WinUAE sound problem

[Anubis]

LOL....

That was it. After I changed settings for minimum CPU in power settings, with JIT enabled emulation now works without any sound problem, SND: does not go more then +- 10, CPU is stable 100%.

You're genius!

Thanks!

[Thomas Korte]

Hi Mr Wilen,

I clicked "enable full logging" in paths panel. Only file I could create was winuaetemp.log (see below) I could not create winuaelog.txt or winuaebootlog.txt! How is this done??

Please can you give a more concise description of how these files are created and where they are stored?

Thanx a lot!

[Toni Wilen]

Tick also Misc panel logging option. (I think this was finally fixed in 3.1 betas).
If log still does not appear, check winuaebootlog.txt's last few lines, it should point to winuaelog.txt log file path.

3.1 beta (Use latest beta if you are you are interested) is also easier to use, button press creates single zip file that contains all needed files.

[Thomas Korte]

Ok, where can I download the 3.1 beta version, it does not seem to be in the download section of winuae.net

[Toni Wilen]

Check topmost thread in this forum

[Thomas Korte]

Ok here is the file i created with the beta version. i think it contans all necessary stuff.

Does this help with the sound??

[Toni Wilen]

Looks good.

Tests to do:

- Display panel triple buffer -> double buffer.
- Misc panel DirectDraw -> Direct3D (if it switches back to DD, install DX9. Yes, you need to install it even if you have Windows 7, 8 or even 10)
- Try windowed mode.

Try each one by one.

I am still not sure if 68060 + approximate speed setting makes sense..

[Thomas Korte]

Ok, hello again.

i tried everythimg out (first one by one, then all six combinations).

It still doesn´'t get better

Any more things I could try?

(Thanx again for your effort!)

[Toni Wilen]

At least narrows down possibilities..

What kind of hardware do you have? Desktop or laptop?
Does switching sound option from DirectSound to WASAPI change anything? ("DS: Primärer Soundtreiber" -> "WA: Lautsprecher (Realtek AC'97 Audio)")

Make also sure sound driver is up to date. (Note that games or other programs that generate sound working fine does not mean anything, playing relatively long sample from memory is totally different than playing on the fly generated audio in very small pieces)

[Thomas Korte]

HI again,

I tried all the options in the Dsound / Wasapi Menu, it didn't get better.

Hardware is a Tower model (I suppose what you mean by desktop).

How do I update my sound driver??

Thanx again for your help!

Thomas Korte

[Thomas Korte]

Ok, I updated my sound driver, it was the latest version.

Sound still isn't better...

Could you suggest any more things that I should try?

[Nut]

Sorry I didn't read full thread but try this... force WinUAE to run 50 fps from Display settings / FPS adj, click on the square and see that it says "50". This has changed I have noticed this. It was 50 before, but nowadays it is something like 49.92 by default. Only Toni knows why he changed this, I can understand the reasoning actually but it causes trouble for me This was a problem for me with sound as I'm doing a lot of non-dma sound and this f*cks it completely. Maybe this game uses interrupt audio? Lots of noise and stuff was caused by this for me.

[Toni Wilen]

49.92 is Amiga long field (313 lines) refresh rate.
50.08 short field
50.00 interlace (alternating 312/313)

(Obviously it was done to match real hardware, the longer some program runs the bigger the time difference between emulation and real hardware would get without using accurate "real-world side" frame timing.)

How can it f*ck non-dma mode? (Unless it causes some bad things to happen when resampling) And no, this game does not use non-dma audio.

EDIT: I can debug this if you have simple enough example. Again

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Even cheap (89euros) Linx 7 Windows tablet (with 1.3GHz Intel Atom CPU, not ARM) run WinUAE without slowdowns and without frame skips, even with cycle-exact as long as program didn't do any heavy copper stuff!

Interesting.. I sold the box I had a problem with sound on (it was a Z3735F Atom based mini PC sam as that tablet) but I guess I must have left it on some stupid setting then like AGA cycle exact...

