Does ZSNES support S/PDIF? If it does, I cannot find it.

M1CH43L · Post by **M1CH43L** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:10 pm

I have my little laptop hooked up to an a/v receiver, and have experienced amazing sound in movies and such, having the sound go straight through to the receiver, but I can't find the s/pdif option in ZSNES. I'm still getting sound out of my receiver, but It isn't what it could be. For instance, in Jurassic Park and other games, they have Dolby Digital, or AC3, and when I play that, if there was an S/PDIF selection, the Dolby Digital symbol would light up on my receiver, telling me that I have AC3 being decoded at the receiver, it does the same thing for DTS. Anyway, I wanted to know if ZSNES supports or has an option for S/PDIF output, or if ZSNES plans on supporting an S/PDIF option in the future. By the way, this is an excellent emulator, good job, glad I'm using it. Well, if you could answer my question, that would be great.

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 am

it's a super nintendo... the hardware is over 16 years old... it has a left and right channel. that dolby thing in jurassic park means stereo. it is not dolby digital or ac3 cause that stuff didn't exist back then.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:57 am

Mmm... just make sure the Surround Sound option is NOT checked (yes, I'm not kidding). I believe you are supposed to use SPDIF passthrough on your sound card... that's all I know about this. You will only get as far as Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround (Super Turrican comes to mind).

M1CH43L · Post by **M1CH43L** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:51 am

I know Jurassic Park was the first movie to feature Dobly Digital, and the game likewise showed the logo at the begining, so I'm assuming it can. But yeah, I was wondering about that since Dolby Digital is around 560 kb/sec, which means that that couldn't fit in a 1 MB game. Haha, I still love snes. But there has gotta be a way to check S/PDIF in the app itself or something. I have SPDIF checked for my onboard audio, but it is still encoding at the computer instead, otherwise I would get the DD symbol. Anyway, it's not really a big deal. Thanks though for the heads up.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:58 am

Read this thread: http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 8:55 am

M1CH43L wrote:But yeah, I was wondering about that since Dolby Digital is around 560 kb/sec, which means that that couldn't fit in a 1 MB game.

Most SNES games use short samples and a small program to play them... As long as you can output DD signals via the DSP, there shouldn't be a problem.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:20 am

Don't confuse the Dolby "DD" logo with Dolby Digital (what they put on DVD's and new game systems) or Dolby ProLogic, a purely analog format. SNES games, such as Jurassic Park, only used ProLogic, which works by phase-shifting the rear and center channels and mixing them with the left and right stereo channels. On systems that didn't support it, it played back as standard stereo or mono audio, but on ProLogic-capable systems, the sound processor would separate the channels.

You'll probably get better results using the line out jack on your laptop because the digital decoder on your receiver probably won't pick up on a ProLogic signal on a digital channel where it doesn't expect it. The sound emulation in ZSNES should be accurate enough to correctly reproduce the ProLogic signal as long as you use an analog output tht the system will recognize.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 2:38 pm

Yes, dear god, let's not start a misinformation spread here

Jurassic Park, the SNES game clearly states that it utilized DOLBY SURROUND. This is an ANALOG encoded surround format. In fact, Dolby Surround by itself had MONO rear channels. The Dolby Pro Logic upgrade allowed for stereo rear channels.

Based on the Dolby Surround logo in Jurassic Park, it doesn't even offer Pro Logic, therefore I wouldn't expect anything but mono rear surround. Does anybody have any proof Jurassic Park outputs Pro Logic surround?

Let's educate ourselves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Surround
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technolog ... rview.html

Therefore, all this talk about SPDIF is USELESS. You will NOT extract any additional surround information from Jurassic Park. It outputs all that it can via standard ANALOG STEREO output.

Your Dolby Digital Signal will NEVER light up from Jurassic Park the SNES game because it's NOT a Dolby Digital signal.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:27 pm

Pro Logic was just an updated and retitled version of Dolby Surround, which was almost exactly the same technology. Dolby Surround was phased out in the late 80's. Both produce a mono center and a mono rear channel from a stereo signal.

And yes, if he does get his SPDIF output to work with ZSNES, his receiver will say he has a Dolby Digital signal because that's what the computer is outputting, but it will only have sound on the front left and right channels. The rest will be mute. And it won't pick up the embedded Pro Logic signal unless it's on an analog input, like I said before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES
It's not exactly proof, but the Wikipedia article says that a few games, including Jurassic Park, did use Pro Logic sound.

Post by **Nach** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 7:48 pm

In my experience, every single SNES related article on Wikipedia is chock full of misinformation.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:26 pm

Well, you can edit it, right?

Post by **Nach** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:44 pm

creaothceann wrote:Well, you can edit it, right?

There's no point because when I fix an article I notice a week later other morons "fix" it. It's also just too depressing to work on something so totally wrong. I'd have to rewrite from scratch many of their pages and I have no motivation to do that.

M1CH43L · Post by **M1CH43L** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 2:19 am

Yeah, I'm using an optical digital out to connect my laptop to my receiver, and the snes audio wouldn't be digital out, except that I'm playing it on a computer and the signal would be sent to the receiver digitally. And actually, my receiver can take dts, Doly Digital, Dolby Prologic II (and the original), wma, divx, mp3, and it keeps going. It also has a number of matrixing systems used to simulate surround, making surround from source audio without discrete channels. Anyway, I just wanted to know if there was an option for s/pdif, so It simply wouldn't be decoded at my computer, it would be decoded at the receiver. It's really not a big deal though, and after reading my post, it looked as if I did confuse and somehow enrage people by using DD, the acronym for Dolby Digital, and interchanging it with Dolby Surround, which was correctly noted as an analogue format. I'm sorry. So no s/pdif?

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 4:42 am

omg

Dolby Surround Pro Logic, the original Dolby professional matrix-surround encoding technology, is featured in millions of home A/V receivers worldwide. Dolby Surround Pro Logic decoding in consumer products features four-channel playback: Left, Center, and Right, plus a mono surround channel that's usually split between two rear speakers.

During program production, the Dolby Surround encoder combines four channels-Left, Center, Right, and mono Surround-into a two-channel Lt/Rt output for recording or distribution on any two-channel analog or digital medium.

jurassic park says dolby surround, which I guess is dolby pro logic (not pro logic II.) pro logic has 4 speakers (left, center, right, rear,) I thought the fourth channel was only sub, my bad. pro logic II has 5 channels (left, center, right, left rear, right rear.) for the hell of it dolby digital thows in a subwoofer on top of those five channels (5.1)

if zsnes can reproduce these custom coded pro logic signals from jurassic park, it would output them via analog, so your best bet would be to hook up the headphone jack to your receiver and set it for pro logic. using the digital connection from your laptop would mean it converts zsnes's output to digital, then unconverts it from digital to pro logic, and I doubt that'll work.

the only way to know for sure is to try it. I almost want to try it myself but I don't even know if I got digital on my laptop, and it would spoil all your fun. maybe I'll whip out my snesy.

AntoineWG · Post by **AntoineWG** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 9:44 am

To answer your question, ZSNES should use whatever the default sound output device is. Try setting the default on your mixer to the S/PDIF output and see if that works. Since it's probably not exactly the same format, it will probably have to get transcoded or decoded to analog then re-encoded by the soundcard.