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[Piccoro]

Anyone else getting occasional crackling noises from their sound bar? Noticing it a bunch in Super Metroid

Yeah, so after my post here yesterday I tried to output the SNES mini sound directly from the TV and I have the same problem: On Super Mario World there are missing instruments on the songs. The first overworld theme (Yoshi's Island) is missing the flute sound.

I've done a little digging and found multiple threads on reddit describing the same problem. Many people solved this by not using a sound bar, problem is for me it also happens with the TV's speakers.

I'm gonna try changing the HDMI cable and a different TV later.

 

[Beegeous]

There's a few sound effects in SMW that are obnoxiously loud in comparison to the BGM. One that springs to mind is the warp pipe sound.

 

[Novum_Veritas]

Anyone else getting occasional crackling noises from their sound bar? Noticing it a bunch in Super Metroid

The odd thing is I had that issue with Super Metroid on my new 3DS XL.
When there was a lot going on, it was crackling pretty much, I wonder what the problem is, seems to be something up with the emulation.

 

[Gleethor]

The odd thing is I had that issue with Super Metroid on my new 3DS XL.
When there was a lot going on, it was crackling pretty much, I wonder what the problem is, seems to be something up with the emulation.

Strange, I haven't seen it mentioned outside of this thread so i figured I had a weird soundbar/snes.

 

[KojiKnight]

Yeah, so after my post here yesterday I tried to output the SNES mini sound directly from the TV and I have the same problem: On Super Mario World there are missing instruments on the songs. The first overworld theme (Yoshi's Island) is missing the flute sound.

I've done a little digging and found multiple threads on reddit describing the same problem. Many people solved this by not using a sound bar, problem is for me it also happens with the TV's speakers.

I'm gonna try changing the HDMI cable and a different TV later.

If it's also happening on your TV, try disabling virtual surround sound if it's on in the TV sound settings.

 

[btrboyev]

It’s not 100% but it’s close enough.

 

[Piccoro]

For anyone that is having sound issues, this is how I solved it: I turned off Game Mode.

On my TV, the Game Mode was changing the sound preset to "Movie" which caused some sounds on the right channel to change volume and drop. After I turned off Game Mode and changed the sound mode to Normal or Default, all the sounds worked fine again.

 

[nkarafo]

For anyone that is having sound issues, this is how I solved it: I turned off Game Mode.

On my TV, the Game Mode was changing the sound preset to "Movie" which caused some sounds on the right channel to change volume and drop. After I turned off Game Mode and changed the sound mode to Normal or Default, all the sounds worked fine again.

But now it's borderline unplayable because of even higher input lag, right?

 

[ClivePwned]

I have a soundbar hooked up vi an optical cable from the TV and with headphones and there's definitely an issue with Super Mario World but not when I use headphones.

I don't think my TV has an analogue audio output but I'll have a look when I get home tonight.

 

[LuigiBlood]

I had noticed very slight sound issues with Super Mario World, but not with Star Fox nor Yoshi's Island.
EDIT: the sound issue I noticed was some very slight pitch issues and that's not a TV issue. It's actually quite subtle but since I worked a lot on sounds I notice this kind of thing.

But we found out that there's a reason for it.
Back then, when Nintendo emulated SNES on Wii (and Wii U, also), they replaced the sound system to use PCM (uncompressed) sounds instead of the SNES native compressed sound format that is BRR. It's a very hacky (and lazy IMO) way to simply not put some CPU time to the sound and dedicate more to the rest.

If you ripped the ROM out of the VC release, you might hear the sound is either lowered, or simply just gone. Nintendo did that for both Wii and Wii U... and SNES Mini as well.

HOWEVER, the SPC700 (the sound chip) is emulated fine because all SuperFX games (Star Fox 1 & 2, Yoshi's Island) does not make use of this sound hack at all.

If you find the sounds to be wrong in other games, there's a reason for it. Basically they just reused the VC ROMs and dealt with it. So you may actually want to reupload the original ROMs to the SNES mini instead just to make things really accurate.

 

[Piccoro]

But now it's borderline unplayable because of even higher input lag, right?

Not really. I played Castlevania 4 for hours and didn't noticed much input lag. Of course it depends on the TV. I played on a small Samsung 1080P TV/Monitor.

I have a soundbar hooked up vi an optical cable from the TV and with headphones and there's definitely an issue with Super Mario World but not when I use headphones.

I don't think my TV has an analogue audio output but I'll have a look when I get home tonight.

If you can, try plugging the snes directly to the soundbar. A lot of people solved the sound issues this way.

If your soundbar doesn't have HDMI input/output, try to output sound from the TV's speakers, and turn off Game Mode.

The way to test if the sound is correct is this: in Super Mario World go to the first map at the bottom (Yoshi's Island). If you're not hearing the flute in that music, you have to change the sound settings.

 

[Enter The 36 Chambers]

Doesn't matter if you get 21 games or 100. It's still embarrasing how Nintendo can't offer perfect emulation for their own system and there are homebrew emulators that do a better job.

Jesus Christ. Only thing embarrassing here is you man.

It's perfect for what it is. I had a Snes as a kid and this is spot on to me. Just using the speakers in my tv and the supplied cables.

99.99% of people aren't going to notice the "embarrassing sound emulation" or even care if they do.

 

[Turrican3]

HOWEVER, the SPC700 (the sound chip) is emulated fine because all SuperFX games (Star Fox 1 & 2, Yoshi's Island) does not make use of this sound hack at all.

Very interesting find but I don't get this.
If they go the "hacky" route, why wouldn't SuperFX games do the same?!

I mean, one would assume that emulating that extra chip would justify even more saving computational resources, yet they chose to emulate... both sound and SFX chip?!

 

[LuigiBlood]

Very interesting find but I don't get this.
If they go the "hacky" route, why wouldn't SuperFX games do the same?!

I mean, one would assume that emulating that extra chip would justify even more saving computational resources, yet they chose to emulate... both sound and SFX chip?!

They did the hacky route because the ROMs were already done for Wii (U) Virtual Console.
Since SuperFX was never emulated, they didn't bother doing the hacky way at the time.

It was just a matter of taking what was done and not even bother with new ROMs that were never emulated. Basically it's laziness overall.

 

[Turrican3]

They did the hacky route because the ROMs were already done for Wii (U) Virtual Console.
Since SuperFX was never emulated

Makes sense definitely, I guess you're right!

(I didn't know/remember those ROMs weren't available before so I was missing a key information)