issues some time ago, maybe that is it? Unfortunately exporting SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dsp does not help at all...

edit2: That may be it. mplayer -ao alsa foo.mp3 sounds definitely better than mplayer -ao sdl foo.mp3.

i'm not disagreeing, but you guys didn't mention that alsa is better than arts, oss, & esd. afaik, (i could be wrong) alsa is the best sound system for linux, which is why (i assume) it is the sound system integrated into the linux kernel in v2.6...

btw, thanks for that tip rb. i didn't know vsync affected that since the changes.

ALSA should be the best, and it is on paper. In practice I think the designers should be boiled in oil for managing to make DirectSound 3D look like a sane API. (Even that would be OK if the project itself had issued any usable documentation for programmers, but they can't even manage that).