I have noticed this too. I hear a "stutter" about every 5 - 10 seconds in the 
audio.

I have been hearing it in FCEU-GX for quite awhile, but have only recently 
heard it
in SNES9x-GX when the core was upgraded to Snes9x1.52. 

You get used to it after a while, but you gotta admit, the sound emulation is a 
lot
better than what it used to be (as far as accuracy is concerned). As far as 
fixing
it, it'll likely be a very difficult task.

Yea the Mario games have accurate sound, and games like Secret of Evermore has 
full 
sound. Anyway, lets hope this gets fixed too. Its probably something simple, 
yet 
hard to find.

It may have to do with the sound buffer settings, either changing them to 
higher or
lower value. We may see a fix in the next version (4.1.9 or 4.2.0...?)

It's because it's hard to have perfect sound AND video synchronization. 
Emulation on
consoles is generally synced with Video Interrupt (VSYNC) which is approx. 1/50 
or
1/60s. In the mean time, audio is played through DMA at a given samplerate (32 
or
48khz). Both frequencies are however not *exactly* 60 frames/sec or 32000 
samples/sec
on the Wii/Gamecube so desync happen after a while. The result in that case is 
that
the previous audio DMA is played again, leading to sound lag once in a while.

A solution would be to synchronize emulation with audio DMA instead of Video
Interrupt but you will get similar frame skipping once in a while, though it's
generally less noticeable than sound skipping.

I've hard time figuring a perfect solution in Genesis Plus, it's not simple but 
the
general idea is to have the output samplerate every frame (number of samples 
output
per frames) match the exact framerate (I measured that on PAL60/NTSC, VSYNC 
occurs
approx. every 16715 us which is approx. 802.32 samples per frames at 48kHz so 
you ned
to ouput either 800 or 808 samples per frame to approximate this value)

[deleted comment]

ekeeke- I know there's no perfect solution, but personally I have never noticed 
the 
frame skipping in the Genesis Plus emulator (everything feels completely smooth 
to 
me). I do however notice the audio skipping in this and the FCEU emulators, so 
I 
would say that the frame skipping is the better solution overall.

If ekeeke31 can fix this, then hopefully he will be interested in fixing the 
same 
problem in FCEU. Its been asked many times by many different people for the 
same 
problem in FCEU to be fixed, but the fix is always rejected. Lets hope that 
doesnt 
happen at least with SNES9xgx

I also don't notice this problem in Genesis Plus, unlike Snes9xGX and 
FCEUltraGX. So,
I think ekeeke solution works pretty good.

I guess the official Virtua Console emulators don't have this issue too.

This is a problem that I really hope to get some attention, since it's the only 
thing
detracting this great emulator. 

[deleted comment]

Now that 4.1.9 has been released, can anyone else confirm if the sound glitch 
has
been fixed?

I didn't touch the sound, so it shouldn't be.

Oh...I was wondering why I say "video/audio changes" in the release notes...Is 
this
something that is much more complex? 

Those changes were unrelated. I have absolutely no intention of looking at 
these 
types of audio glitches as I truly have no knowledge of how to fix them.

[deleted comment]

I also noticed this stutter too. The new audio engine is lovely and is vastly 
improved 
on the old core, but this timing issue is very off putting.

i think the problem is less important in 4.1.9.

But i still prefer to play with 4.1.5 version. no glitch sound and no scrolling 
problem.

i cant see any diferrence with a real snes hardware with version 4.1.5 with any 
games i tried.

thanks for theses wonderful emulators.

[deleted comment]

I've also gone back to 4.1.5 as the sound issues only started with the new core 
update from 4.1.6 and onwards. I just tried 4.2.0 and while the screen 
stuttering has gone the sound stutter is still there, every 5 seconds or so. 
Unfortunately for me it makes the new sound engine redundant. I hope you can 
find what is causing this. But thanks for a marvellous emulator anyway.

Well you shouldn't blame the new superior sound core (as it kicks the crap out 
of the old one), but maybe it's a buffer issue (or maybe someone could try 
setting the frequency from 32000Hz to 31950Hz to get less lag)? It's a 
mind-boggling issue, that's for sure. If I had software that would actually let 
me MAKE changes, and not give me compiling errors/exit codes, I would 
experiment with these settings, but since I don't have anything like that, I 
can't. Any suggestions? I recall BSNES having a similar issue and if you change 
the frequency value to around 31900/31950 or so, most sound skipping issues go 
away. 

here, give these a try and give me feedback: 
http://www.mediafire.com/?1yrjzwjjk2m

@dborth, here are the results of my test; I tested some games where I noticed 
them the most: Chrono Trigger Music Library (since the songs have OSD, you can 
time how often the crackling happens), Animaniacs and Megaman X2. Note: Using 
headphones makes it much easier to distinguish when the crackling occurs. 

