No sound in many games in groovymame? (HD4350 related? CRT_Emu?)

[Endprodukt]

Hi,
I'm in the middle of setting up a new computer for ny cabinet.
I'm using Groovymame 0.146u4, XP32, Radeon HD 4350 with Emu_CRT Driver,  connected to a TV Screen through an UMSA via Scart.
 Long story short:

I have a very strange, stuttered sound (it's more or less just noise bursts) in many games such as MK 1-3. This only happens when Switchres is activated. If deactivated the Sound is normal but the screen is way to small (of course). Even with switchres activated it doesn't happen in ALL games, some seem to work without problems.

I thought this MAY BE driver related. If I understand everything right I shouldn't get a screen through VGA to an PC Screen after installing the hacked driver... but I do. But the UMSA wouldn't work if the output wouldn't be at 15khz and I wouldn't get a picture on the tv screen. VMM also finds the driver.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Calamity]

Try -video d3d

Check this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,122208.msg1297611.html#msg1297611

[Endprodukt]

Tried that, didn't do anything. Sounds still messy. It's like that in almost every game. Just a few seem to work. When I press alt+tab to get to the desktop, the sound get's REALLY fast but is actually playing. Back to game I have the same problem.

[Calamity]

Press F11 during game and check what speed it's really running at.

[Endprodukt]

Game runs at 100,22% average speed  (Mortal Kombat 1). No sound. Pressing F11 says 100, too. Game feels just as it should... no sound though.

[Calamity]

Try enabling -triplebuffer.

[krick]

Do you have a PC monitor and your TV connected at the same time?

Maybe that's causing problems.

[Endprodukt]

Enabled triplebuffer, same problem

No, PC Monitor ist not connected, only the TV through DVI->Vga-> UMSA. Some games work just fine (Mr.Driller) but most have no/stuttering sound. The stutter is not like it's a little... I only get soundbursts.

-> DDRAW + Switchres 0 = Sound, picture too small, game too fast
-> DDRAW + Switchres 1 = No Sound, Picture good, gamespeed good
-> D3D + Switchres 0 = Picture strechted, stuttering sound
-> D3D + Switchres 1 =        "                              "

[Calamity]

That is too odd.

I assume your sound wiring is ok and you have tested this with other sound apps.

The HD 4350 has its own audio built-in hardware that needs its specific drivers, check in the device manager to see if everything is fine.

[Calamity]

Wait a minute Endprodukt, what you mean by "Switchres"?

-switchres option?
-modeline option?

[krick]

That is too odd.

I assume your sound wiring is ok and you have tested this with other sound apps.

The HD 4350 has its own audio built-in hardware that needs its specific drivers, check in the device manager to see if everything is fine.

That's a good point.  If you install the stock ATI drivers, it installs an HDMI audio driver.  This driver is not part of the older Catalyst drivers that CRT_EmuDriver is based off of.  I think you can download the driver separately (or possibly as an optional Windows Update), but once the driver is installed, I think you need to disable the device in Device Manager.

[Endprodukt]

With switchres I mean switchres Modeline is at 1.

Audio works with everything else, just Mame isn't working. Device Manager say's there are missing drivers for HD AUdio Device, I suppose this is for the HD4350. You think this could be connected?

I just tried to hook everything up to the VGA output of the card and it's working. Isn't it supposed to work only through the DVI and not through both? I remember that windows said that the approval failed through installation and if I want to continue. Is that normal?

[Calamity]

Audio works with everything else, just Mame isn't working. Device Manager say's there are missing drivers for HD AUdio Device, I suppose this is for the HD4350. You think this could be connected?

I would definitely try to fix the HD Audio device!

I just tried to hook everything up to the VGA output of the card and it's working. Isn't it supposed to work only through the DVI and not through both? I remember that windows said that the approval failed through installation and if I want to continue. Is that normal?

The VGA output is perfectly functional, the problem is that your monitor won't be detected on boot, defaulting video output to the DVI connector. After boot you can make turn the VGA output on again but you need to do this every time.

[krick]

I think this is the universal HDMI audio driver from Microsoft...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888111

And here's an older HDMI audio driver from ATI...
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/8-2/Pages/hdmi_xp.aspx?&lang=English


If your card has a VGA port, then you should probably use that.  Most Radeon 4xxx cards have two DVI ports, or a DVI port and an HDMI port.

On most cards, the port that's at the bottom of the card (closest to the motherboard) is usually the primary port.  But this is not always the case.

I have an old Radeon X600XT card that has a DVI-D port and a VGA port.  The VGA port is the top port, but it seems to be the primary port.  If it's not the primary port, it still works correctly with GroovyMAME, so that's all that matters.

Out of curiousity, What's the make/model of your card?  Is it an OEM card (Dell, HP, etc..)?

[Endprodukt]

Installed the HD Audio Driver (from the latest Catalyst!), didn't work. At least the sound in mame is still the same.

VGA output works while booting.

Card is an Radeon HD 4350 Asus - I selected it because it seems to work good with Soft15khz and low resolution modes.

[Calamity]

But did it actually fix the device manager warning?

[Endprodukt]

yes it did! the hdmi output is not listed in the audio options but that's because it's not connected... at least that's how it works with all my HDMI devices.

