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City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
#372979 - 01/12/18 02:10 AM
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Anyone else experiencing this bug in City Connection where the audio is probably about double speed? I'm not sure how much faster than normal it is, but it's quite fast.
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Pr3tty F1y]
#372985 - 01/12/18 06:01 AM
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Not real familiar with how it's supposed to sound in the wild but it does "seem" too fast.
-I went back & ran it on v181 & it is definitely a LOT faster than it used to be.
-Also checked MameTesters & didn't see anything about it there.
* citycon: Revert PSG type change; derive 1.25 MHz from master XTAL (nw) -AJR 2017-12-16
* citycon: Correct 6809 types; better guess at clocks (nw) -AJR 2017-12-16
If these are coreect then the previous speed was the incorrect one. I'd imagine it was more than double checked but maybe some confirmation is needed before posting at MameTesters.
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Pessimist: Oh, this can't get any worse!
Optimist: Yes, it can!
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Bad A Billy]
#372989 - 01/12/18 08:56 AM
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Osso1]
#372997 - 01/12/18 07:37 PM
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Is this an issue with tempo, or pitch, or both? Perhaps this is a situation like Arkanoid, where a code change some releases back regressed the game's correct behavior of forcing the sound chip to run at half of its normal clock speed; this regression caused the pitch of all sounds/music to increase by an octave. That issue was fixed after I pointed if out.
I know you didn't find anything in github pointing to that, but I think it still needs to be looked at. Have you logged anything on MAMEtesters?
According to the driver code, this game's schematics specify the General Instruments AY-3-8910, though a PCB was also found with a Yamaha YM2149. The YM2149 is the same sound chip as Arkanoid, and as I alluded to in at the beginning, it has a pin which reduces the clock speed by half, which the AY-3-8910 can't do. My guess is that the sound is running at the standard speed, and is supposed to use the YM2149's half-speed mode like Arkanoid. However, we'd have to look for as much PCB footage as we can, the way I did with Arkanoid.
However, City Connection also uses a YM2203 FM chip - is that pitched too high also? Is the music running too fast, or just the sound effects or whatever is generated by the PSG chip? Or is this just about tempo and not pitch?
Edited by TServo2049 (01/12/18 08:04 PM)
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: TServo2049]
#372999 - 01/12/18 08:14 PM
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Ok, here's a long Japanese video where the PSG-generated sounds seem to run at double speed compared to various older MAME videos. Listen to the insert coin sound in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-UDlQTQF0c
And here's another video from the same person who posted the other video of the glitched PCB previously linked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-CW6uUIhag
This may not be as open-and-shut as Arkanoid, perhaps there could have been some official boards with the YM2149 (with the half-speed pin setting) and others with the AY-3-8910. Maybe this would ultimately need to be implemented as a machine setting, like that Astro Blaster wire mod that turns the starfield from blue to black.
And I'm still not sure if we're even talking about the same issue, or if the speed/tempo of the FM music has recently increased also. Of note, Hamster's Arcade Archives release seems to have the music at a slightly faster tempo than any of this actual PCB footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjaur49yziA
However, it doesn't sound double speed to my ear, and I can't tell if it's faster than other MAME videos on YouTube. (And strangely enough, I have found some videos of the Hamster release with the slower insert coin sound, and others with the faster one. Did the speed change in a patch at some point? Beats me...)
Another interesting thing I notice: On the Japanese arcade video, the cars make a sound when they get shot and spin out. The glitched PCB video has it too. I have never heard that before. (They're missing from Hamster's release too.) Can a dev possibly look into why this sound wouldn't be playing in MAME?
Edited by TServo2049 (01/12/18 08:46 PM)
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: TServo2049]
#373003 - 01/13/18 12:52 AM
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> Ok, here's a long Japanese video where the PSG-generated sounds seem to run at double
> speed compared to various older MAME videos. Listen to the insert coin sound in
> particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-UDlQTQF0c
>
> And here's another video from the same person who posted the other video of the
> glitched PCB previously linked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-CW6uUIhag
>
> This may not be as open-and-shut as Arkanoid, perhaps there could have been some
> official boards with the YM2149 (with the half-speed pin setting) and others with the
> AY-3-8910. Maybe this would ultimately need to be implemented as a machine setting,
> like that Astro Blaster wire mod that turns the starfield from blue to black.
>
> And I'm still not sure if we're even talking about the same issue, or if the
> speed/tempo of the FM music has recently increased also. Of note, Hamster's Arcade
> Archives release seems to have the music at a slightly faster tempo than any of this
> actual PCB footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjaur49yziA
>
> However, it doesn't sound double speed to my ear, and I can't tell if it's faster
> than other MAME videos on YouTube. (And strangely enough, I have found some videos of
> the Hamster release with the slower insert coin sound, and others with the faster
> one. Did the speed change in a patch at some point? Beats me...)
>
> Another interesting thing I notice: On the Japanese arcade video, the cars make a
> sound when they get shot and spin out. The glitched PCB video has it too. I have
> never heard that before. (They're missing from Hamster's release too.) Can a dev
> possibly look into why this sound wouldn't be playing in MAME?
Thanks for the in-depth review. And yes, the issue in MAME 0.193 is in tempo only. Pitch is not affected. Additionally, I'm not adverse to believing that the prior tempo was incorrect; however, I am highly suspect that the new tempo is definitely not correct.
City Connection was ported to both the NES and MSX. The NES music is fairly accurate and the MSX music is a bit crude, but both use a tempo closer to the slower, older tempo.
