Foebane Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 A while ago I spent a while recording a definitive (or so I thought) collection of A8 sound clips, mainly from the best games around, but now, having seen some YT videos of actual A8 hardware in action, I realise that my emulator's audio comes far short of what a genuine A8 should sound like. The emulator is Atari800Win PLus 4.0 and the settings are WaveOut 44,100Hz, 16-bit, with "1" for the Update divisor (whatever the heck that is) and "1" for sound quality as well. Comparing my recordings with genuine hardware, I find parts of the audio missing, mainly the "t-t-t-t-t-t" white noise that makes up the percussion in tunes like Warhawk and Zybex, and Demoscen prods like Numen - that essential noise does not exist on my recordings. It really annoys me that my sound emulation is so vastly distorted like this, and I don't look forward to totally re-recording everything. In any case, what are the most realistic A8 sound settings for this emulator? Please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 You could try a different Emulator. Check that Sound drivers for your OS is up to date . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Check out Altirra, Avery puts a lot of effort into accuracy. No matter what's used, you're dealing with a PC sound card/chip that puts out samples at 44.1, 48, 96, 192 KHz or whatever. And the actual sample rate emulators produce is usually at the lower end. Compare to real Pokey which usually operates ~ 1.79 MHz - some of the sfx/music relies on high frequency interaction between voices which the emulator has to approximate. Also, the output stage in Atari alters the waveform of what's coming out. Normal "pure tone" is a square wave at the output pin but once it goes through the output circuit on the motherboard it smooths the edges out and creates a sort of Attack/Decay on the waveform. There's threads around where that is brought up. It doesn't drastically alter the sound but combine all these things and you'll get some differences. On top of that, any decent PC soundchip offers graphic equaliser functions which also alters the sound, although if outputting direct from emulation to WAV it shouldn't come into play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 Altirra looks quite promising, although I had problems getting it to work at first, what with that crappy fake ROM that it uses - I thought for a second the whole emulator was bust! The sound is actually closer to how I remember my old Atari performing, but I'd forgotten the subtleties of it. I should also not stick to old software that is no longer updated! The thing is, with these recordings, I'd like to know if the audio will be degraded if converted to MP3? I've had problems with that in the past, mainly the square wave issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Audio always degrades with MP3, it's a lossy codec. If you use the highest available bitrate then it stands a better chance, bigger file but still smaller than WAV. There's also audio options you can fiddle around with in Altirra, so you might have to experiment a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 I've made a couple of recordings of the audio from Altirra, and I'm shocked at the huge difference between and Atari800Win PLus: The Atari800Win WAV form is only above the centre line so is half the volume, and it looks much "neater", but I guess also a lot more basic. The Altirra sound uses the full WAV range and there's a lot of spikes in the sound, especially when music starts - it reminds me of C64 SID WAVs when I look at their waveforms - however, this sound looks more dynamic and neater and would be much less prone to the noise that is introduced during MP3 encoding. Didn't someone say that Altirra wasn't suited to games? What's its purpose then? Also, I'm assuming that the "non-linear mixing" in the Audio settings replicates a real Atari and is needed for some audio effects? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 The Help system has explanation for non-linear mixing: "Emulates the effective mixing curve of the hardware, which causes the output of two voices to be lower than the sum of their volume levels. This is needed for some effects and also causes some compression of the output." A proper wave output should cross both sides of the centreline - there's audio options in Altirra so the overall volume can be controlled. Realistically for any audio recording you want to use most of the available range - if the amplitude only uses 1/4 the range then precision is lost and MP3 will probably sound worse also. Altirra is fine for games - sometimes it comes down to personal preference and ease of use. Atari800Win+ is overall a little easier to use mainly because it's feature set is way less. Altirra has by the far most accurate emulation, and better debug facilities. Some people judge gaming ability by how well an emulator works in fullscreen. Altirra allows stretching the screen window a pixel at a time which Atari800Win+ doesn't, that in itself is a huge advantage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 