Need help with Dracula X (sound issue)

[cr0n0]

Okay here goes, I am running it on magic Engine and it loads perfectly but for some reason there is no music. Sound effects I can hear fine, but that's it. The instructions told me to convert the MP3s to Wav files using Nero, which I did. I can't for the the life in me figure it out. I am using Nero 5.5 something. The wave editor is 1.0 and I am running it on windows XP.
Like I said, it loads fine and I can play the game perfectly but the only thing I can hear are sound effects. I am also using system card 3.0.

The image file was done using Nero, (.NRG file)so hope this all helps. I would greatly appreciate any help.

[roushimsx]

Yet another problem caused from shitty ISO+MP3 rips. Do yourself a favor: If you're not going to buy the game (which is inconsequencial for anyone other than ebay price gougers and materialistic whores), at least do yourself a favor and track down a proper bin/cue of the game (such as the RIGG release). ISO+MP3 is a byproduct of the "floppy disk warez era" from the 90s and needs to be done away with.

Otherwise, you'll just be wasting your time.

I realize this isn't the help you wanted, but it's the best help you're going to get short of having the bin/cue or actual CD provided to you (which isn't allowed here).

[itobandito]

Yeah I had this issue my self actually. At least for me it was that the WAV files were named incorrectly. It also may be that your disc drive is not 100% supported by magic engine. Did you get any errors when loading the .cue file in nero??

Okay here goes, I am running it on magic Engine and it loads perfectly but for some reason there is no music. Sound effects I can hear fine, but that's it. The instructions told me to convert the MP3s to Wav files using Nero, which I did. I can't for the the life in me figure it out. I am using Nero 5.5 something. The wave editor is 1.0 and I am running it on windows XP.
Like I said, it loads fine and I can play the game perfectly but the only thing I can hear are sound effects. I am also using system card 3.0.

The image file was done using Nero, (.NRG file)so hope this all helps. I would greatly appreciate any help.

[rbudrick]

Maybe it was burnt too fast?

Try it in Magic Engine and try it on the real thing. If both don't work, the disc was burnt wrong.

-Rob

[cr0n0]

The funny thing is that it ran fine in my other computer, but not on this new one I got. Also, it isn't a shitty ISO/MP3 RIPs, because like I said, it worked before 100%.
I have not received any error messages so far, and I run the game by mounting the cue file on Daemon tools. Maybe my soundcard is the culprit of this. Who knows. Very weird but frustrating. Thanks for the help anyway.

[InsaneDavid]

If you have a licensed version of MagicEngine, try posting over at the Magic Engine messageboards, you'll get faster help there as it's filled with people that eat, sleep, and breathe MagicEngine. I say "if you have a licensed version" in that if you don't and even a hint of that comes up on those boards they will tear you to shreds. I personally don't care either way, I have a licensed copy and then they go and make v1.0 require OpenGL, forcing thousands to continue to run v0.9.5 on their emulation systems which are usually older computers. That's bad business.

[roushimsx]

Also, it isn't a shitty ISO/MP3 RIPs, because like I said, it worked before 100%.

All ISO+MP3s are "shitty rips". Hard drive space is obscenely cheap as are recordable media and bandwidth. Quit preserving archaic piracy methods and start preserving actual games.

I have a licensed copy and then they go and make v1.0 require OpenGL, forcing thousands to continue to run v0.9.5 on their emulation systems which are usually older computers. That's bad business.

Oh come on now, an OpenGL-compatible videocard is going to run you maybe $25-$30 and OpenGL-compatible videocards have been commonplace for the last 8 years A nice side effect of dropping ~$25 on a Geforce2MX is that you'll be able to play Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 along with being able to run stuff like Zinc and ePSXe with hardware-based plugins.

[InsaneDavid]

I have a licensed copy and then they go and make v1.0 require OpenGL, forcing thousands to continue to run v0.9.5 on their emulation systems which are usually older computers. That's bad business.

Oh come on now, an OpenGL-compatible videocard is going to run you maybe $25-$30 and OpenGL-compatible videocards have been commonplace for the last 8 years A nice side effect of dropping ~$25 on a Geforce2MX is that you'll be able to play Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 along with being able to run stuff like Zinc and ePSXe with hardware-based plugins.

Matrox G200 and G400's are amazing sprite pushers, I'm not getting rid of them. Requring advanced graphics modes for 2D emulators is just stupid, like all these people writing programs under the .NET framework.

[zektor]

I have a licensed copy and then they go and make v1.0 require OpenGL, forcing thousands to continue to run v0.9.5 on their emulation systems which are usually older computers. That's bad business.

Oh come on now, an OpenGL-compatible videocard is going to run you maybe $25-$30 and OpenGL-compatible videocards have been commonplace for the last 8 years A nice side effect of dropping ~$25 on a Geforce2MX is that you'll be able to play Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 along with being able to run stuff like Zinc and ePSXe with hardware-based plugins.

Matrox G200 and G400's are amazing sprite pushers, I'm not getting rid of them. Requring advanced graphics modes for 2D emulators is just stupid, like all these people writing programs under the .NET framework.

It's all good anyway, since v1.0 is actually WORSE than v0.9+ IMHO. I have a capable video card for using 1.0, but still prefer the previous version. Still, I hear where you are coming from regarding the situation.

[roushimsx]

Matrox G200 and G400's are amazing sprite pushers, I'm not getting rid of them. Requring advanced graphics modes for 2D emulators is just stupid, like all these people writing programs under the .NET framework.

