[dex909]

I found an INTERESTING problem with VS and ePSXe - not only for THAT game, but every game that uses ADPCM sounds for ingame-musics.

WARNING: This is one LONG thread, sorry


At first - in SHORT:
The glitch is, that the in-game music (PAL Version at 50 Frames) runs ---7 FRAMES--- SLOWER than the GFX.

sounds weird?

LONGER EXPLANATION:
When playing with 50 Frames in PAL, the sound plays at 43 FRAMES. I use Pete´s D3D/Soft/OGL GPU and Null2´s sound plugin.
When setting the framerate to 57 Frames (with Pete´s GPUs)
I get PERFECT sound timing, but when looking at the playtime counter in the menu - time runs much faster - 7 Frames faster.
So you CAN play the game, but well.. SOMEHOW it´s just not the same.

This "glitch" or "bug" (?) occurs with EVERY Sound Plugin out there at the current time. As said above, I can´t test any other Gfx Plugin.

As I am a hobby musician and quite a Vagrant Story-fan I KNOW every little detail in Vagrant Story´s sound. And I am DEFINITELY not the only one, who recognizes this.

But noone every mentioned a problem like this, so I think my experiences could really help spu and gpu coders.

I ONLY use Pete´s Plugins, so I can´t say if the problem occurs on every system. Info from other people would help much!!

I think this glitch is very annoying.
I would say ok to every footstep-BEEP, but the music just sounds
awfull.

After trying EVERYTHING (nearly) to get this game working, I hope someone will fix the problem here, I think it might be very Interesting for Pete´s development, as he codes GPUs, as well as SPU´s.

NOTE:
It is my ALL TIME favourite. I try to emulate this since the day I bought it (2000, shortly after its release day). And Connectix VGS does quite a GREAT job in TIMING (Frameskipping/Music).
So what´s different with ePSXe, when trying to sync sound to gfx?? I really hope someone has a solution to this.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH (in advance and for reading all this ;-))

 

[gerbilcannon]

Have you tested this with a different sound card/computer? And when you say that the sound runs 7 frames slower than the graphics do you mean that it is out of sync, that it is dropping "frames" or something different? Personally on my system the sound has been perfectly in sync with everything else. I'm assuming your computer can keep a solid framerate in these games? Have you tried FPSE or AdriPSX to see if the same sound problem occurs with the same plug-ins?

 

[Fou-lu]

btw, do you know how to get a better sound with that game gerbilcannon? With the int plugin it sound as if the speakers had blown up, with Iori it sometimes sounds better, but some sound effects are weird (footsteps, slashes, some monsters, whatever,...)

 

[dex909]

It is always the same on ANY computer.
The sync of the sounds is correct, so the ingame music STARTS at the right point - maybe right at the beginning of a level - but runs 7 frames slower than the gfx, which started at the same time.
Any suggestions?

 

[gerbilcannon]

Well, have you followed my suggestion of trying a different emulator with the same spu plug-ins to see if it produces the same results? I'd be interested in knowing. As for better sound with vagrant story, sorry, I just haven't experimented with the game enough. Have a bit of an hour's playtime on it, and none at all with the latest releases of Iori's plug-in. About all I could suggest is experimenting with the buffer settings.

 

[sailord2]

Originally posted by dex909
I found an INTERESTING problem with VS and ePSXe - not only for THAT game, but every game that uses ADPCM sounds for ingame-musics.
At first - in SHORT:
The glitch is, that the in-game music (PAL Version at 50 Frames) runs ---7 FRAMES--- SLOWER than the GFX.
This "glitch" or "bug" (?) occurs with EVERY Sound Plugin out there at the current time. As said above, I can´t test any other Gfx Plugin.
As I am a hobby musician and quite a Vagrant Story-fan I KNOW every little detail in Vagrant Story´s sound. And I am DEFINITELY not the only one, who recognizes this.
But noone every mentioned a problem like this, so I think my experiences could really help spu and gpu coders.

You might consider reading my fairly recent post here:

http://boards.psxemu.com/showthread.php?threadid=4846

..as your problem sounds almost exactly like mine. I'm currently playing FF7 at 68 fps (instead of the more desirable 60 for NTSC). I know the music quite well, and at 60, it is definitely much too slow. The graphics (including mdecs) display just fine at 60 (as they have with every other game I've played thus far, minus the music issue), but this is the first game that I've ever noticed this problem in. It's possible that our problems are completely unrelated to one another, but they sound remarkably alike to me.

I tested the issue with Iori's SPU, Pete's, Prodigy (if I recall correctly), and the core SPU, but each yielded the same basic results. My faulty-but-hopeful logic was that FF7, being a slightly older game, might actually work better using less-"updated" plugins.

I tested FF7 on CVGS, and the timing and sync are perfectly fine; however, I do not choose to use CVGS for anything other than testing. After posting my previous message, I tried FF7 on FPSE with the same GPU and SPU plugins (as well as the same plugin settings), and the problem was in fact there, but I should point out that it was even worse (the music was even slower than in ePSXe at 60fps); this, however, could have been due to a number of issues, as I was in a hurry to test it. I've had zero luck with any other PSX emu; so, I skipped out on testing the issue on any of the others. I hope that we can one day discover a permanent solution to our respective problems, whatever they may be.
[email protected]

 

[fivefeet8]

It is known that the current version of epsxe has some timing problems with some games.. ie.. FF7, Tekken 3, MGS.. and a few others.. A future version may fix these timing problems so we all have to be patient and wait..

 

[Fou-lu]

I can't wait!