Sound problems

[Nin_10_Dough]

A friend gave me his old 200mhz pentium. I have been trying to get some emus running on it but almost all of them have problems with sound. Lots of crackling, some even have a weird echo effect. I have updated the sound drivers and am current with directx. I have tried lowering hardware acceleration settings and have lowered the sampling rate in the emulators with no luck.

Zsnes is the only emulator so far that has had good sound quality. I am currently trying Kgen and FCE Ultra. btw, this machine meets the system requirements for the emulators I tried. It is running win98.

Windows media player and other programs that play sound seem fine, just emulators are the problems. Although during bootup I some weird buzzing sounds come from the speakers.

This machine had an Isa sound card, although it was detected by windows I couldn't get any sound out of it no matter what I did, reinstalled drivers, checked for conflicts, ect. So I bought a bargain card from the local computer store, an ESS allegro. I seriously hope that isn't the cause of my problems. I might put the card in my current machine and see if I get the same crappy results.

Any help would be appreciated .

 

[Allnatural]

FCE Ultra has fairly steep requirements since the sound code was rewritten. I recall Xodnizel mentioning about 1 GHz, but that may only be on the highest quality setting.

Don't know about KGen; haven't used that one in a while.

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

I'm using an older version of FCE Ultra. I get a nice steady 60fps with those emulators, just with bad sound :yucky: . Kgen is quick like genecyst...........and of course I tried genecyst. Same problem.

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

Sorry for the double post, but if I edit it won't show up as a new post (don't think).

UPDATE: Tried the sound card in question on my machine. It works fine. This bargain card's 4 channel output put my 2 channel on board audio to shame. Obviously it is a problem with that other computer and not the card. I wonder if that ISA card I took out of that machine works also.........don't worry, my computer isn't THAT old. I'll have to test it on another machine that has an ISA slot.

Anyone have any idea of what could be wrong with that other computer? :huh:

 

[WhiteX]

what is the sampling rate on the old comp?
44100 or 22050?

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

In the emulators (if they had the option) I would lower it to 22050. That generally resulted in a less crisp.......but still equally crappy result. So there is a way to apply that sampling rate to everything? :blush:

btw, the the pci slots on the old comp are through a riser card. Does that make a difference?

 

[WhiteX]

not every time the riser cards make difference, i dunno if there are ways to apply sampling rate to all things, i meant only the emulators.
you may want to try DOS based emulators with the ISA card (what card is it?) with its DOS driver it is almost impossible to make cracks and pops (only if its ruined).
Always remember that ISA sound cards have their IRQ mostly set to 5 so you may want to "marry" it at the BIOS setup and the PCI sound card may have a little bit more minimum system requirements that you have there to offer making it 2 different problems.

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

The ISA card is an Aztech (azt2320). I still haven't tested it in another machine, so at this point I don't know if it works, could never get any sound out of it. With the pci card, emulator wise I have tried dos based ones. Nesticle, Kgen, Genecyst, Zsnes, and others. They all sounded bad except Zsnes. Only windows emu I am hoping to get to work is an older version of FCEultra. To make sure there was nothing wrong with the pci sound card, I put it in my machine and ran some of the same emulators. It sounded great.

Maybe I'll record something, so you guys can hear what I am talking about.