Sound problems

Is it common sound problems with WinUAE?

Every game I've played on it had terrible sound, either bad in general or choppy. I've heard this could be caused by soundcard or the cpu and that I should try a older version of the emulator.

I did that but same thing, besides I think I got a decent hardware on this machine. It's a Pentium 450 with a 128bit soundcard under Win2000 but I don't think that should make much difference.

When I run stuff on WinFellow there's never any sound problems so i'm guessing the current state of WinUAE is buggy when it comes to sound.

I hope someone could clear this up for me.

[Drake1009]

Winuae has always had bad sound for me until I upgraded from my 533 mhz to my 1.7 ghz. I don't think it's bugs in the code though. That would've been caught long ago. Well maybe it is bugs which make incompatibility. I know someone who did get it running fine on a 450mhz by switching a geforce card with a TNT2 card. But I think the main reason for the choppiness would be because winUAE is made to emulate more faithfully which in turn requires more resources.

Hmmmm, sounds like it isn't much I can do about it then until I get my hardware upgraded whenever that will be. But if it requires so much more to run smoothly I think they should change the documentation.

From the readme.txt file...

Rule of thumb: Get a PPro or Pentium II if you want full graphics and
full sound at the same time (reportedly, the Pentium MMX 200 MHz,
overclocked to 250 MHz [83.3 MHz bus speed], is a powerful platform
for running UAE. I have no definite reports about the K6 and the M2 yet,
but these should do pretty good as well.).

[Drake1009]

Well as I said. There are some hardware which apparently work better together than other hardware.

[Chuckles]

Just FYI, it is not a requirement that your PC run at a blazing 1.7 GHZ or so to get good sound emulation. That having been said, there are indeed some problems with sound that Toni is working to try to correct. In WinUAE 0.8.21R3 and in the sound test beta of R4, the sound is pretty bad for me UNLESS I make sure that I don't have NTSC checked. In WinUAE 0.8.21R2, I get very good sound with both NTSC and PAL.

My hardware is a lowly PIII/500, running with a Diamond MX-300 sound card on Windows 98 SE, so clearly it can be done with a slower machine. Of course, the particular combination of hardware you have along with the driver versions you're using. So if you're thinking that you have to have a really fast machine to get good sound, just be aware that that's not necessary. For that matter, I've heard lots of folks complaining of sound problems even with 1.7 GHZ monsters, so I think that makes it pretty clear that the other software and hardware components on your system are at least as important when it comes to sound.

[Drake1009]

Well I said that I know someone who had gotten it to work with a 450 mhz and everything I had with my 533 except for an older graphics card.

Yes, the combination of certain hardware and software can work differently for different users.

I tried with 0.8.21R2 and 0.8.21R3, also an older version 0.8.8R9 which had same problems. I never used NTSC tho. But I think i'll wait and see how it works with next version.

Is there anything else I should check in my configs to improve the sound?

[Chuckles]

The only real advice I can give to anyone is that you make sure that you have the latest driver versions for your sound and video cards, and the latest version of DirectX. Other than that, you should also take a look at the settings that you've configured WinUAE to use. For example, it makes no real sense to tell WinUAE to run in a 24 or 32 bit video mode, when the games you'll be running typically use 32 colors or less. I generally always use a 16 bit mode, which is plenty for any Amiga game I've ever seen. It is also possible that your sound problems could be related to the particular sound card that you have, as I've often heard that many people who had SB Live cards have experienced problems with sound. I seem to recall having heard that these had been largely resolved by the latest drivers, so again, it's a good idea to make sure that you have the latest ones installed.

Thanks Chuckles, I will look into that. I didn't even think about that the video card could affect it, and actually used 32bits mode.

Anyway, thanks all for the suggestions and thoughts,
it's appreciated