Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey guys !

I don't know why but since a few days ago, I have lost the sound in Dolphin. I have also lost the ability to use controllers. Like, my controllers are detected in the controllers' settings and I can map my buttons and move the analog stick and I see it moving but once I'm inside games it's not working. With both my controllers which I've used a ton with Dolphin in the past.

Also, while trying to find a solution I found that I wasn't getting sound with the Cubeb backend but if I change it to OpenAL I have sound... but still can't get my controllers to work. It literally happened overnight. My son played Super Mario 64 like five days ago and it was working fine but wanted to play yesterday and I had this issue. I haven't changed anything on my PC in weeks. I have already re-downloaded Dolphin and even renamed my "Dolphin Emulator" on my user\documents folder to generate a new one fresh. I have the same problems.

Anybody here as seen this before ? Thanks !

I'm still having the same issue but I have more details.

About the gamepad, I've tried with two different gamepads (one XInput and one DInput) and both do the same thing. Both also work fine in other emulators and all my games. So this issue is only in Dolphin. If you look at the following picture :



Basically, what I've realized is that while this specific window is in focus, Dolphin registers all the inputs from my gamepads. Everything works fine in there and all the buttons and joysitcks I activate will register and when I input will be displayed in bold characters. But as soon as I put my focus on the emulation window, what's in the red rectangle does not register anymore. Only the joysticks and shoulder buttons work. But the 10 inputs in the red rectangle simply don't register. As soon as I put my focus on the settings window, it starts registering again. Like I said, it's the same with both my gamepads and will all the games I tried in Dolphin.

I have tried many different versions of Dolphin, even rolled back to 5.0 to make some tests but it's always the same. I really don't know why it does that since it had been working fine for years. I can't find the reason why this behavious has changed and what causes those specific inputs to stop registering while the emulation window is in focus but everything is fine when the settings window is in focus.

As for the sound part, I have moved to OpenAL backend to get sound since the default Cubeb backend just doesn't give me any sound anymore. That I also don't understand why I've been habing this problem. The funny thing is that both the sound and gamepad issue began at the same time a little over 10 days ago.

I'm still looking for help about this. Hopefully someone will have an idea for me. I have already tried the "Background Input" option but it doesn't change anything. Thank you all for your help !

I'd like to bump this up. I still have the same issue and haven't been able to use Dolphin for three months now. Sadly, I feel like I'm the only one with this problem and I've literally tried everything in the book to fix this. The only solution left that I can think of if to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows from the ground up and I don't want to go there. Thanks !

Well for the controller issues, it show that the controller is disconnected. Might need to see if it show up in windows. What controller you using. As for sound I remember a bug in dolphin that if you had a headset that only had one ear piece the audio didn't work. I don't think this was fixed last I knew, but I could check later. Does the sound work in windows?

(08-31-2021, 02:37 AM)themaster123 Wrote: [ -> ]Well for the controller issues, it show that the controller is disconnected. Might need to see if it show up in windows. What controller you using. As for sound I remember a bug in dolphin that if you had a headset that only had one ear piece the audio didn't work. I don't think this was fixed last I knew, but I could check later. Does the sound work in windows?

Like I mentionned in my post with the screencap, I have two different gamepads (one Dinput and the other Xinput). Both work in Windows and other applications, like Steam, Project64, BSNES, Citra, RetroArch, etc. Both my controllers are detected by Dolphin and they both work in the controller settings window. When I launch a game and put focus on the controller settings window (like on the screencap), my controller is still detected and all the inputs work (when I press something it turns to a bold font and I my analog sticks respond as well). But when I put focus on the emulation window itself, the inputs in the red square I drew on my screencap stopped responding, but everything else still works.

As for sound, I've simply changed the backfrom from Cubeb to OpenAL and it works now. But it used to be Cubeb before. I lost both sound and gamepad on the same day at the beginning of June and still can't find why. Dolphin is the only software that has this issue.

Also, I've requested help on the unofficiel Discord on two different occasions. Got some nice people there who tried to help me but nothing works. I have already tried many different Dolphin versions, including reverting back to an older version from before the problem showed up. I've also completly deleted all traces of Dolphin on my system and reinstalled both the "installable" version and the portable version. I have also reset back to default setting many times.

I also need to mention that I've been doing level 2-3 IT support for over 10 years now and I'm used to diagnose and troubleshoot a LOT, yet this issue has been a real challenge. I've also reset all sorts of drivers on my PC, deleted USB entries in Windows, deleted all that had a link to my inputs and gamepads so they would be detected and reinstalled from scratch, etc. Still the same issue.

Like I said, unless I completely missed something, all that there is left to do would be to format and reinstall Windows from scratch...

Well is the any program that emulate a controller or turn a controller input into keystroke on the keyboard. If so try disabling them maybe there conflicting. You could try a clean install option. Download a new 7z of dolphin, extract it with your anti-virus disabled, and put a file call portable.txt in the same dir as dolphin.exe. this will run dolphin in portable mode so you main installation won't be affected. Maybe there a bad setting or file in your main dolphin files. If it works it a lot better then reinstalling windows. Also enable background input it might that might help. On phone so there might be errors.

(08-31-2021, 08:24 AM)themaster123 Wrote: [ -> ]Well is the any program that emulate a controller or turn a controller input into keystroke on the keyboard. If so try disabling them maybe there conflicting. You could try a clean install  option. Download a new 7z of dolphin,  extract it with your anti-virus disabled, and put a file call portable.txt in the same dir as dolphin.exe. this will run dolphin in portable mode so you main installation won't be affected. Maybe there a bad setting or file in your main dolphin files. If it works it a lot better then reinstalling windows. Also enable background input it might that might help. On phone so there might be errors.

Thanks for the help. I had already done all these things... many times. I tried it again anyways and I still got exactly the same results. Unfortunetly. I even killed all the process and services that were running on my PC, one by one and tested after each one until I almost had nothing left running on my PC with the same results.

I really can't find any logical reason as to why it does that. The inputs in the red rectangle from my screen capture are working fine in the Dolphin settings window but stop working when I put the focus on the emulation window. That's just weird.