Sound settings & assorted problems.

[Kildread2]

Hello, I used to run ePSXe fine on my previous machine working Win98, but have long since move to new hardware, a new OS (WinXP, to be precise) and the format I did made me forget to back up all my settings and other things I couldn't remember off-hand.

Here's the comp's stats just for the record:

AMD Athlon XP 1.8 GHz
Integrated C-Media sound board/card/however you wanna call it
ATI Radeon 9200, 128RAM
256 Ram DDR333

Well, I got ePSXe again (V1.0.6.1), as well as the following plugins:

GPU: PEOPS Soft Driver V1.16
SPU: PEOPS DSound Audio Driver V1.8
Eternal SPU Plugin V1.41
CDR: Mooby2 V2.8

The problem is that the emulator produces VERY bad sound quality for every game I've tried, I've tried booting up The World Is Not Enough, sound issues, Alundra, sound issues, etc

I've tried various configs, switches and (as noted) also tried Eternal's plugin instead of PEOPS', no difference. Even the integrated ePSXe sound doesn't do a difference. I don't *think* graphics are the issue here, I can turn everything up to top notch and it runs at ungodly speed if I don't put FPS limit on...

Here's the various settings (as well as differences I've tried, a note, I'm using ePSXeCutor for input):

GPU:

Window Mode, 800X600 in 32-bit
No Dithering (Alsotried with full, though graphics issues are probably not the point here...)
Use FPS Limit, Autodetect limit
Scanlines Disabled, rest is not enabled

SPU:

PEOPS

Mode: Use SPUaSync (Also tried Highest Compatibility)
Volume: Loud
Reverb: PSX Reverb
Interpolation: Gaussian
Enable XA, change XA speed (Also tried turning 'Change XA speed off)
SPU IRQ - Wait for CPU Action (Tried both on or off)
Mono (Tried both on or off, but that was a desperate try as it shouldn't influence anything)


ETERNAL

DirectSound, Buffer Size: 64 (tried 128)
SPUaSync, Smooth (Also tried Timer and Thread)
Haven't turned on any special game fixes.

CDR:

Tried both with Subchannel Data enabled or disabled, as well as all the CDDA options with a Volume size ranging from 0.5 to 1

Also tried running the image either compressed or uncompressed.

GENERAL:

Tried both 2 BIOS files (Am I allowed to name them?)
ENABLE Sound, CDDA, MDEC XA
DISABLED SPU Hack (Tried with it on, no difference)
All subchannel options off, also tried with the first two on.

I'm out of options at this point as far as getting the sound output right.

Further testing has provided me with the following:

Using the Developer Debug Mode, I see the XA section's frequency sticks at 37800, while the bufferred section always hobbles above that.

Yet if I uncheck the XA section and let the buffer empty up, re-checking it removes for the most part the annoying static and garble I keep getting otherwise, sound quality isn't quite what I'd hear on my PS2, but it's getting there....

I don't know if the 37800 Frequency is meaningful at all though, or if there,s a way to fix it so it goes where it shoudl go (Which is 44100, I think).

[bazerr]

right im not sure if this will help but configure it like this and try alundra again

Plugin: Pete's Soft Driver 1.1.54
Author: Pete Bernert

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Fullscreen - [32 Bit]

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 70

Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: off [00000000]



Null2s audio driver 1.4

Atributes - 48000Hz, 16Bit
Buffer length - 50
Block - 5

and in misc tick all boxes except the mute XA/VAG Stream

i had issues with alundra and these are the settings i found that run it perfectly

[bazerr]

PS - use the bios SCPH1001

[Kildread2]

I just tried that, and it worked for a bit, but I'd get really wierd reverb glitches or something along the music in the intro.

But for some reason, I solved the problem. Using Pete's DSound's plugin, I activated the developer window, in that window there's a bunch of settings and I noticed the frequency didn't seem to keep up, I unchecked XA there in that window, that killed XA until the buffer emptied, then I checked it again.... better performance.

Except that once i rebooted the emulator, performance was even better, switching to Eternal's SPU, and putting it to SPUaSync (Wait) killed all the static and strange sound glitches I had in every game, now it works fine everywhere, when that setting made no difference before.

I have no idea why everything works now when I just deactivated XA on the fly then reactivated it, but it does....

[n_w95482]

If you have the sound plugin's audio out method set to SPUasync with the async mode set to Wait, turn off the framelimiter in the GPU settings as setting it to Wait limits the FPS itself.