[krick]

I'm confused.  When you connect to the VGA port, does it fix the sound issues in MAME?

[Endprodukt]

No, connecting the VGA does not fix the sound issue. Until now the only thing that fixed the sound issue was setting "switchres" to "0" in ddraw mode. But then the game is too fast and the screen too small.

[Calamity]

VGA output works while booting.

Probably your UMSA is properly detected by the card as a monitor, that's interesting.

[Endprodukt]

Well or something with the driver is not working as I still can connect my card to a pc monitor. right!?

[Calamity]

No, connecting the VGA does not fix the sound issue. Until now the only thing that fixed the sound issue was setting "switchres" to "0" in ddraw mode. But then the game is too fast and the screen too small.

Please try regular MAME with option -switchres on.

[Calamity]

Well or something with the driver is not working as I still can connect my card to a pc monitor. right!?

If you're getting 15 KHz and you can get more than 60 custom modelines (check Arcade_OSD) then the driver is working. The driver works with any type of monitor, we're not restricting 31 KHz and higher frequencies at all.

However, launch dxdiag and check if both ddraw and d3d acceleration is enabled.

[krick]

Just for the hell of it, you should make sure that you actually have the latest DirectX installed too...

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

[Endprodukt]

Do I need to create new videomodes for the regular mame version?

Just tried the regular version:

DDraw and D3D are bent on  top of the screen and have the same sound stutter problems. Only switchres off + hwstretch on gives normal sound but of course a blurred picture.

[Calamity]

Are you using magic resolutions? Can you attach here either your modelines.txt file or a log from groovymame:

groovymame mk -v -md 4 >mk.txt

[Endprodukt]

Sure, there you go, I don't know what exactly magic resolutions does but it's set to auto.

[Calamity]

Thanks. Everything is normal there.

Just tried the regular version:

DDraw and D3D are bent on  top of the screen and have the same sound stutter problems. Only switchres off + hwstretch on gives normal sound but of course a blurred picture.

Well, there's something really odd going on in your system. The sound stuttering is not related to GroovyMAME. The fact that it happens whenever you switch resolutions seems to point to the video card (??!!) and to me the only connection between the video card and the audio is the built in HD sound that might be conflicting with the version of the driver or something. I would try installing the proper version of the audio driver here:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/9-3/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx?&lang=English

[krick]

Some other ideas...

Do you have the latest chipset drivers installed for your motherboard?

What CPU do you have?
Is it overclocked?
What kind of cooling?  (stock/aftermarket, air/water, )

Could the CPU be overheating and throttling?

Are you using onboard sound or a discrete video card?

Do you have the latest sound drivers?

Is the sound sharing an IRQ with anything (especially the video)?

For the hell of it, you should try uninstalling all ATI drivers, then running the Catalyst Cleaner....
http://www.ultimarc.com/cat-uninstaller.exe
Then do a clean install of CRT_EmuDriver.



EDIT:   I also wanted to mention that I had an issue where I got an error at the end of the CRT_EmuDriver installation mentioned in this thread...
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,121216.0.html

Basically, it didn't install the resolutions properly, so I had to run VMMaker and restart for it to work.

[Endprodukt]

Latest chipset drivers are installed,

CPU is intel duel core quad, air cooled without overclocking. I don't think the cpu is the problem.

I'm using onboard sound. It's a Realtek ALC888s Chip with the latest driver.

How can I check if the IRQ is sharing anything?

I allready reinstalled the system today and I was the same as before... this is getting really frustrating.

[krick]

Hmmm.  Onboard sound shouldn't share with video.

If you uninstall the HDMI audio device, reboot, refuse to install the driver, then disable it in Device Manager?  Does it make any difference?

Is this a standard XP installation or one of the hacked "tinyXP" installs?

I'm running out of ideas at this point.

[Endprodukt]

It's just Windows XP professional. I try to delete all HDMI drivers and clean the registry... we'll see what happens.

[Calamity]

At any moment did you try using the version 9.3 of the HDMI driver I linked above?

[Endprodukt]

Yes but windows refused to take it. right now I hooked up my computer to a pc monitor again to install all net. frameworks to make ONE software working to delete all registrys connected to the newer driver...

[krick]

I think most software only requires .NET 2.0.  I know that the ATI Catalyst Control Center only requires that.

I wouldn't bother installing higher than 2.0 unless you need to.

[Endprodukt]

No matter what I do I can't deinstall the old drivers. Windows automaticly installs the new driver and I can't find it in the registry...

Also the old driver 9.3 comes with two WDM drivers (RIO and AVS_T200) and both give me an exclamation mark.

[Calamity]

No matter what I do I can't deinstall the old drivers. Windows automaticly installs the new driver and I can't find it in the registry...

Sometimes you need to uninstall it manually from device manager, right-clicking on the concerned device, until Windows doesn't find any compatible driver on boot.

[Endprodukt]

I did that a couple of times now. Question is... which WDM driver would be the right one anyway...

[Calamity]

I did that a couple of times now. Question is... which WDM driver would be the right one anyway...

I would try the one in the link above.

[krick]

Did you use the Catalyst Cleaner that I linked to earlier?

Sometimes, you need to uninstall the drivers and remove the devices in device manager, then boot into safe mode (tap F8 while booting), before running the Catalyst Cleaner to really get rid of them.