Sound Echo in Mame32

[IG-88]

I am looking for advice on how I can fix this issue I'm having. I got an old machine that is running mame32 v.83 and some of the games have this annoying echoing during gameplay. If I try using v75 I don't have the problem. Is that small leap in versions that much more hardware intensive that it mucks up the sound? I'd like to continue using v83 if I could. Any ideas on how to fix it?

I'm running it on an optimized version of win98se. The system specs are:

1.2ghz CPU
765mb ram
ATI 3D Rage Pro Mach64
Creative Labs CT4750


thanks

[ahofle]

Is that small leap in versions that much more hardware intensive that it mucks up the sound?

It's very likely.  Any time I've run into that echoing it's because the frame rate isn't 100%.  You can check that by pressing F11 while running the game.  If it's lower than 100%, then you need more hardware.

[IG-88]

Cool. Do you think a better sound card or a bigger (more mb) vid card would help? What would you recommend?

[ahofle]

In my experience those two things help very little.  I went through this same thing a couple years ago and bought a sound card thinking the onboard sound was the problem.  It didn't help at all.  The only thing that seems to help (other than tweaking MAME) is a faster CPU.    What games are choppy?  Have you tried F11 to see how close you are to 100%? 

[IG-88]

OK. I went and checked. Knights of the round was at about 84%. I changed the frameskip to auto from 0 and it helped a little. I then bumped it up to 3 and it looks pretty good. My old eyes can't see much difference. Arabian Knights was the other one I was looking at. It was at 72%. I haven't tried any frameskip on that yet.

Now. Next question. Is that frameskip I set game independent? Or is that a "global" type setting?

[IG-88]

Never mind that last question. I figured it out. Thanks for the advice tho. I was about to start  swappin' cards like mad.