sound

[raist0069]

I plan on starting my project soon and have a few questions.  Playing mame32 v.67 on my pc, Killer Instinct now runs great!  But the sound will get all dissorted somtimes.  Is this because I am using on-board sound?  Thing is, the mother board I plan on buying for my project has on board sound and deciding whether to buy a seperate sound card or not.  So what are your opinions, on-board sound good enough for running mame?  I seriously don't know the difference.

Seems the on-board sound would work just fine.  I play music all the time on it and sounds great.

And has anyone tried putting a sub woofer inside a cab?  The speakers I plan on using has a sub woofer.  Im thinking it should sound fine.

[Odonadon]

I plan on starting my project soon and have a few questions.  Playing mame32 v.67 on my pc, Killer Instinct now runs great!  But the sound will get all dissorted somtimes.  Is this because I am using on-board sound?  Thing is, the mother board I plan on buying for my project has on board sound and deciding whether to buy a seperate sound card or not.

Seems the on-board sound would work just fine.  I play music all the time on it and sounds great.

And has anyone tried putting a sub woofer inside a cab?  The speakers I plan on using has a sub woofer.  Im thinking it should sound fine.

I don't use an on-board soundcard, but I have the same problem with sound.  I think it's a Windows thing as it doesn't happen in DOS.

I think we all have subs in our cabs .  You definitely want one.  It sounds excellent - the cab itself helps resonate the sound.

Odonadon

[raist0069]

Thanks a ton Odonadon.

[paigeoliver]

As long as your motherboard has a real sound chip (as opposed to a deal where the CPU basically emulates a sound chip, which is mostly done on crap OEM computers), then that probably is not the issue.

[Homebrew]

I'm having the same problem in KI and i too have a seperate sound card.  I just recently got the MK3 & UMK to play with only a little sound distortion.  I did this by freeing up system resources and cutting back windows xp services.  It was quite a bit of tweaking actually.  With that said, I think our current problem is due to the amount of power KI requires.  KI even though its perfectly playable, is still using alot of processing power and resources.   As mentioned in another thread by HC, people tend to overlook the amount of resources that are used by the sound card.  I think once people's systems start catching up, the problem will work itself out.  I know my system for instance is working the bare minimum CPU for games like this and UMK.  My system consists of:

AMD 1.2ghz T-bird overclocked to 1.3
896mb PC2100 Ram
Soundblaster Live
Radeon 7500 64mb TV-out

I have more than enough ram, but i think my cpu is holding me back.  My framerates seem to be fine, but sound is what often suffers.  Like i mentioned, i was able to nearly cure the problem in UMK by freeing resources, so i think by having increased resources the same can be accomplished with KI.  The sound in KI for me right now is actually pretty bad.  I think if i upgraded to something like an xp2400+ cpu, i could make a pretty big improvement.  Probably wouldn't cure it, but would be alot better.  I could be wrong though.  It could be that you guys are running much faster CPU's than i am, but at the same time i don't know how bad the sound is for you.  Like i said, its pretty bad for me.  I suppose its also possible that there's improvements to be made to the sound driver in mame.  Just out of curiosity, what are the specs of you're systems guys?

-Kevin

[BillyJack]

Speaking of subs, where do you guys suggest subwoofer placement in a cab?  My cab was originally a World Series: The Season (suck) game, and it had mono audio...  My original idea was to put the sub in the mono (center) hole and cut 2 more for the L & R speaker.  But at the same time, I know that bass is not "directionally challenged" and I don't need it in my face by any means...  

Let me know,

BillyJack

[radiator]

bass tends to be lower than any other speaker (which is why hifi speakers look the way they do - low freq. speaker at bottom, med freq. in center, and tweaters at the top)

i'm personally gonna build my own sub and intergrate it into the bottom of the cab...

