Hi, I'm out of ideas and looking to see if anybody else is having (or has solved) any similar problems.
When I play any game (gamecube games) I run into a problem with sound.
When I set the framelimit to what the game should be (30, 60 etc) the music plays at super speed, at least twice as fast as it should be.
If I set the framelimit to auto or audio, the sounds fix themselves, but the game is then running at half the speed it should be.
I've played with the audio settings and after no fix I am stumped on what to do. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Specifically, which games are you trying to play in Dolphin? Have you tried the latest development revision (currently 4.0-318 as of this writing)? Additionally, can you provide screenshots of your settings?
When you say the game is running half of what it should be, it could be that you're simply expecting games that natively run at 30 FPS (Wind Waker, Skies of Arcadia, Twilight Princess) to run at 60 FPS. The best way to tell if a game is running fullspeed or not is to run Dolphin in Windowed Mode and look at the % Dolphin displays at the bottom. If it's running at 100%, that's the framerate you're supposed to be playing at. If it says 50%, then that's a problem. Make sure you don't have the VBeam Speed Hack enabled for any of your games (right-click game in Dolphin, then click Properties); the VBeam Speed Hack sometimes halves the FPS.
After messing with the settings further, I've found that checking "Synchronize GPU Thread" Fixes the problem with the sound, but also kills performance and sets my fps back to 14-15.
I am currently testing on Super Mario Sunshine, but first discovered the problem while messing around with Twilight Princess.
I have messed with virtually every setting, but I'll post pictures of my current.
Try "Auto" and uncheck "Limit by FPS". This has always been the best combo for me. Tested SMS myself just now. With 30 FPS + Limit by FPS, it speeds up 2x. Unticking Limit by FPS reduces it to 50%. Auto without Limit by FPS works fine. I think 30 FPS games are picky in this regard; Xenoblade Chronicles does the same thing for me.
If Auto + unchecking "Limit by FPS" does not work for you, try 60 FPS + "Limit by FPS". It's a sort of hack-ish, but that's what I used to do in Xenoblade Chronicles before I knew better.
Tested on Twilight Princess:
Auto, limit by fps unchecked, 15 fps
Auto, limit by fps checked, 60 fps and fast sounds.
30, limit by fps checked, regular fps, fast sounds.
30, limit by fps unchecked, 7 fps, 50% sound speed.
60, limit by fps checked, regular fps, super speed sounds.
60, limit by fps unchecked, 15 fps, normal speed sounds.
90, limit by fps checked, regular fps, 200x sounds
90, limit by fps unchecked, regular fps, 150x sounds.
Off, unchecked, regular fps, 200x sounds.
Off, checked, no change.
Audio, checked, 15 fps, 100% sounds.
Audio, unchecked, no change.
100% speed for sound at 50% emulation speed confirmed.
Your're most likely being limited by your hardware. The AMD HD 3600 series is an underpowered series of graphics cards, and your Q6600 is a bit on the slow side (know from experience)
Not to mention that the Radeon HD 3xxx series is pretty old.
I'm having zero problems running the emulation other than the sound being faster than it's supposed to.
Twilight Princess and Super Mario Sunshine (and actually a lot of games) are supposed to run at 30 fps (60 vps). Are you sure you're perceiving everything correctly? 'Cause this shit sounds kinda crazy.
(ALSO TRY LLE, THESE GAMES BOTH USE THE ZELDA µCODE AND DOLPHIN'S HLE IS SHITTY AT EMULATING THAT)