Erratic CD Audio in CD32 Emulation

Hi All,

For quite a long time I had been using WinUAE 2.2.0 as I felt it offered the most accurate CD32 emulation so far.

I decided recently to try 2.4.0 as well as the latest 2.4.1 beta and have noticed that with some of my CD32 games the CD Audio will either sometimes play or not at all. Most notably, the CD Audio will not play for any of the pinball machines in Pinball Illusions. Also music will not play for title screen of Universe. When playing the actual game sometimes CD Audio will play, sometimes it wont. I have tried using both the original CD's as well as images mounted in the emulator or Daemon Tools.

I have simply been using the CD32 quickstart profile and have been playing around with CPU, chipset and audio setting but just cannot make it work. This all works fine with minimal effort in 2.2.0. Any ideas?

[Toni Wilen]

Attach winuaelog.txt when CD audio works and another when it does not work (same game, same audio track), thanks.

Tick loggin checkbox in misc panel first.

Thanks for your reply Toni,

I have attached 3 logs but unfortunately my results were extremely erratic so hopefully you'll find what the problem might be.

I'll try to describe what happened for each log.

"Universe - No CD Audio": No audio for title screen. CD audio played for the opening sequence. No CD audio for first level. Loaded a save and no CD audio played for that either.

"Universe - CD Audio": No audio for title screen. CD audio played for the opening sequence. CD audio also played for first level. Loaded a save and no CD audio. Walked to a different scene and CD audio started playing.

Pinball Illusions: No CD Audio ever plays at all for that game.

Also if I F12 while playing Universe and do a reset, usually, but not always, the colours will go all weird as shown in the second picture.

I hope this helps.

[Toni Wilen]

I tried both Universe and Pinball Illusions (Tosec versions) and I can't duplicate this problem.

Attach logs when you have mounted the images using built-in image mounter.

EDIT: Your both Universe log shows normal playing (playing from 130955 to 144834). Perhaps it plays but sound isn't heard for some reason? Does the drive led flash when playing? (when using physical CDs)

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Perhaps it plays but sound isn't heard for some reason? Does the drive led flash when playing? (when using physical CDs)

I know 200% definitely that during the times when no CD Audio is heard that it's not actually being played because the drive LED isn't flashing. In the instances that CD Audio is heard then, yes, it's flashing.

I've attached the log for no CD Audio when image is mounted directly into the emulator. Unfortunately I couldn't generate a log for working CD Audio because I simply couldn't obtain any instances where the audio could be heard. I tried and tried but gave up. Although, in this particular log, audio played for opening story sequence and only one scene. No audio for the rest of it.

Could there be any other CD/DVD software or drivers that could be causing issues? I'm using AnyDVD, Daemon Tools, Nero and Imgburn.

[Toni Wilen]

Ok, I can duplicate Universe missing in-game CDA. I guess RNC custom loader assumes some specific status replies or specific timing in replies that CD32 ROM loader ignores or something like that.

I'll check this after 2.4.1 is out.

Yeah cool. Thank you for having a look at it Toni.

As I said, it works pretty much flawlessly in 2.2.0. Although I did a little bit of fiddling with it. Did you want the configuration file I created in 2.2.0 for it?

[Toni Wilen]

Working in older version does not help. There was huge CD32/CDTV update in 2.3.x. (CD+G, etc..) This update most likely changed some unknown timing requirement.

CD32 CD hardware timings are not very well known (I don't even have CD32 with harddrive so can't run any custom tests)

[msayed1977]

Do you mean that you won't fix it in the next beta?

[Toni Wilen]

Problem found. It was bug in CD32 emulation and also RNC loader version used in this game..

RNC loader has a bug when sending CD commands, it forgots to wrap around CD command transmit DMA buffer index. (CD32 Akiko chip has 256 byte aligned, 256 byte receive ands transmit command DMA buffers, that wrap around normally).

If transmit buffer index is near end of this 256 byte area, audio play/cd read command (which is quite long, 12 bytes) isn't correctly wrapped around causing command checksum error return code which seems to be ignored. Nothing gets played. (Data commands are retried correctly)

Fix was to emulate TOC packets more correctly (each TOC packet is sent 3 times in a row, not just once) and now index pointer is in more Universe friendly position when it attempts to play the title CD audio

Interestingly loader has a "fix" when it attempts to play in-game CD audio. It sends each CD play commands twice! This confused CD audio emulation (following play command thinks it was stopped immediately)

Fix in next beta, when 2.4.2 series start..