[paigeoliver]

I'm having the same problem in KI and i too have a seperate sound card.  I just recently got the MK3 & UMK to play with only a little sound distortion.  I did this by freeing up system resources and cutting back windows xp services.  It was quite a bit of tweaking actually.  With that said, I think our current problem is due to the amount of power KI requires.  KI even though its perfectly playable, is still using alot of processing power and resources.   As mentioned in another thread by HC, people tend to overlook the amount of resources that are used by the sound card.  I think once people's systems start catching up, the problem will work itself out.  I know my system for instance is working the bare minimum CPU for games like this and UMK.  My system consists of:

AMD 1.2ghz T-bird overclocked to 1.3
896mb PC2100 Ram
Soundblaster Live
Radeon 7500 64mb TV-out

I have more than enough ram, but i think my cpu is holding me back.  My framerates seem to be fine, but sound is what often suffers.  Like i mentioned, i was able to nearly cure the problem in UMK by freeing resources, so i think by having increased resources the same can be accomplished with KI.  The sound in KI for me right now is actually pretty bad.  I think if i upgraded to something like an xp2400+ cpu, i could make a pretty big improvement.  Probably wouldn't cure it, but would be alot better.  I could be wrong though.  It could be that you guys are running much faster CPU's than i am, but at the same time i don't know how bad the sound is for you.  Like i said, its pretty bad for me.  I suppose its also possible that there's improvements to be made to the sound driver in mame.  Just out of curiosity, what are the specs of you're systems guys?

-Kevin

This may sound stupid. But pull some RAM out and try that game again. Back when I had a K6-2-500, and I was trying to get full speed emulation of Super Mario 64, I found that dropping down to 128MB of RAM from 512 MB did the trick. I don't really understand why that worked? (Maybe less RAM for the CPU to keep track of?), but it did work.

[Odonadon]

I'm having the same problem in KI and i too have a seperate sound card.  I just recently got the MK3 & UMK to play with only a little sound distortion.  I did this by freeing up system resources and cutting back windows xp services.  It was quite a bit of tweaking actually.  With that said, I think our current problem is due to the amount of power KI requires.  KI even though its perfectly playable, is still using alot of processing power and resources.   As mentioned in another thread by HC, people tend to overlook the amount of resources that are used by the sound card.  I think once people's systems start catching up, the problem will work itself out.  I know my system for instance is working the bare minimum CPU for games like this and UMK.  My system consists of:

AMD 1.2ghz T-bird overclocked to 1.3
896mb PC2100 Ram
Soundblaster Live
Radeon 7500 64mb TV-out

I have more than enough ram, but i think my cpu is holding me back.  My framerates seem to be fine, but sound is what often suffers.  Like i mentioned, i was able to nearly cure the problem in UMK by freeing resources, so i think by having increased resources the same can be accomplished with KI.  The sound in KI for me right now is actually pretty bad.  I think if i upgraded to something like an xp2400+ cpu, i could make a pretty big improvement.  Probably wouldn't cure it, but would be alot better.  I could be wrong though.  It could be that you guys are running much faster CPU's than i am, but at the same time i don't know how bad the sound is for you.  Like i said, its pretty bad for me.  I suppose its also possible that there's improvements to be made to the sound driver in mame.  Just out of curiosity, what are the specs of you're systems guys?

-Kevin

This may sound stupid. But pull some RAM out and try that game again. Back when I had a K6-2-500, and I was trying to get full speed emulation of Super Mario 64, I found that dropping down to 128MB of RAM from 512 MB did the trick. I don't really understand why that worked? (Maybe less RAM for the CPU to keep track of?), but it did work.

You might have pulled out a bad stick, or one with high latency.

Odonadon

[shmokes]

Onboard sound is definitely not inherently evil.  Nforce2 motherboards, for example, have one of the most advanced consumer level sound chips on the market onboard.  In fact they will send a digital 5.1 stream while an Audigy 2 will not.  Crazy.  An audigy 2 will send an analog 5.1 signal, but over the Toslink or SPDIF digital outputs it'll only send stereo.  Still a fantastic card, though.