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Pr3tty F1y]
#373006 - 01/13/18 06:53 AM
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If this is accurate it may help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-6Hv6LQ5II
Also, the car getting shot sound is missing in MAME as far back as v181. I'm not sure why but line 52 in citycon.cpp is commented out. Compile with that line in & the car being shot sound returns.
You sure did open a big can of worms heh? Haha...
Edited by Bad A Billy (01/13/18 07:35 AM)
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Pessimist: Oh, this can't get any worse!
Optimist: Yes, it can!
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Pr3tty F1y]
#373063 - 01/13/18 04:16 PM
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I just fixed the music speed. I hadn't realized that the audio CPU was so incredibly underclocked. Now it plays "Nekofunjatta" at a much more believable tempo.
The PCB reference video linked in one of the replies doesn't seem to have fully working sound, though, since I can't hear the PSG there.
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: Bad A Billy]
#373069 - 01/13/18 08:28 PM
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Well, I think there are three separate issues here:
[1] The YM2203 is running too fast (I think ajrhacker did a commit on github that will fix this?
[2] The PSG chip is supposed to be an AY-3-8910, but according to a comment added by AJR with his previous change, at least one board has been found with a YM2149. There is video of an actual machine with the insert coin sound running as fast as it does in 0.193, but there is also a possibility that there could be YM2149 versions with the PSG sounds running at half-tempo (but not half-pitch, like Arkanoid does; the pitch of the "fast" insert coin sound is exactly the same). AJR, has the YM2149 PCB actually been run and tested?
[3] The sound of the cars spinning out is missing, and removing the comment from line 52 of the driver causes it to play as it does on video footage of real machines. AJR, can you look into this too?
Edited by TServo2049 (01/13/18 08:29 PM)
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: AJR Hacker]
#373070 - 01/13/18 08:30 PM
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Thanks!
As to the "insert coin" sound speed, I figured it out. If you insert a coin before the first demo plays, it will play at the slow tempo. If you insert it after the demo has finished, it will run at the fast tempo. On 0.193, the "slow" version is as fast as the "fast" version normally is, and the "fast" version is twice as fast again. So the insert coin sound speed variation appears to be a bug in the real game, and has absolutely nothing to do with that YM2149 half-speed pin setting, or the recent clock speed regression.
There are still a couple problems, though, such as the enemy cars not making the proper sound when they spin out.
It makes the sound on this Japanese video of actual machine gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-UDlQTQF0c
The sound also occurs in that video of the glitched PCB (which, while it is missing the YM2203's PSG channels, does seem to play the AY-3-8910 sounds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5-CekPrzo0
And the spinout sound is also in evidence in an episode of Game Center CX where Arino plays the game in an arcade.
The music in the German castle level also seems to have an instrument that sounds too screechy in MAME. It sounds better in the Hamster Arcade Archives version, but I don't fully trust the accuracy of that version, since it has the music running a bit too fast (not double speed, but it's still a bit quicker), it's also missing the car spin-out sound, and the ceiling bump sound is different than MAME (the sound in MAME is the one that matches the actual machine footage in the Game Center CX episode, and the Japanese arcade video I found).
For a possibly more arcade-accurate example, the glitchy PCB video I linked above is of the same castle level, and that instrument that sounds screechy in MAME sounds more pleasing to my ear; even though the YM2203 PSG channels are missing, the distorted instrument in MAME is part of the FM channel that is playing in this video, so do you think it's still a valid reference for how that high-pitched instrument on that level's music is meant to sound?
Edited by TServo2049 (01/14/18 12:14 AM)
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: TServo2049]
#373075 - 01/14/18 12:19 AM
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> There are still a couple problems, though, such as the enemy cars not making the
> proper sound when they spin out.
I managed to fix that simply by uncommenting the AY-3-8910 read. It had been commented out since the driver was first added to MAME 0.31; perhaps the rarity of read accesses (since the parallel ports aren't used), compounded with MAME back then using separate structures to map reads and writes and thus obscuring the connection between the two, was what left devs confused.
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Re: City Connection fast audio? (MAME 0.193)
[Re: AJR Hacker]
#373076 - 01/14/18 12:25 AM
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Makes me wonder why the Hamster PS4 release is also missing the sound. Would a different emulator coded from the ground up have had the same inaccuracy? Sometimes people have assumed in the past that they may just be copying MAME, but they can't have just done that and called it a day, because the music timing is different from MAME (and from any of the real hardware footage we found, I'd naturally trust the real hardware), and also because the FM synthesis emulation is less accurate (like the ceiling bump), though there is that one instrument in the Germany level music that seems less distorted, so it could be more accurate in some aspects too. (Not the first time someone has noted a Hamster release sounding better than MAME, there was a whole thing about the sound emulation accuracy of Gradius a couple years back...)
I should probably log a bug for the distorted FM instrument. Wish we had more actual hardware footage of that level, though. I wonder if anyone has a fully working PCB...
Edited by TServo2049 (01/14/18 05:17 AM)
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Awesome - Thank you
[Re: AJR Hacker]
#373137 - 01/16/18 01:21 AM
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> I just fixed the music speed. I hadn't realized that the audio CPU was so incredibly
> underclocked. Now it plays "Nekofunjatta" at a much more believable tempo.
>
> The PCB reference video linked in one of the replies doesn't seem to have fully
> working sound, though, since I can't hear the PSG there.
Sounds great again. Thank you!
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Re: Awesome - Thank you
[Re: Pr3tty F1y]
#373244 - 01/18/18 11:05 PM
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I'm also having issues with mame 193 also in some games music seems silent while the effects seems too loud, Not sure if its suppose to be like this but in Darius II some of the sfx are just crackles really load ones??
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