How to make LLE sound good even if game is not running fullspeed !

[rpglord]

Have you ever come across a game that needs LLE sound to work correctly ? And when you tried it you discovered that,unlike HLE,unless your pc is capable of running the game fullspeed sound will be choppy,skipping,stuttering etc ?
Well I found solution for this !
All what you have to do is disable "idle skipping" option and enable "accurate vbeam emulation" option. And voila ! Sound will now slowdown like HLE,instead of beeing choppy.
This sounds much better when you are playing the game which can't run fullspeed on your pc.
I haven't tested this much,only on 3 games so far,and it worked on all of them.

Here is the video of SMG2 running with LLE about 85% speed without choppy sound :
http://youtu.be/o5zQCxPzsIo

[ulao]

Wow thx man, cant wait to try this. I get like 97% speeds on zelda SS with LLE and that choppy sound ills me.

[rpglord]

Wow thx man, cant wait to try this. I get like 97% speeds on zelda SS with LLE and that choppy sound ills me.

Ok,make sure to post feedback ! I dont have zelda SS to test,I tested this so far on Last Story,Xenoblade and SMG 2 !

[Shonumi]

I found this out a while ago. Check it out in this thread. I've got a video running of Metroid Prime where Accurate VBeam emulation makes a difference when LLE is enabled. neobrain said this was due to that setting messing with the DMA timings, so it affects how the emulated DSP handles sounds. I don't think this was intended by the devs, but it's incredibly helpful nonetheless. Even if the video output is slow in terms of FPS, the audio remains accurate and does not sound bad.

I think people noticed this for some time, but had no idea what it was or why it was happening. Everyone who plays Skies if Arcadia and looks at the wiki knows it recommends Accurate VBeam emulation, but I've never seen the "speedup" it promised. Instead, the audio is perfect with LLE even with drops in the FPS. I've tried this with MP, SoA, and Mario Power Tennis (GC) and the results have all been the same with Accurate VBeam and LLE. I think I briefly tried it with Tales of Symphonia; same results, but there's no helping the intro movie :p Glad that someone else can verify this as I only have 1 good machine for Dolphin.

Anyway, I left idle skipping enabled. Not sure if this makes a difference. Well, the secret's out now (at least for those of you who don't frequent the Development forum), it'd be nice if neobrain or a dev looked into this more. For now, I'd like to see more people verify this behavior, just to be totally sure.

[rpglord]

Shonumi,thanks for detailed feedback and explanations !
However,I have used vbeam option for long time,it usualy improves perfomance in lots of games,and slightly improves how LLE sound.
But,with that option alone,LLE will still stutter now and then.
What I found now is basically that combining disabling idle skipping with enabling vbeam eliminates stutter completely,atleast in games I tried so far.
Also,having idle skipping disabled without vbeam accomplishes nothing but cause slight slowdown.
It seems these options combined like this cause LLE to act like HLE - I can even notice sound slowing down in some areas of SMG2 instead of stuttering

[Shonumi]

I never thought to disable Idle Skipping (it says it gives a speedup, so... :p), but I guess it's time to try that. I suppose the reason Accurate VBeam itself was enough to avoid LLE audio stuttering was due to my computer's specs. I might have had enough power so that it wouldn't happen. I will try disabling Idle Skipping, and I will try it on a significantly weaker system. I'll get back with some results. Thanks for the heads up on this, by the way.

If you do make any more videos, you might want to try capturing your Dolphin settings somehow in the video, else someone could easily accuse you of using HLE rather than LLE. Even if you're telling the truth, the settings provide proof and will rebuff any such claims that the video is in any way inaccurate. Brb, gonna test a few things.

[LordVador]

I'll try this with a few games by curiosity. Which revision did you use? 3.0 or a recent build?

[rpglord]

Thanks for testing this guys,looking forward to hear the results !
I got last story running 15 fps which is 50% speed with LLE and sound still didn't skip !
I am using 3.0-600

If you do make any more videos, you might want to try capturing your Dolphin settings somehow in the video, else someone could easily accuse you of using HLE rather than LLE. Even if you're telling the truth, the settings provide proof and will rebuff any such claims that the video is in any way inaccurate. Brb, gonna test a few things.

I dont have a camera I am recording with fraps. AFAIK it only captures when dirext application starts,it can't capture desktop

[LordVador]

I am using 3.0-600

This build is from AudioStreaming merge branch by skid. It's supposed to solve some sound issues. Are you sure it didn't have any incidence?

[Garteal]

Not that I need it, but should be fun to try out.

I dont have a camera I am recording with fraps. AFAIK it only captures when dirext application starts,it can't capture desktop

Yes it can, the option is called Monitor Aero Desktop (DWM). Tick that, and you should see the FPS counter appear on Windows itself.