Choppy sound

01-04-2013, 02:58 PM #1

Hi there, I'm new and I have a question.

I just downloaded Dolphin 3.5-126 today. I didn't expect it to work as I have a terrible computer (Dell Optiplex 755) at the moment. To my surprise, it works and I decided to play a game I've been wanting to for a while, Sonic Adventure DX.

However, when I run it the sound is very choppy.

I have already tried:

Changing the Backend
Changing the Sample Rate
Setting the Framelimit to "Audio"

So does anyone know what to do? Please help, and thank you in advance.

EDIT: Uh, I think it might just be the game itself is very slow. Does anyone have any beginner tips on speeding it up I guess?
DOUBLE EDIT: You know what, it's likely just my terrible graphics card. Any ideas?

***Shonumi*** · 01-04-2013, 03:31 PM #2

Quote:DOUBLE EDIT: You know what, it's likely just my terrible graphics card.

That and your CPU are to blame for slow speeds (and hence the sound issues). I have two computers with specs in that same ballpark; my advice: wait until you upgrade your PC (the whole thing) to play Dolphin, unless you want to stick to some of the "light" games. PCs like yours are better suited to office tasks than the kind of emulation Dolphin does. I used to be in your same position, but without a decent PC, Dolphin can really turn into an exercise in frustration pretty quickly.

01-04-2013, 03:39 PM #3

(01-04-2013, 03:31 PM)Shonumi Wrote:
Quote:DOUBLE EDIT: You know what, it's likely just my terrible graphics card.

That and your CPU are to blame for slow speeds (and hence the sound issues). I have two computers with specs in that same ballpark; my advice: wait until you upgrade your PC (the whole thing) to play Dolphin, unless you want to stick to some of the "light" games. PCs like yours are better suited to office tasks than the kind of emulation Dolphin does. I used to be in your same position, but without a decent PC, Dolphin can really turn into an exercise in frustration pretty quickly.

Thanks for responding! Yeah, as I said I figured it wouldn't work at all so I guess I just got really hopeful when the program ran at all. This computer is definitely temporary, so I'll just wait until I get access to another.

***Shonumi*** · 01-04-2013, 03:54 PM #4

I remember when I got excited when I found out Dolphin could at least run on my earlier machines :p Quite a rush even if it didn't actually play all that well. Good times...

When you do decide to get newer hardware, feel free to ask us if you have any questions regarding performance. We have a lot of experienced experts on hand Smile

01-04-2013, 03:57 PM #5

(01-04-2013, 03:54 PM)Shonumi Wrote: I remember when I got excited when I found out Dolphin could at least run on my earlier machines :p Quite a rush even if it didn't actually play all that well. Good times...

When you do decide to get newer hardware, feel free to ask us if you have any questions regarding performance. We have a lot of experienced experts on hand

I remember trying Dolphin on a laptop a few years ago and I could never get it to work, so it was nice to see the thing actually load. I do have an iMac in the house as well, but it is usually reserved for more professional things, and doesn't have too much space. I guess I'll try running it on the Mac from something external, could that work?

***Shonumi*** · (This post was last modified: 01-04-2013, 04:07 PM by Shonumi.)

You can download the latest versions of Dolphin as a .dmg file for OS X and install it on your iMac (shouldn't take up a lot of space) and run games from an external source (USB drive for example). That should work just fine. The speed of the media may impact performance, but it shouldn't cause you any major problems. Just know that recent versions of Dolphin on the latest versions of OS X cause lighting issues that can't easily be fixed right now.

01-04-2013, 04:34 PM #7

(01-04-2013, 04:06 PM)Shonumi Wrote: You can download the latest versions of Dolphin as a .dmg file for OS X and install it on your iMac (shouldn't take up a lot of space) and run games from an external source (USB drive for example). That should work just fine. The speed of the media may impact performance, but it shouldn't cause you any major problems. Just know that recent versions of Dolphin on the latest versions of OS X cause lighting issues that can't easily be fixed right now.

I have a relatively old version of OS X, so I should be fine. Thanks a lot for your help!

**pauldacheez** · 01-05-2013, 02:06 AM #8

The lighting issues happen on Nvidia GPUs under any version of OS X, and they've been present in pretty much every version of Dolphin. However, development versions after 3.5 have been completely broken for OS X because of its stupid way of supporting OpenGL features and the developers' failure to accommodate them. Use the stable 3.5 if you want to run the game on OS X.

Also, shortly after OS X was broken, new-ax-hle was merged in, which is why the sound's choppy (it emulates the sound so well that the audio is choppy when the game runs at less than full speed). Use the stable 3.5 on your PC if you want non-choppy audio (that is processed by a hacky Rube Goldberg machine that may cause crashes and almost inevitably will cause audio glitches).

If you want to use new-ax-hle on OS X (and your Mac can run the game at full speed) use the latest separate new-ax-hle build to avoid current master's OpenGL breakage. http://dolphin-emu.org/download/branches/