Audio Slowly Becomes Choppy LLE

[Spirrwell]

There's tons and tons of threads on audio problems and I haven't found one like mine or at least one with a solution to my problem. Basically it seems that with any GameCube game (not sure about Wii) running with DSP LLE starts off with seemingly perfect sound. But after an hour or so of gameplay the sound starts to become crackly\choppy. Although it doesn't affect FPS when I have the frame limit set to audio.

Just for the sake of simplicity the game that I want audio to work right now is LoZ Wind Waker. I've tried DSP LLE on thread, but the game has a tendency to crash if I do that and hence I can't know if audio becomes better or worse. I've gone into the game properties and checked Accurate VBeam emulation, but that seems to cause the audio to be distorted and play faster than it should as well as lowering my FPS to 15 unless set the frame limit to 30 manually. I've tried disabling Idle Skipping and that has done nothing either.

I went as far as re-dumping the DSP files from my Wii and that had no effect either.

At first I thought it had something to do with the old version I had, so I updated to the latest one I could find on the website 3.5-367. Still the same. Also the reason I brought up that I'm trying to run Wind Waker is that LLE is basically required to remove blank screen crashes. I'm not sure if HLE would act the same although I could test it on another game since the problem is with all games.

Also I know that my audio drivers are up to date, plus, the problem occurs with USB headsets as well, so it's not related to my motherboard's onboard sound card.

Anybody know how to fix this?

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(Side question is it possible to set Dolphin to save state every five minutes? This would help immensely for games that have a tendency to crash)

[Starscream]

Try the latest development version from the official website by using the download button at the top of the forum. The 3.5-367 build is old and from an unofficial site. As far as your issue, there are quite a few people who are seeing the same issue that you are and I do not think there is a real fix at the moment.

Edit: Savestates could corrupt your saves and could cause you even more issues, you're better off not using them at all.

[Spirrwell]

Ha, I never realized that wasn't the official site, it's the first one that pops up. The official one even has deb files for my Ubuntu OS, nice! Anyway, already downloaded and will test now. Just to make sure I got the right one, feel free to correct me somebody it's 3.5-1412.

[Shonumi]

Spirwell Wrote:There's tons and tons of threads on audio problems and I haven't found one like mine or at least one with a solution to my problem. Basically it seems that with any GameCube game (not sure about Wii) running with DSP LLE starts off with seemingly perfect sound. But after an hour or so of gameplay the sound starts to become crackly\choppy. Although it doesn't affect FPS when I have the frame limit set to audio.

You obviously didn't search hard enough; this is a very common issue :p As Starscream said, there is no fix atm, and it's known to affect both HLE and LLE audio. The latest revisions suffer from the static-like audio as well as versions going back to 3.0. The best workaround is to save your game (in-game saves preferably) then restart Dolphin (just click the Stop and Start buttons, no need to close the actual program). You shouldn't have to do this more than twice for a single sitting (else you're probably playing too long, take a break or something )

[Spirrwell]

(06-17-2013, 07:14 AM)Shonumi Wrote:

' Wrote:There's tons and tons of threads on audio problems and I haven't found one like mine or at least one with a solution to my problem. Basically it seems that with any GameCube game (not sure about Wii) running with DSP LLE starts off with seemingly perfect sound. But after an hour or so of gameplay the sound starts to become crackly\choppy. Although it doesn't affect FPS when I have the frame limit set to audio.

You obviously didn't search hard enough; this is a very common issue :p As Starscream said, there is no fix atm, and it's known to affect both HLE and LLE audio. The latest revisions suffer from the static-like audio as well as versions going back to 3.0. The best workaround is to save your game (in-game saves preferably) then restart Dolphin (just click the Stop and Start buttons, no need to close the actual program). You shouldn't have to do this more than twice for a single sitting (else you're probably playing too long, take a break or something )

Well perhaps I lacked the proper words for searching, because there's tons of other threads about audio that are irrelevant to the problem I have and mostly geared towards specific games. Also I'm aware that you can just start and stop, er the other way around. :p Also it's not like I don't take breaks, but I tend to leave programs running so I don't have to close them, and that includes games. I typically will just Alt+Enter, minimize, and mute Dolphin if necessary. Bad computer habit. XD

Also the thing about save states, I'm aware of corrupt memory because I've experienced it myself. Sometimes it can be fixed by loading from the memory card first and then loading the save state. I would just like an auto save state feature, because I always forget to save anyway so having a save state every few minutes would help immensely.

Anyway, thanks. I am curious though, is it known what the problem is with the emulator from a development point of view? Perhaps the sound system could be reset with a command or something. I'm not sure, I'm not familiar with the Dolphin source code, or even emulator type code for that matter.

[Starscream]

(06-17-2013, 09:02 AM)Spirrwell Wrote: I would just like an auto save state feature, because I always forget to save anyway so having a save state every few minutes would help immensely.

I would call an "automatic savestate" feature an "automatic game destroyer" feature. Savetates can sometimes cause issues, I certainly wouldn't want the emulator to automatically destroy my games every few minutes.

[Spirrwell]

(06-17-2013, 09:11 AM)Starscream Wrote:

(06-17-2013, 09:02 AM)Spirrwell Wrote: I would just like an auto save state feature, because I always forget to save anyway so having a save state every few minutes would help immensely.

I would call an "automatic savestate" feature an "automatic game destroyer" feature. Savetates cause issues, I certainly wouldn't want the emulator to automatically destroy my games every few minutes.

Well, that's why it'd be a feature, not something forced. There's definitely bound to be people like me that it doesn't matter whether or not to save state. I haven't found that the act of using a save state would destroy a game or corrupt a save file, but it's the act of loading a save state that could cause problems. But this is beyond the scope of the topic and it's just a side question that I was interested in, it would be cool for me, maybe some others, and maybe not for other people as well.

I mean it's not like it would be hard to implement, I'm assuming that the save state function in the code is a single function that gets information from other functions and writing a selectable timer wouldn't be hard. But I'm not a Dolphin developer, and it's just my opinion. I thought it would be cool to have especially since save states are already a part of Dolphin. If they were really that bad I wouldn't see the point in having them at all. Ah whatever, thanks anyway.