Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I know...I know

I am grasping for straws at this point hoping to find some common thread as to finding a fix. I want to ensure I exhaust all options on my end because not everyone is experiencing this issue (or at least if they are, they are somewhat quiet about it) so I was seeing if I could fix it on my own.

Of course, to date, I have been unsuccessful.

UPDATE:
I was seeing if it was a latency issue using DPC Latency Checker and everything looks normal the entire time I played and the issue appeared so that was another dead end

(02-20-2013, 05:24 AM)haddockd Wrote: [ -> ]I want to ensure I exhaust all options on my end because not everyone is experiencing this issue (or at least if they are, they are somewhat quiet about it) so I was seeing if I could fix it on my own.

Of course, to date, I have been unsuccessful.

Well, this issue takes approximately 2 hours to show up, some people don't play 2 hours straight.

I also already tried many options and still no way to get rid of those random static audio.

I (on my machine) have discovered a way to make the issue happen instantaneously (no need to wait 2 hours). I was able to get this to work using:
Baten Kaitos
Wind Waker
Resident Evil 4
I stopped after the third game exhibited this behavior so it may work for any game.

I was using 3.5 x64 and was playing in Windowed (non full screen) mode. Here is how I did it. I opened the game leaving the FrameRate on "Auto" and unchecking "Limit by FPS". Load your game and do something for 15 seconds or so (I just walked around). Hit the "Esc" key and go back to the Dolphin GUI. Open the General Config screen and change FrameLimit to 35 (also tried 45 as a test and that worked too) and check "Limit by FPS". Reopen the game and when you get to the save open screen, the garbled static should be there.

Note: You can enable Idle Skipping and still repro the issue.

I do not know why this works, but I can get it to happen every time using this method (I tried 6 times).

I attached screenies of my settings. If a screenie is not present then no settings were changed by me (all default).

The reason I wanted to post this is I assume that a fix is difficult or elusive because it is not easily reproducible. I am hoping this makes the issue easier to troubleshoot.

Let me know if you need any further info.

Does it occur with all three audio backends as well as both LLE and HLE? Is this the latest revision? Have you tried setting the framelimit to audio?

That issue sounds fairly normal since you're forcing the game to run faster than it was intended to run.

Excellent questions NV. Here are my findings (keep in mind these responses are pointed at this little workaround causing them instantly). All backends as well as HLE/LLE will trigger the issue when played for 1.5 - 2 hours:

Using 3.5
happens with or without LLE on thread
happens with XAudio2 and DSound
Does not happen with HLE
Slowing it to under 30 FPS does not trigger it instantly (I play NTSC)
Going from Auto to Audio does not make it happen

Latest Revision
OpenAL, the issue does happen but it doesnt sound the same as 3.5 (it is more mellow and wave like static versus constant static. Additionally it didnt happen until I played the game for around 5 seconds, not at the load screen
Same thing when using HLE in the newest rev (assuming AX-HLE here). It did happen just doesnt sound the same

(02-21-2013, 07:27 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]That issue sounds fairly normal since you're forcing the game to run faster than it was intended to run.

That is true, but the opposite is also true. The issue will still occur if you set it to a lower frame rate than intended (25 for NTSC as an example) and the static will still happen. I do not think it is a "frame rate too high" specific type of issue.

I found a version that appears to be immune to this workaround above: 7719M. I didnt have 2 hours to dedicate but I did play for about 20 minutes and no static occurred. I will test this more probably this weekend, but can anyone else give this a try and see if they get the same result?

Here is the version I was using in case you cant find it elsewhere (I removed my LLE files, etc)
http://www.mediafire.com/?gnbllkxip3vtlrp

NV it is a problem with all three backends and both LLE and HLE before and after the ax-HLE merge for me and I have stated that several times in this thread.

Forgive me if I didn't want to read through a 16 page thread about audio issues.

I just played with 7719M extended and it does indeed have the static issue unfortunately...but I think we all already knew that.