Q Sound in MAME... Sounds... not so good.

[Tritoch84]

Is there any drivers or anything that I'm missing that will make the Q Sound (capcom CPS-2 boards) sound better? Going from Kawaks (AMAZING Q-Sound) to MAME left alot to be desired. It's ok enough, but Kawaks just owns it to no end as far as QSound goes.

Any settings/files that will help?

[Bobby115]

I Have the same problems. Everywhere I looked I have not found a fix. I tried editing the MAME INI file but so far nothing has helped.

[Minwah]

How exactly is it different?  (I haven't used Kawaks)

[Tritoch84]

Well, Kawaks sounds like awesome QSound.

QSound in MAME sounds like it's being played thru a pillow.

I only noticed because I'm a huge fan of capcom fighters, and I noticed they sound ALOT better (the ones with qsound) in kawaks. Download kawaks, and you willsee what I mean! It's like night and day.

[elvis]

It's only a guess, but I would assume Kawaks uses some sort of automagic normalisation like a lot of emulators do (I know AdvanceMAME does the same).  MAME by definition is against that sort of thing, but you can still fiddle with the options yourself.

During a game, whack the tilde "~" button.  Each time you push it you'll be presented with a new menu.  There are things like sound channel volume options (including qsound stuff for those games), gamma controls, etc.  Try fiddling with those and see if you can make it sound a little better.

Remember that for better or worse, MAME is not intended to modify a game in any way.  If the original board had poor sound output, then so will MAME.  Any post-processing (video or audio) is not the job of the MAME devs.  Hence why you don't see all the fancy scale2x modes and whatnot in vanilla MAME.

[Tritoch84]

Thanks for your post, I noticed those, but it's just volume settings, nothing to enhance the sound.

So if MAME is so perfect, why does Kawaks "sound" more true to the arcade boards I have played on?

(Or maybe it doesn't, but I grew up in arcades, and play alot of CPS-2 QSound games in tournys.)

[elvis]

For most games you can change the volume per channel.  So say just the qsound or voice channels are lacking, you can boost them independant of the other channels.

Again, things like Kawaks and AdvanceMAME use normalisation routines to change the sound to make it better for PC use.  MAME doesn't modify any graphics or sound, and plays them as close as humanly possible to what the original arcade PCB would have done. 

Remember also that there are often a great deal of analogue filters between an arcade's sound board and your ears.  Various amplifiers and equalisers are not going to be emulated by MAME.  Kawaks and co will often "simulate" this.  MAME is a pure "emulator", and as the FAQ says, will not ever be a "simulator".

The differences are subtle, but you are seeing/hearing the result first hand.

[Tritoch84]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.