Groovyarcade audio / video adjustment questions

[nespcbuild]

1. Is it possible to change audio settings to mix the stereo output down to mono? Some of my cabs have only a single speaker and I'm wondering if I'm going to be missing sounds when I play roms that are in stereo on them.

2. Is there a way to adjust overall gamma, brightness and contrast not just in mame but universally? I have a monitor that I just can't get dialed in perfectly without adjusting settings in mame. I know I should be able to just set default settings for mame and retroarch but is there somewhere that those settings can be adjusted for the entire OS?

3. Mame looks beautiful on my arcade crt monitors but running console roms in retroarch, the scanline effect is missing. The shaders seem to all be missing too even though I've downloaded the shaders assets. What am I doing wrong? If I can get the scanline effect without using shaders then I guess I don't really care about shaders.

I also would like to just say thanks to everyone involved in this project. I can't believe how awesome it is. I also appreciate how helpful and friendly people have been when I've needed help in the past with GA related stuff. You guys are great.

[Substring]

1. looks like it's possible from software (google "alsa downmix to mono" for example)

2. nope. Or at least, not to my knowledge. Open your monitor set the pots

3. The configuration is intended for a 15kHz display which has native scanlines, it's not a shader thing. RA works fine for everyone on 15kHz. What is your monitor ?

[nespcbuild]

Thanks for the help.

Actually I must just be wrong about the scanline thing because I compared a little more and it seems fine. I guess they're just much more pronounced in certain mame roms but I think that's just the way it is.

I know you suggested the pots on the monitor but I think this tube must need a rejuvenation or something because no matter how I set the pots, I can't get certain details to show up on screen. It's a 25" k7000 and even went as far as to check my other 19" k7000 to see what the settings were on there to see if I had just done something weird with this one. I've also spent probably a total of about 4 or 5 hours trying different settings with the pots but I just can't get it looking 100% right unless I use software setting to tweak it. It's been recapped and flyback and HOT both replaced and I tested every cap I replaced before replacing them so I don't know. Even if I turn up the brightness to the point of making it look washed out or the contrast up to where it starts to make the colores bleed, there are still some details missing from some of the darker stuff. I can adjust the brightness/contrast in emulators until I can find a way to try to rejuvenate it.

The mono audio was really the main issue I wanted to figure out so thanks for pointing me in the right direction on that one.

[Zebidee]

Regarding mono audio - You could try simply twisting your left and right stereo channels together. I see it in consumer gear all the time. You lose very little of the audio "content", it just gets pushed out a single speaker.

However, an easier option is to change your PC audio settings.

If using Windows 10 or similar, go into "settings" and search for "mono audio". You should then see a slider to turn on/off mono.

Regarding monitor brightness/dimness, if you install the relevant ATI catalyst software for your video card, you can make adjustments to brightness, gamma, color saturation/brightness/warmth etc with that. I think you would need to uninstall CRTEMU first (or maybe ATI Catalyst does that anyway), but you can re-install CRTEMU after without removing the ATI catalyst.

Yes, you can have both ATI catalyst (software) and CRTEMU (driver) installed at the same time. Some people prefer to not install any ATI software at all, to avoid any potential conflict with CRT_emulator. However, I've personally never found this to make any issues.

You might also consider tweaking the flyback on your monitor (if you haven't already). With your brightness and contrast pots in mid-position, load up some monitor test software, or a game with a dark background (I use Galaga). Now adjust flyback knob up a little until the black space background looks a little gray, then slowly down again until the "grayness" disappears, and is the same colour as the black cutoff bars at top/bottom of screen (or left/right sides monitor isn't rotated).

Don't adjust the flyback so high that you get retrace lines appearing. Once you get the brightness sorted out to the right level, you may also need to re-adjust the flyback focus knob.

If the colours are still washed out and the CRT guns near the end of their lives, you may need a rejuvenation and/or to start looking for replacement donor tubes (I understand this is relatively easy for the K7000s).

As Substring says, you don't need scanlines or shaders for a 15khz CRT monitor as it has them "natively", so to speak.

[nespcbuild]

Thanks for the suggestions. I might try bridging the audio wires if I can't get the software settings to work. The windows stuff won't apply to me since I'm using groovyarcade with archlinux. It was pretty easy to get the emulators and everything up and running but things like audio settings have been a little more complicated mostly just because I'm not as experienced with Linux.

I wish I could get this monitor looking right but I've tried the flyback adjustment and every pot and just about every possible combination of settings with the pots on the chassis and the neckboard and never have I had such a difficult time getting a monitor to look right. It's good enough for now that I can just make slight adjustments in mame and retroarch to get it looking good enough though.