I know that snes games usually do not have surround sound in them however one game "Tales of Phantasia" has the best sound by far in any snes game technicly... it even has a built in EQ. what im asking is about the surround sound option in zsnes. does it play the stereo sound on all speakers or does it allow the game to send individual channels to the speakers... now when i have the surround sound option off it still plays on all 5.1 speakers but i dont know the differance between the functions

Slightly OT: If you like ToP's music, play Star Ocean. Same composer, same coders (and like ToP, 16 channels instead of the usual 8 ).

You know.. I dont think that it does send it to the devidual channels. I have tried the surround sound option (with star ocean,ToF of course..), though it would seem that it only widens the stereo arc. Or (now im only sumising..), it could be attempting to create a stereo 3d environment by varing the pitch of rear assigned sounds. Though this would only work well if you had a stereo setup, which would explain the strangely different sound from the five channels. I know this doesn't really help, this is a question I also would like to know the answer...

From the SNESAmp plugin:


Maybe ZSNES does the same?

I don't know what Zsnes does, but it does not invert channels like SNESamp. Inverting the channels sounds awful; the bass will be totally gone if you're using a sub. This is not the case with Zsnes

Right on man. I was just about to say that. It's just like you hooked up one of your speakers wrong. The speakers will cancel each other out. You won't have any bass and you'll hear slight echo if you have good ears and all sorts of other abnormalities.

Inverting a channel can do nothing short of making the sound worse if you ask me.

Ever do it with headphones? It makes your head want to explode.

Anyway, back on topic, I actually think that is what it does. I haven't been able to get it to do anything though.

I feel that there are still some sound issues with the new release... Have'n played around with a few settings, rear speakers have given up working. The best thing to do is to just wait for a new official release and then see if things become clearer. Also.. does anybody else get a crash when they disable then re-enable cubic spline?

Speaking of which, which snes games had Surround Sound?

The only two I can think of are Jurassic Park and The Shadow (which was never really released).

I've got the cart for Jurassic Park. Back when it came out I remember it being advertised that you would be able to hear where the dinosaurs came from. But I've never really been able to test it on an actual surround sound setup. I should probably try sometime.

Super Turrican 1 & 2, Fatal Fury Special, Art of Fighting(?)

The SNES games that are marked Surround sound are designed to be listened to on a receiver that has Dolby ProLogic audio processing.

On a PC that only has a stereo connection to a receiver, all you have to do is turn on the ProLogic decoding in your receiver to hear it.

On 5.1 PC systems, you can't do that however, and ZSNES itself would need to process the audio in ProLogic then output sound via DirectSound3d/OpenAL to the 5.1 PC setup.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I believe my Sound Blaster Live has an option to process Dolby Pro Logic sources and can output them to 5 speakers just fine. I never verified what the option does though because I have it hooked up to my home reciever anyway, and when that's not one, just stereo speakers. I'm pretty sure it can do it though.

SB Live can do Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding(software based though), but it doesn't do ProLogic decoding. I used to have one before I upgraded to nvidia Soundstorm.

Hopefully I remember to check when I go home. I am almost positive there is a Dolby Pro Logic option as well.

I believe the dolby surround feature is called CSMM or something like that.

But i can't check because I don't have a creative card anymore (phew!)

I played it on our ProLogic system back when ProLogic was new. It worked reasonably well, adding some depth to the sound. It probably would have worked better if the rear speakers were positioned correctly in the room. And it sounded better on stereo speakers in surround mode. I should try hooking it up to my receiver now and see what happens.

The Dolby ProLogic option (CMSS) only takes PC games that support 3d sound, mixes them internally as 3d, and sets up your stereo sound output so that it will sound 3d when processed with ProLogic. Basically the same thing Gamecube games that support ProLogic 2 do. It only generates a stereo sound from a 3d mixed game, it won't process stereo into surround.

Huh, CMSS. I thought that was for simulating surround from simple stereo signals. Not to mention, when you use that or any of the other EAX effects with that shiny Audigy 2 or 4, you lose the 24-bit capability.



That is quite unnecessary. WaveOut or DirectSound are all you need for discrete multi-channel output. Throw in WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE, and you can output to specific channels without padding the missing channels with silence, but that is completely unnecessary for 4.0 output.

Oh you're right about CMSS. My mistake.

But does Zsnes have 24bit support? And has the "shiny" Audigy even got true 24bit capability? I highly doubt it: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22019

That is only applicable to Audigy 1/Extigy from what I can see, not the entire Audigy series.

That was a useless note. Yes, the 24-bit limitation applies to all of the Audigy series which use the emu10k2 chip for EAX effects. While it is capable of 32-bit integer processing internally, all inputs and outputs are 16-bit. Therefore, when you have CMSS or EAX effects enabled, the output of that p16v chip is truncated to 16 bits before processing.

Then there's the Audigy 1, which does not even support 24-bit output as advertised. While Creative did lose a class action lawsuit over that, the only thing victims receive is a $25 discount off a future purchase from Creative USA web store.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Surround output topic.

Yes, you're right. I checked on that yesterday. That's the option I was thinking about. That's kind of odd that the card cannot decode Dolby Pro Logic when it can decode Dolby 5.1. I don't think I've ever seen a peice of equipment that decodes 5.1, but can't also decode Pro Logic.

Probably because ProLogic is a DSP effect, and Creative would rather use EAX instead of a outside DSP program. Even the Dolby Digital decoding is software based on your system CPU, and not done by the card itself.

And I suppose Creative didn't think there would be a use for it. Most PC games that support ProLogic have actual 3d sound support also. It would be nice for the Blizzard game cinematics though.

ok i have tried my best to figure this out and this is what i came up with

1. the surround sound option in zsnes virtually has no effect
2. the only reason why it would play on surround sound speakers is if you have enabled it on your sound card (EAX handles this for creative and there is a clone option for nvidia sound cards)
3. as far as i know.. pro logic isnt very good surround sound and it really isnt worth it but if he game has surround sound in it and allows you to use it i dont understand why the emulator cant get this RAW sound from the game and if it cant just put in a software pro logic decoder soo we will have at least a minimal excuse for surround sound.

I also monitored all the channels coming out zsnes and it appears to be all stereo.