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Jabberwok
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Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 532
Location: Quebec, Canada
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 Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 2:56 am Post subject: "FM" speed tech question... |
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Im comparing a real PCE with ME ( I know I know  ) and there is some obvious 'holes' in the sound. Here is an example : With Military madness the openning song sound different that on a PCE. There is some 'holes' in the 'drum beats' when compared on a PCE... Ive been told that this doesnt happen on the old DOS ME. I also remember This problem once happened to me in MEKA and to fix it I just had to boost FM speed from 2 to 6. I also remember the same thing happened to GENS and Stef fixed it (about 4-5 revisions ago) I just don't remember how. The point of all this is, can this be fixed?
But then again, does this happen to anyone else 
Last edited by Jabberwok on Fri May 10, 2002 12:01 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Kaminari
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 1432
Location: Paris, France
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| Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 1:51 pm Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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Truth said, the sound emulation in Magic Engine is not as good as in YAME.
The FM, PCM and white noise generator usually produce too much hissings compared to a real PC Engine. The Noise Reduction doesn't help since it 'reduces' way too excessively. But the main issue is by far the imperfect streaming PCM, which makes many RPG/ADV games unplayable at some point.
So, my guess is that there's still plenty of room for improvement 
| Jabberwok wrote: | | The point of all this is, can this be fixed? |
Nothing can't be fixed. It's the raison d'etre of any emulator to be ultimately fixed |
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dmichel
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Joined: 04 Apr 2002
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| Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 9:41 pm Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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| Kaminari wrote: | | Truth said, the sound emulation in Magic Engine is not as good as in YAME. |
There aren't much room for improvement though, I emulate the real thing as closely as possible. There are may be 1-2 things that could be enhanced, but that wouldn't make big changes.
Actually what makes more problems I think is DirectX, it's really not easy to have good continuous streaming sound, I have very little control over the hardware. 
| Quote: | | But the main issue is by far the imperfect streaming PCM, which makes many RPG/ADV games unplayable at some point. |
Is it that bad??
Games like Gulliver Boy sound ok on my PC, even when there's very long streaming PCM.
Jabberwok, about missing drum beats, this may be because you enabled the 'vsync' option. When this option is enabled sound synchronization is not as good and you can miss a few things.
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David Michel |
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Jabberwok
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Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 532
Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 11:57 pm Post subject: Just checked... |
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Just checked, Vsync is off unfortunately . So it could be DirectX thats the cause? I allways thaught of DirectX of being the only thing 'good' Microsoft ever did .
On a lighter note, you can allways email Gens author about this as he had the exact problem once and fixed it.... who knows, maybe youll get lucky? Worth a shot in my opinion.
Thank you David for your "Service apres ventes" . |
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Kaminari
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 1432
Location: Paris, France
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 12:20 am Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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| dmichel wrote: | | Actually what makes more problems I think is DirectX, it's really not easy to have good continuous streaming sound, I have very little control over the hardware. |
Well, that's no good news...
At least, would it be possible for you to implement a kind of lighter Sound Filtering? The current feature dithers the sound output too heavily. The trebles become barely noticeable. That's fine by me if people enjoy it, but I would really like to be able to select an intermediate filtering between the current one and no filtering at all. There could be two kinds of filtering: a light one and a heavy one (the current mode).
Notwithstanding the PCM issue, that could give a very good rendering to the overall sound output.
| dmichel wrote: | Is it that bad??
Games like Gulliver Boy sound ok on my PC, even when there's very long streaming PCM. |
Not willing to bash your efforts, David, but...
In my own experience, I honestly can't say that the PCM sounds good. The latest beta has shown some improvements (Gulliver Boy, yes, though the sound of the cut scenes is still jerky at times), but the PCM usually remains quite choppy, and deadlocks still happen from time to time during a streaming audio access (Gulliver Boy, Kabuki Den). For example, just look at Sherlock Holmes and you'll really see how terrible is the PCM. That doesn't make that game playable at all.
I mean... heck, I have a P3/620, a GeForce 2 Ti, an SB Live, a 40x drive... |
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dmichel
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 2:30 am Post subject: Re: Just checked... |
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| Jabberwok wrote: | | Just checked, Vsync is off unfortunately . So it could be DirectX thats the cause? I allways thaught of DirectX of being the only thing 'good' Microsoft ever did . |
But note that I use DirectX 3 in MagicEngine. ^^;
| Quote: | On a lighter note, you can allways email Gens author about this as he had the exact problem once and fixed it.... who knows, maybe youll get lucky? Worth a shot in my opinion.
Thank you David for your "Service apres ventes" . |
I know what is the problem, it's just a synchronization problem; MagicEngine can skip some sound frames to keep everything in sync. The problem is how to keep everything synchronized without making any problem. ^^;
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David Michel |
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dmichel
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 3:00 am Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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| Kaminari wrote: |
At least, would it be possible for you to implement a kind of lighter Sound Filtering? The current feature dithers the sound output too heavily. The trebles become barely noticeable. That's fine by me if people enjoy it, but I would really like to be able to select an intermediate filtering between the current one and no filtering at all. There could be two kinds of filtering: a light one and a heavy one (the current mode). |
Yes, I could implement a true filter i think, actually I'm just doing a raw interpolation.
| Quote: |
Not willing to bash your efforts, David, but...
