Sound is hard to emulate?

[taelmx]

I was just wondering why the sound is so hard to emulate. I would think the 2d/3d and everything else would be a lot harder, or else the devs just don't care about the sound that much...=P

 

[Toasty]

The sound hardware on the GC is very poorly documented, so developers don't know enough about the sound hardware to write code that can imitate it properly.

 

[taelmx]

Where do you get the documentation for Gamecube hardware? I might want to learn a little bit about GC hardware, then I might be able to help(not that it's an easy thing to do).

 

[LelandStanford]

Ask Nintendo

 

[Sercio]

there are few open source sites with gc documentary... but sadly i dont know which anymore
Maybe a Dev could help ya ....

 

[JKKDARK]

You want to hear good sound when it's only 6 FPS?

 

[Toasty]

Some games get up to playable speeds (or even beyond, due to lack of a frame limiter) on a good system.

 

[Lightning]

http://www.gc-linux.org/docs/yagcd.html

That documents what is known about the gamecube. You also have IBM's website to look around for the PowerPC documentation. Of course it may not include the paired single opcodes that are part of the gamecube.

As for sound, even Nintendo does not have documentation on the commands to the sound chip but instead have a library that is compiled into each game to allow sound to occur. As a result there is no information, even leaked, about the sound chip. The only info is what Duddie did yet that is incomplete and not fully accurate. This results in having to guess. Dolphin currently emulates the sound at a high level. Guessing at what it should play and how to handle the sound and acting on it.