MAME sound problems cont.

[radiator]

i posted a while back about nasty sound problems i was getting in MAME...

well...i've sorted it (kind of) but need some advice/help/opinions...

my machine is an Athlon 1.2Ghz, 640Mb RAM, 40Gb HDD, ATI 7500 64MB graphics card, and i'm using a 25" s-video tv
the problem only occurs when the tv is connected to the computer (ie, only the tv, as the main display, no secondary monitor plugged into the card).
as soon as i unplug the tv and connect my monitor, the problems completely go away (and suddenly i'm able to play the vast majority of games at full speed (auto frameskip, reports 100% and 60/60 fps - whereas using the tv, with the same games, it goes down to 50/60 with nasty sound skipping)

just wondered if this problem has occured to anyone else, and is there an easy fix that i've missed along the way

cheers guys

[austinrfnd]

Wow, that's weird man.  I am a newbie, but are you using the correct and updated drivers for your ATI card?    Are you running your emulation in DOS or windows?

-Austin

[radiator]

running mame .65 in WindowsXP Pro

ATI drivers are the latest (only got the card a month ago - downloaded the drivers as soon as it arrived!)

it is kind of a weird problem, not really sure why it happens...

 

[radiator]

anyone

[Cave]

Try renaming or deleting your mame.ini this should give you default settings and try the offending game again if its ok now then its got to be a setting in the .ini, this is what my problem was sounds very much like yours.

[Cave]

Ok I've found out that it was the "Triplebuffer" command, try setting this to 0, having this turned on was causing crackled sound and lag on my setup.

[radiator]

Cave:

did what you said, renamed my old mame.ini and created a new one (i'd have never thought of that )

anywho, setup the following in the new .ini file:

hwstretch              1
resolution              640x480
effect                      sharp
high_priority          1
skip_disclaimer      1
skip_info                1

and also turned off artwork, backdrops, overlays and bezels, fired up mame and the sound problem was solved.........but, got nasty video 'tearing' in the game i ran (using SmashTV as a test).

after fiddling around with the .ini file i found that turning on either triplebuffer, or waitvsync would cause the problems again (and also, the autoframeskip would report between 89% and 110%, at anything between 47 and 58fps (out of 53fps)).

grrrr

is there any damn solution that can get rid of the video tearing, but leave the sound alone?!?!?

this really bugs me, its like you can either have nice video, or nice sound, but not both at the same time...

(just waiting for Howard to come along and tell me i need a P4 3Ghz to be able to run MAME properly )

but seriously, i dont think this is a 'CPU not fast enough' situation, as the problems go away as soon as i connect my PC monitor...it only seems to happen with the tv!?


EDIT:

ok, just ran SmashTV again, using my computer monitor - same settings as above (but with waitvsync and triplebuffer enabled)
sound is fine, graphics look nice and smooth, and the frameskip constantly flickers between 99% and 100%, the fps runs at 53/53 and very occasionaly flicks down to 46/53

seems to just be a problem with the tv-out on the graphics card...hmmm

[Cave]

I'm using an arcade monitor+ArcadeVGA with an AMD xp2000+ and have the same problem one or the other  , the thing is i never had this problem last week and can't remember what i've done to cause it.

[radiator]

thanks for the info Cave

does anyone else have this problem?

[StephenH]

Try upgrading to the latest version of DirectX

[radiator]

ok, i've double checked that my ATI drivers are up to date (and they are), i've also downloaded DirectX 9.0a (which took bloody ages!)

still, the problem persists...

i might give advanceMAME a shot and see what happens, unless anyone has any bright ideas?

 

[Cave]

I've narrowed it down a bit more, Puckman for instance, when its displayed in its native rotation i.e. vertical, sound is fine with triple buffer on, when i run the game on a horizontal monitor sound starts to skip, now would this sugest a video problem ?