Emulator

Does this happen with both HLE and LLE?

Oh, left out an important detail. This has been happening with the HLE sound backend. It likely does not with the LLE backends, but my computer isn't fast enough to run Skyward with it at full speed.

Does it happen only with DSound plugin or is XAudio2 affected as well?

I've been using DSound. I haven't tried XAudio2, but after some google searching, came across this post:

http://forums.dolphin-emulator.com/showthread.php?tid=19897&pid=181010

Two people having this issue, one tried Xaudio2 + disabling audio throttle and says it stopped. Maybe worth a shot.

If XAudio2 isn't affected then this problem could be related to issue 5006

Wow, I think google code just detonated itself.

First it comes up as a double post (then a double-doublepost) and now I've deleted all of them somehow. Here is the save state link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?c6139miedimqp2x

It's like 5 dungeons into the game so spoiler alert. Shows the problem, Dsound/HLE. Anyone who's interested in this issue probably got the full text of my previous post (several times) in their email. Let me know if you want it posted again.

The reproduction steps are as follows:

1. Set DSP to HLE.
2. Stress your machine so it does not get enough cycles to run emulation at full speed.
   For instance: EFB to RAM, or high multi sampling, you can even kick on the CPU interpreter.
3. In about 30 to 40 seconds the synchronization between the CPU and HLE DSP breaks and the music gets restarted while the old track is still going.

When I first started playing this game, I used HLE audio just so I could get the best performance possible. I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) I used XAudio2 as the backend because that's all I really ever used, but I always had audio throttle enabled.

I experienced the music looping in the very first dungeon. I was thinking to myself... wow this dungeon music is uncreative and is starting to get monotonous. Then I realized it was just playing a 6 second section over and over again. I then switched to LLE, found out the music is longer than 6 seconds, and never had the problem again.

Beat the game from start to finish on R7718. So it did have a chance of happening on the older revisions, only with HLE, and possibly with XAudio2 throttled.

Well, on the newest revision available, I've played a few hours in a row with Xaudio2 + Audio Throttle, and haven't seen the issue since switching to it.

A curious conundrum, this one.

I can confirm comment 10. Played using XAudio2 and Audio Throttle Enabled for 2 hours and did not notice any sound looping.

I forgot to add, I was using rev 223-dirty...

Issue 5006 has been merged into this issue.

For an easier view I re-post here the most useful information so it eventually doesn't get "forgotten":

Works correctly until Revision 7f055d6b568c (r3.0-198) included, from Revision 3d2a2abb49df (r3.0-199) starts the DSound problem.

I am not able to reproduce this problem with xaudio2, it does however happen very frequently with dsound.

Running d3.0-235-Dirty

I would suggest to test Revision 33f0f9fd9fc6 (r3.0-294) and see if this problem is still happening.

SS uses AXWii, the change you link to is about the Zelda UCode. It won't fix this issue.

Although issue 5006 is completely fixed, Dsound still has some random looping problems in many games that XAudio2 doesn't have.
Maybe this issue should be renamed DSound music loop/sync issue or somewhat silmilar.

Obviously I meant DSound HLE

Yes, I have the same issue even LLE DSP configuration.

Issue 5397 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 5760 has been merged into this issue.

As per issue 5760, it's also possible for this to occur while using XAudio2. It's much rarer, though.