Improving the sound engine

[deepblue22]

It's really impressive, when you first here the SNES sound via console through TV's speakers and then via ZSNES through a 5.1 sound system. Thanks again to the ZSNES guys for that incredible new sound experience!
If you could tickle out a crystal clear sound of the instruments, this would be excellent.

[kode54]

If you like, I can port that surround filter to a DSP for RetroArch, then you can use it with a pile of other emulators.

[paulguy]

A 5.1 surround sound system will generally sound better than some tv speakers. I'm pretty sure zsnes isn't the source of the improved audio quality.

[Gil_Hamilton]

It's really impressive, when you first here the SNES sound via console through TV's speakers and then via ZSNES through a 5.1 sound system. Thanks again to the ZSNES guys for that incredible new sound experience!
If you could tickle out a crystal clear sound of the instruments, this would be excellent.

You know you can connect a real SNES to a sound system too, right? You don't need an emulator with a surround-sound toggle.

Also, surround receivers will create a surround effect internally for a stereo source.

[deepblue22]

You know you can connect a real SNES to a sound system too, right?

Yes I know this. Unfortunately, I don't have a SNES console anymore. I also have no surround receiver. Only ZSNES with a simulate surround sound switch I like and an Audigy 2.

If you like, I can port that surround filter to a DSP for RetroArch, then you can use it with a pile of other emulators.

No thanks. I stick with ZSNES. Not only I like the sound, but also the snow BG effect.

[deepblue22]

Let me express, once more, my deep honor, to all guys who worked on the ZSNES sound engine. Donkey Kong sounds like never before.

2.0 will probably employ a hardware accurate mixer, so different resampling options are straight out. So is the sample rate setting, since a hardware accurate mixer always runs at about 32KHz.

Does straight out mean no sampling rate setting, no cubic spline setting? If so, 48KHz however sounds better than 32KHz, so this hardware accurate mixer could sound worse. Well, I will review it and compare it to the sound engine of v1.51 to hear if the sound is better then.

[paulguy]

Nowadays there's probably nothing wrong with outputting at 32000hz and letting the sound card driver/subsystem figure out what to do with it. Back in the day you'd frequently run in to issues with drivers having either no resampling ability or arbitrary limitations on resampling, but nowadays that's rarely left up to the sound card driver itself as far as I know. It's usually up to directsound or alsa or coreaudio or whatever to handle mixing and resampling, so it's rare to see any games or applications that have an output sample rate option anymore unless it's something dealing specifically with audio like a media player or audio production program.

On the other hand, default resampling algorithms on many OSes may not be super duper great, so having an internal fancy resampler might not be a bad idea, but it's going to be a matter if people find it a worthwhile effort.

I imagine what kode54 is referring to is that the emulated SNES DSP mixer rate will always be 32000hz, whether the emulator will have it's own resampler after the fact or not, since the SNES mixes and resamples things in a certain way, and changing the mixing rate would mess with that in a way that resampling the mixer output afterwards wouldn't so much.