31900Hz - More crackling present; most noticeable in this build; occurs randomly

31950Hz - Not as noticeable; they may be absent. Tested CT Music Library for 
timing, but I don't want to say that it's completely gone; one thing's for 
sure, it definitely occurs less frequently (maybe every 45 seconds? If it does, 
it certainly doesn't sound as loud) 

31977Hz - Occurs every 25-30 seconds (again, not as frequently like the 
official build, where it happened every 10 seconds or so. To make sure it 
wasn't a false positive, I waited for it to happen three times in Chrono 
Trigger, and counted each time it happened in seconds).

32000Hz - Exactly the same as the official 4.2.0 build; prominent crackling 
occurs every 10-15 seconds. 

Overall conclusion: 31950Hz gave me the best overall results (the issue mostly 
gone), but I'd like other people to confirm it as well, to make sure I'm not 
hearing it incorrectly. Use headphones if possible (it's easier to hear it). 
Has anyone else been able to test these builds? 

Hope this information helps towards getting this issue resolved! For now, I'll 
keep testing the test build set at 31950Hz, to make sure it really sounded the 
best.

Do you want builds at other freq eg: 31940 or 31960? Or I could probably throw 
in a temporary setting so you can change it yourself to try to find the best #?

Hmm...you know, I think having a changeable option like that would be quite 
advantageous for narrowing this issue down. :) The more frequency builds 
available, the better, IMHO. 

here's a build that lets you change the freq under Video settings - 
http://www.mediafire.com/?zt5jrnmmdqg

before trying to find the perfect freq, be sure to try with extreme values 
first to be sure that changing the value is actually doing something. I think 
it should though...

I extensively tried 31894hz setting for almost 2 hours using headphones, lots 
of different games. Not even a single skip. Original video setting, no filters, 
4:3, playing (U) roms. Sound is flawless.

Geez, what a joy. Playing this emulator with an original SNES controller is 
just like being in heaven :D

@nintendonerd 

See, that's the thing! I have actually tried to make it crash intentionally, by 
doing things like, load roms in rapid succession, press the home button over 
and over, change options then press home alot, change the Hz all over the place 
then play awhile, press home alot again. Do all this and exit, still no dump. I 
just can't break it!

 It performs like a finely tuned piece of software. What exactly do you usually do that causes said code dumps? Are you just playing a game,.. and then FREEEZE, CODE DUMP! or is it just pushing home while playing, that causes the code dump? Or a black screen on exiting? I'm very curious what is causing yours. 

Well this sucks. Am I supposed to delete the settings.xml file before I use 
this or what? Right now I'm using the predefined 31955Hz build...I know it 
doesn't sound as good as the customizable ones, but I've used it for over two 
hours, and not once did I see a crash. Now with the customizable builds, I seem 
to be cursed; it seems to happen randomly, whether I push the home button or 
not, thus forcing me to manually hard reboot the wii. I'm using the normal 4;3 
aspect ratio (since it looks better than the 16;9 forced correction, IMHO) with 
a normal filter (I don't like the way SNES games look unfiltered; it looks too 
much like upscaled VC games). I just wish someone else could confirm this 
issue, or at least tell me WHY it's happening in order to prove I'm not 
hallucinating. 

@nintendonerd, you're not alone. I just happened to come across the same issue 
when I hooked my wii back up to my hdtv (running 16:9 filtered). Just as I was 
playing I hit the home button and got a code dump. I restarted the wii, started 
a game, hit the home button and got another code dump. This never happened to 
me when I was running the same build (customizable with latency) on my CRT (4:3 
original mode), so maybe the filter has something to do with it.

Why would the filter cause these crashes? I've used 4.2.0 and 4.1.9 (then 
again, ever since Snes9xGx was "born") with filters before and never had a 
single code dump; other problems caused those (such as pressing "home" too many 
times or a corrupt ROM file). I'm sure these will go away once the code is 
cleaned up a bit and released as 4.2.1. 

I think Muceda is right about the filter causing this.

I use a CRT television with no filters, on 4:3, and have no issues with code 
dumps/freezes.  

[deleted comment]

Why have an HDTV if you can't even use it for videogames? How can it be the 
filter? 

Another thing I noticed was when switching to filtered mode, I began to hear 
crackling again. I switched to unfiltered mode, and the crackling was still 
there. Switched back to original mode, and the crackling was gone. This was all 
done with the input freq. set at 31984.

So I tested the filtered and unfiltered modes with nintendonerd's suggestion of 
31953 and the sound was perfect. When I tried it with original mode the sound 
skipped about every 10 seconds. So maybe the frequency setting is different for 
both supported resolutions. original's 256x224 sounds best with 31894, while 
filtered/unfiltered's 640x480 (at least I believe so) works best with 31953. 
16:9 correction seemed to have no impact to the sound. Can someone please 
confirm this?