It isn't likely to be related to the fact that the sound goes over USB bus on these Baytrail Atom devices?

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Even cheap (89euros) Linx 7 Windows tablet (with 1.3GHz Intel Atom CPU, not ARM) run WinUAE without slowdowns and without frame skips, even with cycle-exact as long as program didn't do any heavy copper stuff!

It looks charming I'm about to buy the same CPU windows mini pc (http://bit.ly/1IBYdHd) as amiga emulation dedicated machine in these days.

Is it possible to full A4000/060 (or /040mhz) emulation with Quad core 1.3GHz Intel Atom CPU fluently? Are there any suggested config files?

Thanks in advance.

[Leandro Jardim]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Without cycle-exact any "modern" (as in not over 10 years old) should be more than fast enough.

It is rarely about CPU speed, it is always something else. (one example is display driver forced vsync)

Even cheap (89euros) Linx 7 Windows tablet (with 1.3GHz Intel Atom CPU, not ARM) run WinUAE without slowdowns and without frame skips, even with cycle-exact as long as program didn't do any heavy copper stuff!

Check CPU% on screen led (enable in misc panel): Does it stay above 100%?
If it stays below 100%, check SND%: does it jump around and flash yellow/red/blue all the time?

You need to attach your config file and logs if you want more help.

I run WinUAE with Workbench only, and I have sound issues on two computers, one Dual Core E5200 2.22 MHz with Windows 7 and one Laptop Core i3 4005U 1.70 GHz with Windows 8.1, and its worse with the latter.

I run Workbench 3.9 with Blizzard 1230-IV '030 emulation at cycle-exact *40 MHz* speed, with A1200 Chipset and AGA, and add Tocatta, A2605 ethernet and 48000 MHz sound with "Anti" interpolation to it.

My problems with sound began very before the accelerator board emulation in WinUAE, and I see people reporting issues with games but my problems are happening mainly with Workbench and the programs I use, which are theoretically simpler than games.

When I play any MOD song with EaglePlayer or HippoPlayer, and start browsing my hardfile with Workbench, the CPU usage get higher to +105%, and the sound begins to pop and click if I dont stop browsing its directories the most quickly possible.

I should clarify that I run Workbench with a nice copper backdrop, and for that I use CopperDemon, but I found recently that it is a major resource hog, and now I use WBVerlauf for testings, as it runs faster. Anyways, when I disable CopperDemon (or anything that draw copper rainbows on the Workbench screen), I can browse the directories on my hardfile without problems.

With or without copper, when there is heavy file system activity, the sound distortion and CPU usage gets even higher. For example, when I run IBrowse, during the program loading or browsing, the sound gets distorted and full of bad noise. SCSI emulation worse it more, increasing the CPU usage more than IDE/ATA does.

In general, on my two computers, the CPU meter and the sound latency gets overloaded *very* easily. I even have the impression that none WinUAE user uses WinUAE to run Workbench or navigate in Internet, because looks like I am the only person in the world, that uses WinUAE and have all the problems I did.

I am not sure if is correct to run the emulated CPU at full speed (cycle-exact or not) when the emulated chipset or hardware demand too much from the host CPU (no matter if the host CPU is slow or not), and expect that it will work by luck or coincidence (hardware is deterministic), like the sound in AmigaOS that gets distorted. In a real computer the CPU and chipset doesnt hog the bus when cant finish a heavy task in real time, every component need to start and finish in right time. The distortion in WinUAE sound is like that, the MOD player itself sends perfect sound to the emulated chipset, but the chipset emulation doesnt have enough time to run when the CPU emulation demand too much from the host CPU. This could be remediated by throttling the emulated CPU usage when it is consuming too much time from the host CPU and nothing remains for the emulated chipset, in expense of interrupt dispatch precision for the emulated CPU (this may break programs that need perfect interrupt dispatch, but only on underpowered computers).

If Toni wants to see my configuration and logs and if him think is possible to fix my issues, then I could post them.

[Vicky]

I had the exact same problems and this is how I fixed it.

