entremet
Member
You guys are way too into your hardcore bubble sometimes lol.
This is a mass market product. Cycle-accurate emulation is not necessary and would make it cost more.
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SNES Classic sound emulation: how does it hold up?
- Thread starter samred
- Start date
You guys are way too into your hardcore bubble sometimes lol.
This is a mass market product. Cycle-accurate emulation is not necessary and would make it cost more.
MultiCore
Member
No, I have a JBL Northridge E series 5.1 setup. It's not speaker quality, or virtual surround. I turned on All-channel stereo, and direct mode, no difference was made in what I was hearing. Every time you finish a level, the little note that slides up and down as the screen collapses in a circle around Mario is not accurate.
I have my SNES hooked up to a 50" Sony CRT RP as well, and the speakers in it are excellent, considering what it is.
I've been playing SMW since SNES emulators first became a thing, and I've heard this sound on any emulator you could probably name, on my PCs, PSP, phones, other Nintendo products and of course, I've actually had my real SNES plugged in most of the time as well.
Edit
I just watched a side by side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0m1Nh-oMmY
They sound good here, so maybe my TV is doing something wrong. I'll try running it in to my reciever.
wut
You complain about the cost but Higan is incredibly resource-intensive and would've needed much more expensive hardware. It needs 3Ghz+ CPUs to run smoothly.
nkarafo
Member
What generation though? That claim was written many years ago, bsnes era, when pentium 4 was still a thing. Today a 1.5ghz CPU on a smartphone can easily outclass a 3.0ghz CPU of that era.
Bsnes was almost perfect as well back in the day, much more accurate than SNES9x today.
tomwhite2004
Member
check the change logs to bsnes / higan since that article was written, its continued to make improvements which keep the 3ghz relevant when we are talking about the accuracy core.
so if years ago bsnes was better than snes9x is today you can imagine how big the gap is now.
lets put it another way. a raspberry pi 2 which is roughly similar in spec to a snesc has to use a seven year old version pf snes9x to run full speed. and snes9x from seven years ago is missing a ton of changes that increased the cpu requirements.
ChrisInCali
Member
So many SNES Classic threads on the first page x_X
How much would it cost to get a computer to run Higan at full speed, carts for all the games, and the hardware to rip the ROMs?
Earthbound alone goes for about 3x what the SNES classic costs.
nkarafo
Member
the point im trying to make is that you dont need a demanding accurate emulator to have correct sound. You can do that on older bsnes and you can also do it with snes9x. The later can run on a toaster. So again, hardware limitation is not excusing incorrect sound emulation.
Edit: i hear you about snes9x. I dont know how weak pi is but i remember i could run a port of snes9x version 1.51 full speed on the original xbox. Thats a pentium 3 700mhz. That version still had good sound.
kitchenmotors
Banned
These people complaining are most likely pirating without own original software or even hardware. All of these games would cost a lot more than msrp or even scalper prices, but youre getting a modern mass market product that works with current TV setups. Its well worth the price of entry.
nkarafo
Member
Who are those people you are talking about? Also what pirating has to do with anything?
Dreamwriter
Member
The existence of great emulators doesn't mean that other people without years of emulator-writing experience are able to create software of the same quality in a short amount of time. Your statement is similar to saying "I find it embarassing every PS4 game doesn't look as good as Horizon". Unless you are suggesting that Nintendo should have tried to license BSNES or something, but there's no way in hell Nintendo is going to legitimize any indie emulator, Nintendo is the most-anti-emulator company in existence. Sega might do that, but not Nintendo.
Also, "this much money"? If you divide the number of games into the price, you'll find that the games (at what, $4 a piece?) are cheaper than even NES Roms in the Virtual Consoles, and that's not even counting the hardware or the two controllers. And used copies of the actual game cartridges for just about all those games except Super Mario World would be higher than that ROM price, in some cases over a hundred times higher.
Edit: I guess even the Super Mario World cartridge is worth like $15 now, so yeah, this thing is an amazing bargain at its price.
nkarafo
Member
Correct me if i'm wrong but i was under the impression homebrew emulator developers have bigger barriers to overcome. Nintendo has full time developers working as their day job and also is the owner of the system so they should know about it's inner workings, quirks, etc. Homebrew developers work solo most of the time with some help, if any, they have to do this in their free time, sometimes real life forces them to abandon their projects for years, etc, and they also have to figure out how a system works by themselves.