@nintendonerd, it's the build. I switched back to the older customizable build 
(no latency, just freq) and got no code dumps on all modes.

Hopefully the new version will rid this issue once and for all XD

I've been getting no code dumps what so ever from using both the frequency 
release and freq/latency build. In fact they are the most stable builds I've 
used for what ever reason.


To answer the question someone asked earlier:

I cannot tell a difference through my TV speakers from 31890 to 31900 but with 
a pair of Sennheiser headphones on I noticed there is a lot less crackling with 
31890. From what I can tell 31890 appears to be the sweet spot and personally 
speaking if it were up to me, I would incorporate that frequency as a default 
setting in the next official build.

Just to confirm, I've also been using a CRT SDTV hooked up through RGB SCART 
(c'mon guys, it's the ONLY way to play SNES in pure 240p goodness :P) which may 
explain why it's been stable for me also. :-)

We don't USE SCART over here, just component/NTSC combination, and I don't want 
to use CRTs because the flickering gives me a headache (the 50/60Hz frequency). 
But like I said earlier, I must be cursed. Maybe dborth knows why this is 
happening.

There is no flicker in 240p though :) it's a progressive signal not interlaced. 
Though if you are from the US (I'm from UK) then I understand why you don't use 
it. But yeah I do hate flicker myself. This is just one of the reasons why I 
think this is the best SNES emulator out there, even better than ZSnexbox on 
Xbox as it could only output at 480i/576i on SDTV's. Plus Snes9X GX sounds 
amazing now.

On the old build I was using I was getting code dumps quite frequently, now 
it's really stable but for some odd reason seems to only effect component users?

[deleted comment]

I play with a CRT too, original video settings, and never got a single crash 
with all the later small releases dborth gave us here. It's probably the 
filters+new audio frequency which causes the problems. I initially used an HDTV 
to play but switched back to an old TV... it was just embarrassing to play with 
such huge pixels :)

I stay with 31894. By the way, it also depends on the roms you play. NTSC games 
(60hz) play perfectly in sync with that frequency, but PAL games (50hz) will 
start crackling and skipping sound, as they have different refresh rate, so 
keep that in mind when doing some tests. You'll probably need a different audio 
frequency to match the PAL games rate and achieve perfect sound.

Yeah I know what you're saying, though for me NTSC ROMS take priority. The only 
way to test PAL ROMS in 50hz on these builds is to enter the Wii menu and force 
50hz then boot up the emulator. It's a real tough one as I went down as low as 
31300 and while there was no noticeable stuttering below the default setting, 
there was noticeable crackling which I couldn't seem to get rid off no matter 
what I tried..

@ dieroboter

Can I just ask you why are you using 31984 and not 31890? Have you spotted 
something wrong with 31890 over 31984? I admit they sound very similar indeed 
but I thought I heard the occasional crackle at 31894, but that could have been 
my imagination.

I'll do some more PAL testing later, but turns out that the ROM I was testing 
was International Superstar Soccer and the menu music has quite a crackly sound 
to it anyway so that could have affected my judgement.

@tmor81: I got some slight problems with 31890 (though not happening every 
15sec like earlier this issue) that 31894 apparently helps to get rid of. I've 
been playing with headphones and I couldn't notice any cracks or skips. I don't 
have an explanation or a reason why it works better; just kept trying and found 
it was the best :)

Anyway, I would like to hear more from ekeeke31's coding comments, he seems to 
be the only one who happens to know how is the sound engine working and where 
to modify. Maybe there's a proper way to fix this... or more "polished". The 
programming process surpasses me, hehe.

Just wanted to mention that some games have some crackle even on a original 
SNES console. For example, the first stage in Castlevania IV, past the castle 
gates, there is normal crackling in that game. So be sure of what your hearing 
guys. 

[deleted comment]

Oh, and just a random side note, is it just me, or did issue 498 come back from 
the dead in the 31955 build? 

Well I'm just going by what you guys say, so here's a build that uses 31953 for 
unfiltered/filtered and 31894 for original - 
http://www.mediafire.com/?z1gon1ztaylzwnn

So if I understand you correctly, when you have the unfiltered or original 
(normal filtered TV look) graphics, it switches to 31894Hz and when you have a 
filter like h2qx, it goes to 31953Hz? Is that correct? Just tested Chrono 
Trigger Music Library once more (on an NTSC LCD HDTV), with the original 
filter, no crackling whatsoever. Nice work!

no, just like I said - unfilter/filtered - 31953. original - 31894. hq2x 
doesn't play into that equation.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry about the confusion; suffice to say, I don't notice the 
crackling sound issue anymore, so, can we consider this issue fixed? That's 
cool how you got Snes9x's sound frequency to change like that, depending on the 
filter/unfiltered modes.