Game audio levels

[keropi]

Hiya!

it has always bugged me, why the game audio levels in mame are not constant? Some games are loud - some have very low volume , isn't there an option for all to have the same audio level? 

[krick]

Some games have on-screen volume controls that you access by hitting the service button (F2 on your keyboard).

Other games had hardware volume controls on the board.  I don't know if these are hard-coded in the MAME drivers, or if you can adjust the volume through the per-game settings in the MAME menu (the TAB key on your keyboard).

If you find a game that's really out of whack, you can ask about it on MAMEchat forum on MAMEworld and see if anyone thinks it needs to be reported as a bug.

Are there specific games that you're having problems with?

[keropi]

Several games actually - take for example Battletoads: extremely low volume. Others are not so bad but there are volume fluctuations and you need to adjust your volume knob per-case (good thing I installed a hidden one in my cab - so useful!) I just don't understand why can't everything be at the same level. Per-game settings is a solution - yes , it just strikes me as odd to have these differences...

[Paradroid]

This is actually something I've been meaning to bring up here for a while now...

I refurbished a cabinet with a 20" vertical CRT a while back and fitted it out with some refurbished LS-30 rotary sticks.

The games list was strictly vertical games with rotary joysticks (including Calibre .50 that uses the Loop 24 stick) so the games list was short.

Aside from the hassle of getting the rotary sticks working, one of the things that really annoyed me once I had it up and running the volume discrepancies between the games.

Long story short, I wrote and AutoHotkey script that imported sounds recordings of each games (I played each one for 300 seconds) into Foobar and then analysed the recordings to create ReplayGain values. From there, my AHK scripts created individual *.ini files for each games with the ReplayGain value used to attenuate the volume level (attenuate because MAME doesn't provide a way to boost so the quietest games dictates the highest gain).

The end result is that all games have extremely similar average volumes levels now. I suppose increasing the length of the sample recording would make for more accurate analysis but I found 5 mins produced a good result. Of course, the downside is that I had to play every game to produce a WAV file to analyse (not such a terrible task) but it would be very time consuming if the games list wasn't so short. If we got organised and distributed the task though... 

I could dig out my script (the final version is stored on the cab which is in a cafe set to freeplay) and post some instructions if there's any interest. It's a lot more accurate (and less frustrating) than trying to match the volumes by ear.

[haynor666]

http://www.1emulation.com/forums/topic/35683-feature-sound-boost-with-save/

Not an easy problem. The only way is boost audio through mame sliders menu. Very annoying when You have game with many sound channels.
Another problem is audio cut off in some games when when You set audio above 1.00.

[Titchgamer]

 I used 2x shift keys on my cab to control the windows volume as a last resort but most games I set up as I went using sliders in the mame menu.

[krick]

Long story short, I wrote and AutoHotkey script that imported sounds recordings of each games (I played each one for 300 seconds) into Foobar and then analysed the recordings to create ReplayGain values. From there, my AHK scripts created individual *.ini files for each games with the ReplayGain value used to attenuate the volume level (attenuate because MAME doesn't provide a way to boost so the quietest games dictates the highest gain).

Before you did this, did you use F2 on each game (if supported) to adjust any of the on-screen volumes?  For example, the Mortal Kombat series by default has very low volume and you need to use the F2 menu on each game to jack the volume to a normal level.

[Dacasks]

MK1 and 2 have really odd combo of low music audio + too loud sfx sound compared to real hardware. Its annoying as hell the "Hooah Hooah Hooah OOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW" if you want to listen to the music.

[krick]

MK1 and 2 have really odd combo of low music audio + too loud sfx sound compared to real hardware. Its annoying as hell the "Hooah Hooah Hooah OOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW" if you want to listen to the music.

I think you can adjust the volume levels of each via the F2 in-game menu.

[Dacasks]

MK1 and 2 have really odd combo of low music audio + too loud sfx sound compared to real hardware. Its annoying as hell the "Hooah Hooah Hooah OOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW" if you want to listen to the music.

I think you can adjust the volume levels of each via the F2 in-game menu.

Yes, I'm aware of that, but I'm not talking about the game volume, I'm talking about the sound emulation.

Some of the music instruments are also in the same channel as other sfxs, so, the slider controls can't help much either.

(Reading again, no, the service menu only allows to change the overall volume)

[krick]

You should file a bug at mametesters.org and/or mame github about the MK 1/2 volume issue if there isn't already an open issue.  It would be best to provide reference audio from a real board so that mamedev can compare it to the emulation.  They generally ignore this type of report without reference recordings/videos from real hardware since "I remember it sounding different" isn't enough.

[Dacasks]

Well... "I do remember sounding different" just because I don't have the boards anymore so...
But it kinda amazes me since these are such well known games, that most arcade pcb collectors have and still... so probably is something nobody really cared to figure out yet. Just like CPS 1 default "overclocked" settings, which in my opinion is a lot more noticeable and easier to workaround.