Sure, it takes a long time for a good emulator to be created but a company like Nintendo does have a good head start. Also, aren't they emulating their systems since the Wii anyway? They should already have a 10 year experience with this stuff.
tomwhite2004
Member
But Nintendo didn't make the sound chip in the SNES, Sony did. For all we know they might have extremely limited official documentation so have to reverse engineer the chips functionality. Speculation of course, but you are making a lot of assumptions about the time, resources and effort they actually put into this stuff.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Wii had hack filled per-game emulation, Wii U was their first proper emulator.
And it was a totally different team. Wii U one was done in Japan, SNES mini is done in france at NERD. I doubt the wii u emu code has english notation.
I'd think they're more likely to look at open source emulators and work it from there then use what Nintendo had already made.
And while homebrew devs have bigger barriers, there's also more passion there. Nintendo isn't going to pay to decap chips to get more accurate emulation for example. Do they still have all the info in house? Possible, but it's equally possible that some information has been lost in the intervening twenty years. And they're not going to have great info on the chips they purchased from other companies.
AtomicShroom
Member
A cheap way for low-budget people to feel like they have something approximating home theater sound quality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundbar
And for some reason, they all seem to have the same feature of putting themselves to sleep whenever they detect complete silence, and taking something like a second to wake up after sound resumes playing, meaning you often get what appears to be cut outs in sound. For example once I tried calibrating Rock Band on a soundbar and it was simply impossible: since the calibration plays really short ticks amidst complete silence, the ticks would simply not play at all, because the sound bar never woke up.
admiraltaftbar
Member
The long speaker thats a cheap option for sorround sound or for people who want speakers better than the in tv speakers.
KojiKnight
Member
Spot the people who know nothing about emulation.
Many people already commented here, so I'll skip you.
At this point, Byuu probably knows more about the SNES than any engineer still living at Nintendo. No amount of documentation can change how higan works. Cycle accuracy requires very powerful hardware, period.
This is just silly, it's an $80 dollar box with an emulator probably made within a year by a couple employees. Something like bsnes has a decade and more of work put into it by dozens of people (either directly, or based on the works of people previously).
Many people already commented here, so I'll skip you.
At this point, Byuu probably knows more about the SNES than any engineer still living at Nintendo. No amount of documentation can change how higan works. Cycle accuracy requires very powerful hardware, period.
This is just silly, it's an $80 dollar box with an emulator probably made within a year by a couple employees. Something like bsnes has a decade and more of work put into it by dozens of people (either directly, or based on the works of people previously).
What a stupid device. Why do all of them do this?
nkarafo
Member
Well, Nintendo managed to do decent emulation of the N64 on the original Wii (i assume that has a very weak CPU even compare to a modern Pi?). That's without prior emulation products by them and don't forget the N64 is one of the hardest systems to emulate, homebrew developers still struggle with it after 20 years.
I mean, if they struggle with the SNES, how are we going to expect a N64 mini?
But if SNES mini emulation wasn't made by Nintendo then that's fair.
tomwhite2004
Member
PC based N64 emulation is actually in a pretty good state, lots of long term issues are slowly but surely being ironed out and the gliden64 plugin is still making huge strides.
N64 emulation on the Wii was stuffed full of per-game hacks and inaccuracies, but playable. So if there is the be a N64 mini is will be broadly of the same quality.
No doubt if it happens people will have the same over inflated expectations of quality and moan of non perfect emulation with that too....
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Snes mini emulation was made by Nintendo, specifically a french subsidiary called NERD (Nintendo European Research & Development). But as I said, little from the wii would be usefull as it was per game hacked emulation. Accurate n64 emulation would have been impossible on the wii.
The reason the SNES is so much better emulated and understood today is partially to do with complexity, but much more due to the scene. The N64 emulation scene has suffered from stops and starts of various projects over the years, while the snes scene has ALWAYS had people working on it. From the nineties with ZSNES and SNES96/7, up to SNES9X. Then when MKendora quit snes9x over 10 years ago, the focus really shifted to Byuu's BSNES. Byuu got tons of flack back then (and still does) about the resources required for accurate emulation, but he stuck to it and a lot of the people who worked on SNES9x helped out along the way. And he's still working on it today, which is why the snes scene is in such good shape.
N64 scene in the last couple of years or so has gotten a lot better though.
AtomicShroom
Member
I dont know if they all do, but all those that I came across did. From what I can find online some say its because of EU power saving regulations. No idea if its true, but it would make sense...
They aren't struggling, emulation is just rarely 100% accurate. It's better to think of it as a pretty close approximation. The N64 isn't going to give them any major problems.
I also have a Vizio sandbar and the music constantly cuts in and out during games, the main system main menu music works fine though. Even with with soundbars "EcoPwr" setting turned off.
I am plugging the console directly into the soundbar with the included HDMI cable (The soundbar has a HDMI pass through to the TV).