I was under the impression that the G400 had full OpenGL support. Reviewing the MagicEngine forums cache, it looks like Matrox puts out worse drivers than ATi ever did

Also, using OpenGL for the video output makes cross-platform support a hell of a lot easier. Doesn't it also offer the potential to use various scalers, with the work offloaded on the GPU? While a handful of people with antiquated videocards may irked, Mac owners are a hell of a lot happier If only they'd fix borked MacOS cd rom support...

How about DirectX? Does your card even work properly with that?

I do agree that .NET can eat a fat cock, though....so hey, at least we can agree on that.

[-hellvin-]

I've heard people say the system card fixes the sound problem, but that never worked with my iso/mp3 mix. What fixed it was plugging an analog sound cable from my cd player to my sound card input inside the pc.

Worked great after that. Game has some damn amazing music ;D.

[InsaneDavid]

Thanks for some support zektor.

I was under the impression that the G400 had full OpenGL support. Reviewing the MagicEngine forums cache, it looks like Matrox puts out worse drivers than ATi ever did

Yup, rule of thumb with the Matrox cards, once you find a driver revision that works and is stable - don't touch it!

How about DirectX? Does your card even work properly with that?

Yeah, it's all good there - this isn't some antique ISA card.

I do agree that .NET can eat a fat cock, though....so hey, at least we can agree on that.

Nothing pisses me off more than when I see a homebrew program, especially emulation dev stuff, and then "you must have the .NET framework installed... hopefully this will change, anyone other than Windows users are out of luck until then..."

I guess the real question we should be asking (getting back on topic with this thread) is if cr0n0's soundcard is some onboard piece of crap. Because that's where CD sound issues with MagicEngine usually come from.

[Anthony1]

This is why I say F all that, and just play a backup of Dracula X on a real TG-16 CD combo. That's what I do. I'm not about to pay $200+ just to play the damn game, but I do want to play it in it's correct form.

[Mr. Smashy]

What fixed it was plugging an analog sound cable from my cd player to my sound card input inside the pc.

I'm betting that would fix it (though in some cases, you may need to enable CD audio in your OS. If you don't have that little cable going from your optical drive to the CD-in header of your motherboard (or sound card), that would likely explain why it's not working.

If your optical drive has its own headphone jack, an easy test would be to plug some headphones into that jack while you're playing the game and see if you're getting any music out of it.

[Ed Oscuro]

If you don't have that little cable going from your optical drive to the CD-in header of your motherboard (or sound card), that would likely explain why it's not working.

In my time at the CV Dungeon, this seems to be a sure cause of the sound not working. Enable that, and it should work.

I gotta go with Roushimsx on the MP3 issue - if you're just downloading one game, you can get the entire thing. I downloaded a complete Neo Geo CD archive a while back, and that would've taken much too long with regular BIN + CUE style rips, but the sound will be crap if you wanted to play it in your stereo, for example.

Dracula X has some great music; do it justice and get the BIN + CUE online (I saw a torrent for it earlier today, though I've no need for that). Go gett'er!

[cr0n0]

thanks for all the help guys.

[roushimsx]

Holy sweet hell, this thead inspired me to dork around and find suitable alternatives to Magic Engine for cheap people, and I finally spent some quality time with Mednafen (which wins the award for "most newbie unfriendly emulator of the month").

The interface is pretty rough (what interface?) and it's command line driven (uh oh), but with a little bit of effort it's quite the Hu-go/Magic Engine/Yame alternative. I'm working on writing up a little tutorial right now, but it's safe to say that if you're having trouble getting Magic Engine to spit out the aural goodness using a normal cd image or cd rom then Mednafen will work dandy-fine for you.

edit quick tutorial w/ pictures. Hope it helps some of ya'll

[InsaneDavid]

Holy sweet hell, this thead inspired me to dork around and find suitable alternatives to Magic Engine for cheap people, and I finally spent some quality time with Mednafen (which wins the award for "most newbie unfriendly emulator of the month").

Yeah, I've spent a moment with that nightmare before. As HuCAST on the Dreamcast gets more and more fleshed out (it's already quite good for an early port) I'll probably end up using it for PCEngine / TG16 stuff. I really don't play my TurboDuo very much due to the short controller cords, need to build myself a nice long 8' extension cord.

[whoisKeel]

What fixed it was plugging an analog sound cable from my cd player to my sound card input inside the pc.

I'm betting that would fix it (though in some cases, you may need to enable CD audio in your OS. If you don't have that little cable going from your optical drive to the CD-in header of your motherboard (or sound card), that would likely explain why it's not working.

If your optical drive has its own headphone jack, an easy test would be to plug some headphones into that jack while you're playing the game and see if you're getting any music out of it.

This is the answer.

The TG/PCE CDs are Redbook audio, and so they're played like this. Notice that you can play your CDs in a normal audio cd player starting at track 2.

It wouldn't matter if you had the original or not, it's just the way the emulator works (and probably the same way the TGCD/DUO/etc reads as well). You need that little analogue cable hooked up.

[roushimsx]

It wouldn't matter if you had the original or not, it's just the way the emulator works (and probably the same way the TGCD/DUO/etc reads as well). You need that little analogue cable hooked up.

It stems from an outdated method of playing the audio and it's something that the author of MagicEngine needs to correct. Reading digital audio over the IDE cable is something that's been possible for a long time now, and there's no valid purpose to requiring an additional analog connection from the CD-ROM just for the redbook audio tracks.

You'd think that by making it a commercial product that the author would be interested in making the emulator work properly on peoples' systems, but I guess he's too infatuated with the trainwreck-like wonder that is the PC-FX to bother.