In my own experience, I honestly can't say that the PCM sounds good. The latest beta has shown some improvements (Gulliver Boy, yes, though the sound of the cut scenes is still jerky at times), but the PCM usually remains quite choppy, and deadlocks still happen from time to time during a streaming audio access (Gulliver Boy, Kabuki Den). For example, just look at Sherlock Holmes and you'll really see how terrible is the PCM. That doesn't make that game playable at all. |
I just played to Sherlock Holmes.
I got the choppy sound like you describe it, and yes it makes the game less enjoyable, but it's not really because of the PCM emulation, this happen just because the emulator is slowing down at this moment.
When this happened I switched to low res (1x1 zoom) and sound was much better, almost not choppy at all.
| Quote: | | I mean... heck, I have a P3/620, a GeForce 2 Ti, an SB Live, a 40x drive... |
Better than my PC.
I know... the Windows version of MagicEngine is quite slow.
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David Shadoff
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Joined: 10 May 2002
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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 3:33 am Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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A couple of notes on synchro...
I noticed that CDROM voices are de-synchronizing with movement (over time) during cinema passages. It's good near the beginning of a cinema sequence, but gradually gets worse - after 1 minute, it seems like the de-sync is about 1 second.
With the newer Win2000/XP digital audio playback, this could possibly be fixed by either (a) dropping/repeating small pieces of data (ie. interleaved bytes, NOT entire frames), or (b) modulating the playback frequency slightly (if it can be done in small increments). A reasonable tolerance for maximum gap is probably 1 or 2 60'ths of a second, and it should be reasonably easy to maintain this with frequent adjustments of the playback data and rate.
This could also be done for any ADPCM playback as well - to "force a fit" between the amount the data, and the real playback speed. |
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Jabberwok
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Joined: 24 Apr 2002
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Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 4:10 am Post subject: DirectX 3 |
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| Humm... DirectX 3 eh? What if you used DirectX 8.1 instead? could this speed things up? I mean Microsoft don't just add new drivers in there do they? Im sure there must be a performance gain in there somewhere.... Theoretically speaking that is . |
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ethylene
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 9:58 am Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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| David Shadoff wrote: | | I noticed that CDROM voices are de-synchronizing with movement (over time) during cinema passages. It's good near the beginning of a cinema sequence, but gradually gets worse - after 1 minute, it seems like the de-sync is about 1 second. |
 David Shadoff in tha HEEOOOUSE!!
Heh heh, sorry.
Yeah, about the CD desynching. I had this, too, at one point, but don't anymore. I know that you are way more knowledgeable than most of us here, David, but still I'd like to suggest you try these settings:
60 Hz refresh rate
auto_frame_skip=y
vsync=y Does that help? |
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Jabberwok
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Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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It does help, sounds better BUT my little 'ol 500Mhz can't take it  Im upgrading next week so I know what ill do then .
Thanks for the tip.[/quote] |
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dmichel
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 11:16 pm Post subject: Re: DirectX 3 |
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| Jabberwok wrote: | | Humm... DirectX 3 eh? What if you used DirectX 8.1 instead? could this speed things up? I mean Microsoft don't just add new drivers in there do they? Im sure there must be a performance gain in there somewhere.... Theoretically speaking that is . |
Hey, DirectX 3 rules
You are right, although I don't expect a noticeable perfomance gain, but I believe it could fix a few problems, but this is not as simple, when I started to program the Windows version many users wanted to be able to use it in Windows NT, so I had no choice but to use DirectX 3. I could upgrade to DirectX 8 now but this would imply quite a few changes (if I want to take advantage of the new features of DX 8 ), and MagicEngine core is getting quite old, specialy with the new 1.0 core that I already started to program, so should I spend time upgrading the old core or should I work on the new one which does already support DX 8?
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David Michel |
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dmichel
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 11:28 pm Post subject: Re: "FM" speed tech question... |
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Hi Dave!
| David Shadoff wrote: | A couple of notes on synchro...
[...]
With the newer Win2000/XP digital audio playback, this could possibly be fixed by either (a) dropping/repeating small pieces of data (ie. interleaved bytes, NOT entire frames), or (b) modulating the playback frequency slightly (if it can be done in small increments). A reasonable tolerance for maximum gap is probably 1 or 2 60'ths of a second, and it should be reasonably easy to maintain this with frequent adjustments of the playback data and rate. |
A simpler way to fix the problem would be to adjust the timer on which MagicEngine is sync'ed to match exactly the CD play speed. For example MagicEngine could be sync'ed on 60.5Hz or 61Hz, rather than on 60Hz.
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David Michel |
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Jabberwok
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Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 532
Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 11:31 pm Post subject: Oh... |
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I see your point... a new ME core definitely sounds sweet and kinda makes this whole tread useless then... Have any info on the ETA of this new core? or maybe this is a secret? im guessing that the 'infamous' screen stretch WILL be part of this new core hehehe....
Ill just wait patiently in line right here then  . |
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Kaminari
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Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 1432
Location: Paris, France
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| Posted: Sat May 11, 2002 3:32 am Post subject: Re: DirectX 3 |
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| dmichel wrote: | | MagicEngine core is getting quite old, specialy with the new 1.0 core that I already started to program, so should I spend time upgrading the old core or should I work on the new one which does already support DX 8? |
It depends of the release schedule you have in mind for the 1.0 |
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