I'm gonna try plugging the console directly into the TV later today and see if I get any problems just using the TV speakers, and check if there are any problems when I pass the audio through the HDMI-ARC back to the soundbar.
edit: works perfectly when on TV speakers when plugged directly into TV.
Blackpuppy
Member
Not just cheap people: I live in Europe and space is definitely an issue. My living/dining room is 19 m2 (205 ft2) and I could squeeze in a center and left and right speaker but I sure as hell can't get any speakers next to or behind me. A good quality soundbar is a decent substitute.
Dreamwriter
Member
I have a Vizio soundbar and I havent run into any sleep/wake issues (to be fair, I dont have a SNES Classic yet). Maybe its because I have it hooked up to my TV via optical audio rather than devices going straight into the sound bar, and the TV keeps it awake.
MrSaturn99
Member
I've noticed this as well, but I found it alternates: sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Not sure what the reasoning behind it is, but it actually doesn't look that bad and I'm generally okay with whatever compromises we can get in exchange for no dark filters.
Maybe it's just me but I vaguely recall said crackles in the original as well? Regardless, it is a bit more noticeable here.
I haven't noticed any differences with the framerate. Can you provide any examples?
There's two parts to SNES audio: they use my SMP (processor that executes instructions), and blargg's DSP (signal processor that outputs via commands given to it by the SMP.) I can't take all the credit.
And Snes9X of today has much higher system requirements than Snes9X in 1998 did. Requirements go up as accuracy increases. v1.54 is about 80% faster than bsnes-performance was.
That honor goes to Atlus USA now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/72lo12/statement_atlus_usa_attempts_to_shut_down/
I've no proof, but I'd bet money on that being the case.
petran79
Banned
He spent also more money on research even than Nintendo. He even paid a small fortune to an electronic engineer to decap the SNES custom chips
Tarin02543
Member
I used to emulate with snes9x, but something always felt off...
Now I have switched to Higan and it feels much better. I can finish Mario All Stars now, where with Snes9x this was always impossible.
Now I have switched to Higan and it feels much better. I can finish Mario All Stars now, where with Snes9x this was always impossible.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Somebody was complaining that the SNES Classic was a rip off compared to using a more accurate emulator. However, acquiring the carts included w/the SNES Classic & ripping them to use on such an emulator would be exponentially more expensive (and even more expensive if you don't already have a powerful computer since accurate emulation is very system-intensive). Earthbound alone generally sells for more than the SNES Classic.
TyrantGuardian
Member
My bad, I was under the impression the SNES mini was way more expensive than it actually is. Confused by scalpers 
Wait, why would you use cart prices? Fairly sure Earthbound is like 10$ in previous Nintendo VC releases, people could, you know, just rip that?
Then the SNES mini is still not a "rip-off" (quite the opposite, really) because it includes 21 games at a much lower price than 210$.
If entire instruments are missing then that suggests you have a problem with the stereo mixing in your setup.
Walking across any town/field. Looks a bit choppy to me, to the point it is mildly irritating.
sixteen-bit
Member
Sounds a little shrill in the DF Retro analysis video
nkarafo
Member
Fair enough but that assumes the buyer never owned any of these games either physically or digitally on Wii, WiiU and 3DS and also doesn't have any device that can emulate a SNES properly. That includes a PC not older than 10 years old or a smartphone around 5 years old or newer.
Higan would not require a "powerful PC" (any PC can run it nowadays) but it would require a more expensive smartphone, however, you don't need Higan to get better emulation than SNES mini. I don't know why everyone assumes the next best thing after SNES mini is Higan only. Older BSNES versions and SNES9x are also better than it and less demanding than Higan. Other less known emulators are also better, like SNESGT (that's an old emulator i was using on Windows XP).
ZiggyPalffyLA
Member
I've noticed the blurry effect too. I wonder if it's a visual bug or something they added to prevent seizures.
Earthbound always ran at a choppy framerate, especially when there are lots of enemies on screen. The sound effect issues I haven't noticed.
gingerbeardman
Member
This reminds me that a friend of mine realised he had a bad setup when I mentioned the voice acting in Zelda:BOTW which he had never heard because of him missing the centre channel! He quickly corrected his setup.
For me, I don't care enough to have a 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever surround sound setup (my media consumption on my TV is mostly sports, but I'll occasionally stream music or w/e through it), but I want something that is better than the complete garbage that TVs seem to come with nowadays. Fortunately the one I have doesn't have the cut-out-on-silence issue reported in this thread (Rock Band, mentioned as a problem, worked fine) - I'll have to see how the SNES Mini turns out on it when I get mine).
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