1. I booted into a WinXP desktop, installed version 3.1.0 and used the SAME files I had used to configure WinUAE on the Win7 desktop. The sound worked fine.

2. I went back to the Win7 desktop and uninstalled the latest beta AND all the versions I had that didn't work. I reinstalled 3.1.0. Everything worked great.

2. I uninstalled version 3.1.0 and re-installed the latest beta. The sound worked great.


I have no clue why this worked. It did. NOTE: This solution quit working two days later.

Toni had me switch to WASAPI and I got 4 choices with that. Two worked, two did not. Sound is great now. Thanks, Toni!!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Leandro Jardim

I run WinUAE with Workbench only, and I have sound issues on two computers, one Dual Core E5200 2.22 MHz with Windows 7 and one Laptop Core i3 4005U 1.70 GHz with Windows 8.1, and its worse with the latter.

I run Workbench 3.9 with Blizzard 1230-IV '030 emulation at cycle-exact *40 MHz* speed, with A1200 Chipset and AGA, and add Tocatta, A2605 ethernet and 48000 MHz sound with "Anti" interpolation to it.

A real Blizzard IV 1230 use a 68030 running at *50 Mhz* not 40.

I had in the past sound problems, and toni had a look (due to many users complaining about sound stuttering).

I use the very latest Winuae beta on my laptop Dual Core (same version as the one i have on my desktop computer), and i get no sound trickery.

About the sound instead of using 48khz, use 44khz that's enough (beyond it's quickly a ressource hog, even on my quadricore computer, so imagine with a dual core !).

I wonder even how you get sound problems on your core i3. It's a very powerful CPU, so something must be wrong somewhere.

[Leandro Jardim]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

A real Blizzard IV 1230 use a 68030 running at *50 Mhz* not 40.

I had in the past sound problems, and toni had a look (due to many users complaining about sound stuttering).

I use the very latest Winuae beta on my laptop Dual Core (same version as the one i have on my desktop computer), and i get no sound trickery.

About the sound instead of using 48khz, use 44khz that's enough (beyond it's quickly a ressource hog, even on my quadricore computer, so imagine with a dual core !).

I wonder even how you get sound problems on your core i3. It's a very powerful CPU, so something must be wrong somewhere.

Well, firstly thanks for your response!

The reason because I have problems with the WinUAE speed is because of the "cycle exact speed" switch. When I disable it and set the speed to "Fastest possible", it can run everything I load on it (but without "more compatible" switch, because it hurts performance too...).

I enable "cycle exact" because I would like to simulate the "perceived" speed of a accelerator equipped Amiga, to have the "feel" that an 1995 Amiga user had. So, its not really necessary for myself to have it enabled, of course, but what I didnt understood from reading EAB and other Amiga-forums, is why only myself have such problems with WinUAE...

May seem a stupid question now, but I was always asking for myself that, since I thought that everyone was using "only" cycle-exact now, since it is infinitely superior.

And when I enable "approximate A500/A1200 CPU speed", the speed is good too, but not so good like with the "Fastest possible" toggled on.

Its only because that which I was "bugging" Toni to see if him can fix that.

The big "bottleneck" I can see from my everyday use of WinUAE, is copper-rainbows (it hurts performance when on the WB desktop), and curiously, access to hard-drive, because while it is really fast, when I enable a mere copper-rainbow on WB, all other tasks together, like sound and screen update, gets slower (I say "mere", because it seemed a so trivial procedure for an Amiga to do).

[Toni Wilen]

Same answer: Don't do it. There is nothing to fix.

Don't use fast 68020+ cycle-exact, it is pointless, you only get huge CPU usage without being accurate.
EDIT: 68040/060 does not have this problem because it is not internally cycle-exact like 68020 and 68030. Only memory accesses are cycle-exact (DMA contention is emulated).

EDIT2: Thanks for reminding, I was supposed to add optional memory cycle counting only -"cycle exact" mode for 68000-68030 CPUs long time ago...