Emulator Issues #7234
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Tales of Symphonia (GC) audio stutters on opening video [cpuTiming]
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Description
Game Name?
Tales of Symphonia
Game ID?
GQSEAF
What's the problem? Describe what went wrong in few words.
The audio stutters on the opening video.
What did you expect to happen instead?
Audio shouldn't stutter.
What steps will reproduce the problem?
- Open the game.
- Wait. (No interaction required.)
Dolphin 3.5 and 3.5-367 are old versions of Dolphin that have
known issues and bugs, so don't report issues about them and test the
latest Dolphin version first.
Which versions of Dolphin did you test on?
Dolphin 4.0-1386, 4.0-1468
Does using an older version of Dolphin solve your issue? If yes, which
versions of Dolphin used to work?
No.
What are your PC specifications? (including, but not limited to: Operating
System, CPU and GPU)
Windows 8.1 64-bit
Intel Core i5-3317U
Are you using the 32 or the 64 bit version of Dolphin?
64-bit.
Is there any other relevant information? (e.g. logs, screenshots,
configuration files)
It sounds sort of like stuttering you might get if Dolphin was running too slow, but it isn't: the same problem shows up setting the framelimiter to 30fps.
Reproduces with both HLE and LLE audio, and multiple audio backends.
If I "overclock" the CPU (set CPU_CORE_CLOCK to the Wii clock frequency), the stuttering goes away. Not completely sure what that means, but it might be helpful.
Updated by JMC4789 over 10 years ago
- Status changed from New to Accepted
Confirmed; the video itself seems to stutter too during the audio lags. Seems as though the emulated CPU is slowing down when it shouldn't be, maybe?
Updated by delroth over 10 years ago
I've noticed that too, maybe our clock cycles/op are wrong?
Updated by magumagu9 over 10 years ago
Our cycle estimates are extremely unrealistic: the chip is superscalar, and we don't model the pipeline at all.
Updated by JMC4789 over 10 years ago
Could this explain why the emulator doesn't slow down properly in one of the Spyro games, causing a few tricks to be impossible?
Updated by magumagu9 over 10 years ago
Possibly? You can experiment with the emulated CPU speed by modifying the setting of CPU_CORE_CLOCK in PreInit() in SystemTimers.cpp (line 260).
The other big potential source of slowdown which we don't model is the graphics pipeline: we currently assume graphics rendering completes instantly.
Updated by degasus over 10 years ago
magu: only on single core. On dual core, the game may wait for the gpu and waste emulated time. So is it required to overclock the emulated cpu on single core?
Updated by JMC4789 over 10 years ago
I tried this same trick (OCing the GC) on MegaMan X Collection, and it doesn't seem to help the stuttering audio in those FMVs. The stuttering audio seems to kick in after 15 - 20 seconds, and then goes away eventually, usually after another 15 - 20 seconds.
Updated by JMC4789 about 10 years ago
It seems as though something is going on regarding the CPU Timing. Two people have confirmed it's working in this Pull Request. https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/1316
https://dl.dolphin-emu.org/prs/pr-1316-dolphin-latest-x64.7z
It's a hacky WIP and not guaranteed to be the correct fix, so not marking as fixed in PR or anything like that.
Updated by darkrocket almost 10 years ago
In 4.0-4424 audio stutters two times on the oppening video (with HLE and LLE). I've tried with pr-1316 and the problem disappears.
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
Issue 8382 has been merged into this issue.
Updated by skeer almost 8 years ago
Hey, I'm having the audio stutter on Dolphin 5.0, I tried doing some research, found something interesting: disc 1 stutters, but the same intro on disc 2 has no lag or stutter at all. I used HxD to compare the title.tpl (I'm assuming that's the intro, no clue), and they both have the exact same binary.
It almost seems like there's a setting affecting disc 1 or 2 differently, even though they both are gqseaf. Hopefully disc 1 can read audio propperly eventual. Hope this helps
Updated by JMC4789 almost 8 years ago
Just so people don't get confused by this comment in the future, let me clarify.
Disc 2 doesn't stutter because it uses a lower quality video than disc 1. For some reason the opening is significantly smaller (just over half the file size of disc 1's opening) which makes it less intensive to decode.
The problem here is that our CPU timings are incorrect and something that uses the near maximum of the GameCube's processor is lagging in this situation due to timing differences.