Sound glitches on A1200 (SND:-82%)
 

Hello.

I've got issues with the sound on A1200 emulated with WinUAE 3.3 and 3.1 (both portable and installed). I've tried to set up a configuration for A1200 according to Example Configurations at http://www.vware.at/winuaehelp/
( http://www.vware.at/winuaehelp/Examp...gurations.html ).

SND indication increasing and goes from 0 to -80% in a few seconds and then goes grey beyond -80% with glitches appearing, emulations slows down and indicator stops on -82%. I've read on this forum (I guess that was from Toni Wilen) that SND normally should be between -20 and 20%.

A500 configuration on WinUAE has SND at -40 or -10 and its sound is working fine.

I've tried tweaking sound options including switching drivers but all I have is a little delay (buffer 10) of sound normal working for a few seconds untill SND reaches -80%. But I don't know how to use WinUAE plugins, maybe some plug-ins for sound would help if I knew how to use them. For example OpenAL?

The dropdown list of sound drivers at the top of the sound options consists of DSOUND: Primary sound driver and DSOUND: Realtek HD Audio Output but changing it doesn't help. I've got also installed ASIO4ALL audio driver but it it's not listed here.

I'm using WinUAE on my old Eee PC 4G netbook with Intel Celeron 900MHz, 504MB RAM, integrated graphics Intel GMA 900 and audio Realtek ALC662, WinXP SP3 installed.

What should I do to fix this?
Thanks.

High CPU usage can result in poor sound. Try moving the CPU speed slider to the left.

Probably your config + PC hardware combination requires more CPU power than is available. Check CPU%, does it stay (temporarily or continuously) above 100%?

Thank you for replies!

Previously I've already used option CPU Emulation Speed Fastest possible. I also moved CPU Speed slider to the left as well. But that didn't helped much. "Fastest possible" option helped to decrease CPU indication from previous 200+ (continuously) to about 50-180% and emulation went faster but the issue with the SND:-82% remained. SND percentage grew from 0% to 80% and then as usual started to glitch. Before -80% all works very well.

If I pause emulator and then resume sound buffer size set to 10 again gives normal sound untill it grows -80%. I set mono mode, 15000 or 11000 Hz, disable interpolation, turn off audio filter.

Floppy drive sound emulation causes the same problem. Even when FDD sound emulation is off and I see kickstart picture with diskette animation the issue with SND growth remains (I just don't hear glitch).

And if I disable sound (doesn't matter emulated or not) the issue is gone.

On A500 the sound works fine and SND stays lower than -80%.

Maybe some memory settings could also lower requirements? Or other settings set to minimum for such netbooks as mine to emulate A1200 without audio glitches?

Could you attach the two configs you're using (A500 and A1200)? Maybe there's some other difference between them which could explain the problem.

Those screenshots show averages. Sometimes it can get worse or better.

In the A1200 config you have CPU speed set to "Fastest possible" not "Approximate A500/A1200 or cycle-exact". Try setting it to Approx... instead.

The A500 config uses full-screen, the A1200 windowed.

(You also have 512KB slow RAM in the A1200 config???)

Also, you're using DirectDraw. Do things improve if you use Direct3D instead (Graphics API in Miscellaneous settings)?
Try setting Collision Level to None (in Chipset settings) too, that could help reduce CPU usage.

Also, try setting on the Display settings tab, the option Native screen to Fullscreen.
To the right of that, set the dropdown to Low Latency Vsync.

Finally, set the refreshrate to 50hz PAL.

EDIT: Doh! I should have read OP's comments better. The Celeron 900mhz is not the best configuration for an A1200 AGA setup. That might indeed be the cause.

Thanks for useful comments.

Onkelarie, eventually it works alright despite its incompatibility with WinUAE minimal requirements.

Mark_k, Slow RAM was set up initially to 512KB because according to Example Configurations at http://www.vware.at/winuaehelp/ it is shown as n/a. So I've set it between 0 and 1.8MB randomly. Any value at all didn't improve or worsen the sound.

Direct3D didn't help.

Fullscreen + Low latency VSync turns out to matter in my case because Windowed worked slower.

Screen settings refresh slider set to second value was optimal and mostly fixed my sound issues (values are not indicated here in this setting and by the way it was 50Hz PAL all the time). First (left) value gave normal image movement and glitchy sound and vice versa. With this slider set like that now normal work of sound lasts minimum half a minute and more while the image is still moving smoothly.

All other settings mentioned in this thread didn't improve emulation. Including Collision Level to None, tweaking slow RAM. Except memory settings Chip that I must set to minimum value starting from 1.5 because if less then I couldn't boot normally and I'll get AmigaDOS message while loading a game:
runme.exe: not enough memory available
runme.exe failed returncode 10

So now A1200 config works fine with all settings mentioned above and CPU emulation speed set to Approximate A500/A1200 or cycle-exact -90%. And A600 config with Fastest possible speed (Approximate didn't work and glitches were back).

I've attached these two working configs just in case.

But there's still a tiny problem that I couldn't manage to fix. The sound now in these configs is faster and higher than it should be originally. That's OK, I can live with that.
UPD: Fixed. Need to choose other than Low latency option in Display→Screen settings→Native at the right.