Skies Of Arcadia Problem+ New Release Curiosity

[Bopig!]

Hey,
I realize this emulator is still quite new and I can't expect anything to be perfect, but I'm having some trouble with SOA and I was hoping someone else whose played it may of found some solutions to the sound problem and random crashes.
Specifically, the game has been crashing a lot for me in the city of Yafutoma. Whenever I try to buy some weapons or items at the shops, the music suddenly stops and an annoying humming sound begins. Then, the sound trails off completly, and once I leave the store, the game screen goes black. The emulator doesn't acually crash, the game just goes black and freezes.
I blame this on the sound, as It seems that the emulators sound buffer can't handle too many sounds at once at this point. The sound of the running water all over the city, as well as the sounds of money and items being purchased seems to be too much for it, and at this point I'm not sure what to do.
Anyway, to make a long story short, (or try to anyway ) does anyone know of any sound settings I can mess with with either my OS (Windows XP) or the emulator to stop this from happening? I want to buy some new weapons!
Mainly I'm looking for answers from people who have played SOA as well on this emulator and have been in the same boat, but if anyone else has some ideas feel free to toss them out.

Edit:
Well, I finally solved my own problem with the sound. Hopefully this will help others too who have been in this situation.
I knew that the problem had to do with too many sound effects and such going at once. I'm assuming that my sound card was trying to work overtime to get things all goin, and was likly one of the reasons for the crash. I would like to mention in my sound card's defense, that this IS the first game to ever cause me so much sound trouble so it's certainly not a hardware issue.
Anyway, I'm sure your all familiar with DXDIAG.exe.
For those who arn't though, just type DXDIAG in the RUN menu of your start menu. Once here, I went to my sound tab, and reduced the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level". Generally, this setting is usually maxed. Well, I figure to get the sound card to work less, I'd reduce this and see what happens. Well, after reducing it to "Basic Acceleration", I was buying weapons and items left and right without a crash whatsoever.
Now, this isn't to say that this fix is gonna work for everyone, but it's definitly worth a try. I'd also like to add that I havn't tried any of the other sound acceleration settings; just basic, but I assume that anything below the max should help.

Edit:
I decided to test the other settings, and I've learned that anything above basic acceleration causes the game to crash in this city.

Anyway, that's the solution that worked for me, and hopefully it'll help someone else as well. I'd also like to take this time to thank Manias again for helping me get this great game running on chankast.

[~akujin~]

does that "trick" prevent the game (or others as well) from stuttering sound or is it just a fix for the crash?

[Coolsvilleman]

I think I have an idea why it crashes. Chankast uses the directx sound buffer. Unfourtunately it does not update the uffer properly and so data gets overloaded which causes games with lots of sound like skies to crash. When you set it to basic level you are basically telling you computer that you want your CPU to do most of the sound emulation instead of directx with hardware sound. By doing this the buggy directx buffer problem is avoided and so the game does not crash as often. Downside is that other games that use hardware soun may run much slower cause more cpu resources are being shuntted to what should really be a hardware process. But thanks for the tip, im gonna try it now. I had a heck of a time getting through yamafuto with that bug let me tell you!

[Bopig!]

Heh well, what that "trick" fixed the problem I had at that point, but it didn't help me get past the consecutive boss battle followed by two ship battles. After beating all three, the sound screwed up and the game crashed before I could save.
That really really sucked. So, even with this so so fix, I'm gonna stay away from SOA until a new version of chankast is released.

[Coolsvilleman]

I'm having the same problem. It's near the endo f the game right? Has anyone figured out how to solve this... without being level 99 and defeating everyone in like 1 shot?

[Bopig!]

I'm talkin the end of Yafutoma on the first disc, but there is something similar at the end of the game as well. Where all the new releases at?

[Coolsvilleman]

I hope they release something with at least a no sound plugin system or something so that I can pass the game... grrr... Has anyone found any other ways to disable the sound or hack directsound to make it buffer more/less data at a time.