Mame Gp32 Sound Is Too Low


slaanesh said:
Apologies for leaving this so long, but I was thinking about the low-sound issue on the GP32 recently and I think it know what the problem is!
No problem at all, i knew the whole time you would try to solve the issue. :)


QUOTE

Right, I've made some neat improvements to the GP32 MAME sound code.

[+] Sound mixer is a fair bit more accurate now and should be scaling volume precisely.
[+] Triple buffering for the sound which should improve sound quality.
[+] Updated Sega System 8 drivers (Wonderboy in Monsterland, Choplifter)
[!] Fixed Xybots driver in launcher.
[!] Fixed FPS timing so games play at their designed rate (ie. 60FPS instead of 64FPS)



It sounds too good to be true. :lol:

Can't wait to test the whole improvements.

Thank you very much slaanesh, to keep the gp32_console alive (still one of my favorite game-machines) - You are the best ! ! !


BTW: You have a PM
 
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Woooohoooo! slaanesh is back on the job! It would be great if you could add a couple more notches to the gamma/brightness thingy. Are you gonna include that in game menu selection button option(pause, flip screen, dip switches, etc..)? Are you, are you, are you??? Cuz that was an ultra cooool idea. Are you gonna add any new games??? Are you, are you, are you??? Am I gonna stop nagging you like a 9 year old child? Am I, am I, am I???
 
The main change I'm working on is getting the sound right. I'm aiming for a really good sound engine. See how that goes.

There will be some other fixes as well.

And there will be some new games too.

Dipswitch support won't make it for this release.
 
Now that your good and rested from your vacation slaanesh, just wondering how the GP32MAME update is going. What new games can we look forward to playing?
 
I haven't added many new games, rather been improving ones that are already there.

The biggest improvements are to sound which will now support:

16-bit sound
16 channels
GP2X style mixer (it's fast!)
Updates from GP2X MAME such as improved sound chips for Konami games like Yie Ar Kung Fu.
Updated DRZ80; many games using Z80 will now work. ie. 1943 (US), Black Tiger, Gunsmoke, etc.
There's a few improved drivers in there as well such as qiz, zookeeper and warp warp now fully work have sound.

The problem with the poor old GP32 is that it can literally only go so fast; the limited total bandwidth of the system seems to be the biggest bottleneck. The GP32 sound bug and the inaccurate GP SDK sound handling is rearing it's ugly head here. I've tried many new ideas for mixers and sound algorithms. Funny thing is I implemented a pre-calculated divide lookup table and was really surprised to see a similar idea now being use in the GP2X version.

Adding new, big games with big resource requirements are not really going to be the worth the while. They just aren't going to run at an acceptable rate with sound. Yes, perhaps without sound, but I'm not a fan of playing in silence.

1943 is one game which is a good benchmark. It uses two CPUs and FM sound with moderately sophisticated graphics. Even at 166Mhz, autoframeskip <=2 and 80% underclock on CPUs the GP32 is pushing only 16-19FPS. Mind you, without sound it's full 60FPS.

Basically anything that uses the more advanced FM sound hardware is slow. That's YM2203, YM2151, YM2610, etc. The simple AY8910 fair much better as do many other sound systems.

The low sound problem is still sort of there, though the better mixer does help a little. I explained what the issue is in the MAME GP2X 4.6 thread. The solution would be some sort of normalization of volume; boosting quiet games and reducing "noisy" ones (these may suffer from excess clipping). I may have some ideas, though any input from devs who are familiar with this kind of problem would be appreciated.
 
All your hardwork is much appreciated and I really am looking forward to this release. Just outta curiosity though, what would be the biggest MAME game the GP32 could handle, memory wise not necessary performance, without sound?
 
DisgruntleElf said:
All your hardwork is much appreciated and I really am looking forward to this release. Just outta curiosity though, what would be the biggest MAME game the GP32 could handle, memory wise not necessary performance, without sound?
They are already there: The DataEast 16 bit games like Robocop, Heavy Barrel, etc. Around 1.2MB uncompressed. It also depends on the hardware as well. Some need large amounts of screen memory; this is due to the way that MAME handles the screen maps. Large ROM games may be possible if their hardware is moderate.
Actually, as a little footnote, Robocop now has full speech. When you kill ED-201 after the first level you'll get all his smart comments - "Thank you for your co-operation". :)
It would be possible, with decoded graphic storage optimization to run ROMs up to 2MB. It's unlikely to happen though as it would need some major work. Though, larger games usually need more resources and wouldn't run well anyway.
 
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Okay I gots some technical stuff questions. PalmMAME modules are over 2MB and yet GP32's are but a fraction of that. Why? Vilmos says that the MAME core takes just under 2MB in PalmMAME. Are you using the entire MAME core? Are the games sorted by manufacturer or cpus? Or does MAME .36 require much more memory than say MAME .34? Also I have a request for the next release but not a game. Could you if possible display the amount of memory the game is gobbling up as it loads?
 
Hey slaanesh,

i'm curious to know the current status of MAME_GP32, is there a beta-version that we could try out the new features ?

Regards
Gerald
 
I haven't done a single thing to GP32 MAME for about a month now. :eek:

The issues with the sound were frustrating me.

I've done some work on the GP2X version again in the meantime - which I must admit is much nicer to work with! Hooray for Linux!

I'll get back to the GP32 and release something soon-ish.
 
slaanesh said:
I haven't done a single thing to GP32 MAME for about a month now. :eek:

The issues with the sound were frustrating me.
I cannot blame you for that. ;)

QUOTE

I've done some work on the GP2X version again in the meantime - which I must admit is much nicer to work with! Hooray for Linux!



Yep - it seems, the GP2X-version is easier to handle.

QUOTE

I'll get back to the GP32 and release something soon-ish.



G r e a t - The GP32 fan-community counts on you. :)
 
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Here's something I found a bit odd. Gameplay freezes after 10 minutes of play when using the Old Core. I usually use the New Core so no biggy but I just may have accidently switched it without noticing. Just strange because I can't recall that happening before.
 
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