Why can't emulators get the sound right?

[aaron7]

I was just wondering this... why can't emulators get the sounds exactly like the systems?

[jb143]

One thing is that graphics is their main concern. The other is that most sound is controlled by special sound circuitry which falls more under sumulation raher than emulation. Instead of taking an assembly command from an NES and interpreting it as a PC command your trying to simulate somethign closer to setting a voltage across a capacitor. Trying to accuratly simulate analog circuitry can take too much processing time so the "close enough" solution is taken. Also, on top of all that, some games have special sound chips built in the cart so the emulator would need to have a special case built into it for each cart that uses one.

[NE146]

It really depends on the emulator of course.

For example TG16 emulation on the Xbox suffered for a long time because the sound was so "off".. But that was the old Hugo emulator (commonly found on the BAED discs). Now with MednafenX-PCE the sound is pretty much spot-on to my ears. The balance and volume of the voices and explosions in Blazing Lazers for example was horrible before but now it seems indistinguishable.

[Berserker]

There might be specific reasons that you could come up with for each emulator, but I think a generally-applicable one is that it's probably just inherently easier to verify visual accuracy than it is to verify accuracy of sound.

What I mean is, visually for example you're dealing with a set amount of pixels, of which the individual color values and whatnot can be tested and matched pretty easily, or at least coming incredibly close. It's much harder to do that with sound, because you're dealing with waves, and each person might hear something differently etc., so it's much more subjective.

There are things that can be done to come close, like studying and attempting to replicate sound chips and circuitry, which is basically what's done now, and probably later down the line we'll achieve some sort of general environment for full virtualization, which will bring it closer, but for some people it may never fully be "there".

[Haoie]

Actually, some emulators, like ZSNES, can produce even high quality sounds than the SNES itself.

Cool huh?

[Nirvana]

Actually, some emulators, like ZSNES, can produce even high quality sounds than the SNES itself.

Cool huh?

God, I love ZSNES. Which emulators don't sound great?

[AllP0werToSlaves]

I've only used ZSNES, GENS and NEStopia; they all seem to get the sound right in my opinion.

[Graham Mitchell]

God, I love ZSNES. Which emulators don't sound great?

I haven't noticed much of a problem in the last few years, but NESticle used to be pretty off. Most of the digital sound effects just ended up being silent.

Also, I use NESEm on my Palm and the sound is abysmal. Then again, it's a Palm T/X so the glass ceiling for sound quality probably has more to do with the hardware than the emulator.

You know, the Generation NEX butchers NES game sound as well. The timing is usually okay, and digital voices are reproduced fine, but the tone is altered in most games.

[zektor]

As stated earlier, it all depends on the emulator you use. The majority of the emulators I have used have correct/perfect sound, so I am not so sure what you are using? A list of the systems you are trying to emulate would be helpful to help YOU obtain something better I would think!

[ryborg]

I haven't noticed much of a problem in the last few years, but NESticle used to be pretty off. Most of the digital sound effects just ended up being silent.

Yeah, this always bothered me in Tecmo Super Bowl on the NESticle because the voice-overed "TOUCHDOWN" was either static or simply not played. It happens to a few other games were digitized voices are used, but I can't think of any offhand. The same problem seems to exist with whatever version of NEStopia I use.

[roushimsx]

I haven't noticed much of a problem in the last few years, but NESticle used to be pretty off. Most of the digital sound effects just ended up being silent.

NESticle also hasn't been updated in over a decade, though to its credit, it was light years beyond the other available stuff at the time (iNES, Pasofami, etc). Still, in the last 10 years there's been so much major development in the field of NES emulation that I have to wonder why you're even bothering with NESticle anymore?

As far as emulators showing emphasis on improving sound quality, check out the changelogs to Ootake sometime. It'll put a warm smile on your face as you see his history of obsessively trying to perfect all aspects of PCE / PCE CD emulation. :)

[Jorpho]

Aren't there C64 emulators that can use HardSID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HardSID) ? That ought to get the sound right.

[Graham Mitchell]

Still, in the last 10 years there's been so much major development in the field of NES emulation that I have to wonder why you're even bothering with NESticle anymore?



Notice I said Nesticle "used to be" off. I haven't used Nesticle in about 10 years either. I'm running Nestopia on my mac and it's almost the best NES emulator I've seen. It's certainly the most accurate. Where I have to bitch about it is that I don't think it runs FDS images, which NESTER did on my old PC. Kind of a bummer, because the emulation is so accurate. Then again, maybe it does now and I just haven't checked for updates.

[zektor]

Well, in my opinion, this is what you should be using for NES if running Windows:

http://virtuanes.s1.xrea.com/

I still can't believe Nesticle was even mentioned :) I haven't seen it in about a decade!

[tomaitheous]

I think Nestopia is the most accurate NES emulator to date - iirc. It also has all the beautiful NTSC/PAL analog emulation filters ;)

Emulating those old chips doesn't have much to do with filters or analog circuits (external to the IC) per say. Those chips were digital state machines. Unlike a processor, they're not as simple to emulate since no complete 100% documentation can be found for them. The existing patents and datasheets only cover so much. That is, if you can even find a datasheet for said chip. And even then, they usually have incorrect info at least on a few points. Same with the patents.

The other thing is how the emulation core 'samples' the audio channels. Precision has to be filtered down. The PCE for example can easily output a single sample of a instrument cycle/waveform at 100khz or more (up to 3.57mhz). If the emulation doesn't handle this at the higher rate and then down sample, but handles it at a lower precision rate - you tend to get artifacts. Not necessarily particular distinguishable artifacts, but slight differences in tonal aspects. Plus, the emulator has to handle all the quirks, shortcut methods, and anomalies of the audio chip. These aren't necessarily documented (or documented correctly) and have to be figured out/reversed engineered. This can also effect how some games sound different from the real hardware and yet other games sound fine.

I think out of the earlier generations, SNES would probably be the easiest to emulate. It's just large samples being played back. Not tone generation with really high frequency dividers like NES/PCE/MD. Less complex for sound accuracy. Though I'm sure some SNES emu authors might disagree <_<

That and what someone mentioned before, the main focus had been on graphics and cpu emulation and not so much on sound accuracy until more recently in the emulation life span.

[Haoie]

For PS emulation, the available plugins for EPSXE do a very good [although still imperfect] job of getting the music right.

Although for me, a lot of games have slowdown [total], blah.

[XYXZYZ]

One thing I liked about NESticle was the in game tile editing. Does any modern emulator do that?