Snes9x EX 1.3.26 armv7 speed up sound

dislaire · Post by **dislaire** » Tue May 24, 2011 7:51 pm

TheRe's a bug on the latest version of snes9x ex for iPhone.Every ROM i run on it has speed up sound, ntsc rom, pal rom.I thought at first that it was because of PAL game which is speeded up to match 60 fps, but no sonce I was running a NTSC rom (but it look very similar).So I tried secret of mana in both pal and NTSC version, and Seiken Densetsu 3 , Japanese rom.They all have speed up sound.

I don't know, but I think it may be because I'm running snes9x ex on iPhone 4, the CPU is faster so the games runs fater maybe.But still, it's a big issue

Oh and yeah, there's a delay with classic controller when you push on a button, some people already noticed that. It can be mostly fixed by setting frameskip on 1, but it's sad to force frameskip in games which runs smoothly without (secret of mana runs perfectly without the need of frameskip when it's on AUTO). every games become unplayable when frameskip is set on 0

But the sound issue is way worse, since the emulator is almost flawless.So sad that there is this issue

Thx for your good

EDIT: Same thing with Super Mario Kart NTSC

Rakashazi · Post by **Rakashazi** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:58 pm

That's odd, are the games running significantly faster than on my preview video that ran on an iPhone 4? The audio has to run at a specific speed to match the iPhone's refresh rate so if it's really running too fast/slow you should hear skips. Also, I test the app on my iPhone 4 before releasing and am not experiencing the issues you describe.

dislaire · Post by **dislaire** » Fri May 27, 2011 11:05 am

I did a few more testing, and i was wrong, it's not really speeded up, the sound is really more high pitched, I don't know how to say that, it very similar to speeded up sound but it's not (I think) , In French I would have said that the sound is way more "Aigu" (sharp.acute.pointed.shrill google traduction)

On square logo in secret of mana, because the original sound is very heavy and the emulator makes it "high pitched", it's absolutely horrible.Give a try, launch secret of mana, listen to any music (save screen, anything) and then watch someone's video of secret of mana on YouTube, you will clearly see the difference.You can compare it to Secret of Mana app in appstore too.Same thing on some Mario kart level with heavy music, it sounds absolutely horrible.

PS: it does this in every sound, it's just way more noticeable in heavy sounds.But it's still very noticeable in every sound you can hear

EDIT: the delay issue seems to affect all controllers (the classic controller, wii remote and iCp controller)

And I still think it's a bit speeded up but i'm not sure

This guy had the same issue than me http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php ... on-iphone/ but he said he solved his first issue (game speeded up) by using NTSC rom, which is weird since I only use NTSC roms (Seiken densetsu 3 does not exist in PAL version) I think he fixed the speeded up gameplay issue by using NTSC rom, but I'm sure the sound of his rom is still too high pitched since we don't really notice this issue if we don't know or don't remember how the original sound is like .He found the same workaround than me for the controller delay issue (frameskip set on 1)

dislaire · Post by **dislaire** » Fri May 27, 2011 12:06 pm

I'm sorry to do a double post, but I watched your video, and the sound is really high pitched too.Compare the sound of your video to original snes game, you'll see the difference (specially on the nintendo logo on Mario kart, listen to the sound of the coin in nintendo logo and then watch a video of Mario kart on YouTube of the nintendo logo with the coin you will clearly see the difference)

You don't really notice this when you don't pay attention to music in games , and it's hard to notice it on Mario kart but I'm a fan of Secret of Mana Soundtrack and I noticed it really quickly, games with elaborated music like zelda, secret of mana , seiken densetsu, chrono trigger...seem a lot more affected but every game is affected

EDIT:Heres a video comparing original sound and snes9x EX sound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x32RcYxGjw

SparroHawc · Post by **SparroHawc** » Fri May 27, 2011 11:05 pm

He's right - I just pulled up Chrono Trigger on my phone and on my PC, and the phone is playing audio back at about a bit less than one semitone higher than the PC.

It might be a holdover issue from SNES9x 1.43 though, which does have a slight difference in audio - probably due to the different audio core.

Rakashazi · Post by **Rakashazi** » Sat May 28, 2011 4:18 am

Hmm, I'll check the APU code, think I saw a way to adjust the pitch of samples in there. It's probably something related to the 1.43 audio core which was replaced with the more accurate snes_spc in 1.5.

the_randomizer · Post by **the_randomizer** » Sat May 28, 2011 2:16 pm

Can't they use the 1.52 audio core?

Rakashazi · Post by **Rakashazi** » Mon May 30, 2011 2:10 am

The main reason this port doesn't use 1.5 is its audio & video rendering code is over twice as slow which would cause major performance issues on all ARM devices. I plan to try and get the all the front-end code compiling with both 1.43 and the 1.5x series in the future so you'll be able to run the latest code on newer devices.

dislaire · Post by **dislaire** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 11:25 am

So, there's no workaround to fix that?Older phones Will always have this issue?And when i mean older, i meant iPhone 4 too?(since the new iPhone is almost there lol)

SparroHawc · Post by **SparroHawc** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:15 pm

You'll have to just put up with it until Rakashazi publishes the app update. However, once that gets pushed it should be fixed for all phones that can run it, not just new ones.

Rakashazi · Post by **Rakashazi** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 12:06 am

Just wanted to report that the semitone problem should now be fixed in 1.4.2. I also enabled sound interpolation after doing some more optimizations to offset the performance decrease, so the sound emulation should be as good as it will get given the 1.43 codebase

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 1:16 am

Rakashazi wrote:Just wanted to report that the semitone problem should now be fixed in 1.4.2. I also enabled sound interpolation after doing some more optimizations to offset the performance decrease, so the sound emulation should be as good as it will get given the 1.43 codebase

since we're still on a thread about sound...

Rakashazi, is it possible to integrate Blargg's sound core into the 1.43 source? if so that would be awesome

(although one has to wonder how would it fare on a majority of droids and iOS devices made in the last two years... of course my Evo 3D could handle it.)