[Linux] Sound problems on 1.11

[philbo20]

I'm not sure if I'm the only one having these sound issues, but I constantly get the "sound underrun" error message and jumpy, crackly sound. I have tried it with the sync sound off and the latency set to the max, but the problems still occur. Is there anything else I can try?

[patrickp]

I still get the "Sound underrun" message, with my Latency levels set to about 96ms, but I don't get any sound problems, philbo20, so I don't regard the error message as a problem.

How about some more information? Linux distro, sound driver, machine specs etc? Unfortunately, we don't have many psychics on this forum, and none of them seem to be around ATM - so you'll just have to tell us...

[philbo20]

Hehe, sorry about that. I'm currently running ArchLinux as my distro. The machine specs are:

Athlon xp 2500+
1 gig of ram
soundblaster live with the emu10k1 driver
geforce 6600 GT

The strange thing is some games are worse than others. On ff9, for example, I don't get many underrun messages, but there is slightly crackly sound. On gran turismo 2 I get a lot of the messages,the bad sound, and the game hangs quite a bit.

[patrickp]

Your machine specs look fine, philbo20. I don't have either of those games, so I can't say for them but, as I said, I'm not getting any sound problems - apart from the "Sound underrun" message itself - on either of two machines, both running Ubuntu 6.10, one specced better than yours and one not as good.

Have you tried using the ALSA or OSS drivers rather than the emu10k1 one?

[philbo20]

Well, the emu10k1 driver I am using is an ALSA driver. I also tried using my onboard nForce audio with another ALSA driver and got the same behavior.

[patrickp]

How are you playing the games, philbo20 - from CDs or images - and, if images, what format?

[philbo20]

I'm playing them through CD images. The formats include: .img, .iso, and .bin mostly

[patrickp]

Try playing them from the original CDs.

If you have access to Windows, the CloneCD .ccd/.img/.sub format is favourite, as it includes the subcode information from the CD, which can sometimes enable pSX to play them properly. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any tools available for Linux that can rip to this format. How did you rip your images?

[philbo20]

I tried using the original CDs for FF9 and I didn't get any improvement. Most of the images I have ripped have been in the clonecd format. The FF9 ones, for example, were clonecd.

[siman]

I got similiar problem.

psx throughs the "sound underrun" constantly and the sound is somewhat strange (it seems to stop very shortly every few seconds - "crackly" is a good description ).

I tried several latency settings suggested here - that just changed how the crackly sounded, but it never went away. the sound underrun messages kept on coming, no matter what.

my sys spec:
ubuntu 6.10
athlon 3200+
1 gig ram
soundblaster with emu10k drivers

I mainly run isos, but they all have this secondary (ccd?) file.

[patrickp]

So, what games, what format isos (I presume you're using the term 'iso' as a general reference to disc images rather than to the specific .iso format?) and how are you playing them? Again, have you tried playing from the original CDs?

I have to say, I don't get these problems in a very similarly specced machine, but with an Audigy rather than a Soundblaster (same driver) or in a much less well specced machine with a Soundblaster Live! card. Both are running Ubuntu 6.10.

One thing both of you could try is, when playing images directly that have a descriptive file (eg the .cue file for then .bin/.cue format. or the .ccd file for the .ccd/.img/.sub format, start the game by selecting the descriptive file rather than the image itself.

I presume you're both running the first release of the emulator rather than one of the previous WIPs?

Edit: one thing that occurs to me is, when I go to the Sound configuration tab in pSX, under Device I get 4 options: Default, ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback,Multichannel Capture/PT Playback, and Multichannel Playback. The first two work fine (I presume that Default is selecting ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback anyway) but AIR the other two get me terrible sound or worse.

[arek]

This seems like the old problem with alsa's minimum-size sound buffers being too big (~30ms minimum). Raising the sound latency (I use 35ms) solved the crackling for me (I do get occasional pauses, tho, no matter how high I set it), tho I still see "Buffer Underrun" errors in the console on occasion. I'd like to know exactly what causes this problem (and how to fix it properly, short of using a MASSIVE sound buffer), since pSX is one of only 2 programs which have it (The other one is Wine).

--Arek

[patrickp]

I don't know, arek, but I've noticed that if you google on it, the issue seems to have been around for at least five years, and people keep saying that such-and-such a kernel has fixed it... but it still doesn't seem to be fixed.

I have to say, though, that unless I have the latency set pretty low, I get the 'Sound underrun' errors in the terminal, but the sound is generally fine - usually better than Windows for me. I have no special drivers installed - on both machines, with an Audigy and a Soundblaster Live! I'm just using the default drivers the OS provided.

[wizardofyendor]

I was having the same problems with Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy), but yesterday I upgraded to Feisty, and now I get full speed and full sound.

My sound card is a VIA on board.

Thought I'd pass the word.

[patrickp]

Sounds good, wizardofyendor. And, of course, the public release of Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) is tomorrow.