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Written By Ali, References Taken from Pete's Documents Version 1.0 The direct sound plugin of Pete is one of the best playstation emulator's sound plugins what we have today. It is has got some high compatibility, with awesome sound quality and very easy to use interface. Configuring this plugin is not a big deal, there are just a few options and we'll would have a look at them as we continue with our review. So let have a look at the configuration window of this plugin.
1) Volume Settings are quite simple, you have four options Low, Medium, Loud and Loudest. This option is just like a substitute to your ordinary sound card mixer. Its all up to you which one you want to use. 2) XA Playing: Well there are games which would require audio data to be read continuously from the CD rom or ISO during the gameplay. Like in the game smack down and Tekken 3 when you are in a match you can continuously hear the music behind, that music is read directly from the CD rom during the gameplay that's why there is a lot of activity going on in the hard disk (In case of ISO) or CD rom (if you are not using the ISO). This plugin is not decoding that XA audio data, so what's this option about. All that you can do from this plugin is disable enable that audio. Why would you do that? because In case you get very bad XA audio, you can come here and disable the sound and play the game without it. The XA audio will still be decoded by the emulator, but your won't be hearing it. So if you want to disable XA audio you have to do that from the emulator. 3) Change XA Speed: First you should know about XA audio which is explained above. If you are not using a frame limiter and suppose that you are having 100 fps, where as the required ones were 60 fps (considering the game is NTSC), what will happen is that the XA audio would get cutbacks, you will get very weird and horrible sound, why? because the game is running faster and the XA audio is being played at actual speed. So what this plugin does here is that it would play the XA audio at the same as that of the game. 4) Miscellaneous Settings: High compatibility mode is for solving some system compatibility problems , related to the sound. In some games a very exact timing of sound and graphics is required. Let me explain it very simply, when you are in the game menu ( of any game, say Resident Evil 3) , as you move through the options you would hear sound. If you feel that sound is played a few secs after when you have moved to another option, then you should use this mode to solve the issue. This was just an example the use of this mode is not only in the game menus, but very extensively inside the game, so I would recommend you to keep it enabled. This option requires are little system power, if you are having troubles then I guess a second option is available. SPU IRQ is used for solving sound issues with games like Metal Gear Solid. Keep it enabled as it would not cause any problem with other games. Developer Debug mode would when enabled would open an information window as soon as the spu gets started. This window would show graphically ho the 24 sound channels of the plugin are used by the game, and detailed information of each channel can be viewed, and to isolate sound problems each channel can be turned off separately. This winds up our review for this great plugin, if you feel like in need of more help, then feel free to visit the emuforums. |