Agreed. I'm abandoning Atari800Win as of now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Atari800win stopped any real dev years ago, the person who took over did a couple of updates, minor ones and looks to have abandoned it, while Altirra has been constantly updated with great emphasis on accuracy. As for it not being suited to games, don't listen to that, its superb for games as most of the emulation fixes were found by game tests. What I think was meant is that Altirra offers devs a great monitor and debugging suite that is second to none and makes dev work much easier. Sadly POKEY is one of those area's where in depth docs just are not around and its been down to basically reverse engineering and hard work by all involved in the Atari community. Avery is the man to answer re Altirra and the completeness of POKEY but as emulation goes I'd say it the most accurate out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Altirra really is the best when it comes to emulation. It really does every quirk of the Atari that you wouldn't even think of normally, and Avery is working on it all the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charliecron Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Isn't Atari800Win based on Atari800? Don't forget Atari800 is still being developed and runs on Windows too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Altirra really is the best when it comes to emulation. It really does every quirk of the Atari that you wouldn't even think of normally, and Avery is working on it all the time. +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Isn't Atari800Win based on Atari800? Don't forget Atari800 is still being developed and runs on Windows too Don't know about Atari800 ... but there is one emulator called Atari++ which is also out there that does a decent job with some things, too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 The emulator is Atari800Win PLus 4.0 and the settings are WaveOut 44,100Hz, 16-bit, with "1" for the Update divisor (whatever the heck that is) and "1" for sound quality as well. The defaults for these should both be 2 -- according to the manual, changing Sound Quality to 1 reverts to an older sound engine that supports fewer effects. Numen sounds a lot better with the default engine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 I've spent all afternoon trying out Altirra, and it really was like going back in time! It feels like a genuine A8 as it has all that stuff that appears on the overscan, which I'd forgotten about and which Atari800Win didn't show - despite it spoiling the presentation of various games, mind. I assume there's an option to turn it off? I tried about 25 games on there and they all played flawlessly - except for Mr. Do!, but that was only because the image file was dud; I tried another image of the game and it played fine. What impresses me about this emulator is that this guy wrote the entire emulator from scratch, using "Mapping the Atari" and various reference manuals, or so I hear. But the sound in this instance is what I was after, and the games sound just as I remember it, with the meaty explosion when the jetpack man dies in Dropzone to the slight distortion in the music in Ninja. If I ever collect a bunch of A8 games on my PC, this is what I'll play them on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russg Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 A while ago I spent a while recording a definitive (or so I thought) collection of A8 sound clips, mainly from the best games around, but now, having seen some YT videos of actual A8 hardware in action, I realise that my emulator's audio comes far short of what a genuine A8 should sound like. The emulator is Atari800Win PLus 4.0 and the settings are WaveOut 44,100Hz, 16-bit, with "1" for the Update divisor (whatever the heck that is) and "1" for sound quality as well. Comparing my recordings with genuine hardware, I find parts of the audio missing, mainly the "t-t-t-t-t-t" white noise that makes up the percussion in tunes like Warhawk and Zybex, and Demoscen prods like Numen - that essential noise does not exist on my recordings. It really annoys me that my sound emulation is so vastly distorted like this, and I don't look forward to totally re-recording everything. In any case, what are the most realistic A8 sound settings for this emulator? Please? There's wasap and asma37 for the PC. Has about every game music ever made. It is about 14 megs, too big for here. I forget where I got it. You use wasap player with about 5000 sound files from asma37. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 There's wasap and asma37 for the PC. Has about every game music ever made. It is about 14 megs, too big for here. I forget where I got it. You use wasap player with about 5000 sound files from asma37. I needed to have actual in-game SFX as well as music, and I wanted my own gameplay recordings. As it was, I was quite chuffed that I won "Alley Cat" on Kitten and got the girl cat! The sound effects in that game are phenomenal. On the negative side, I did hear a fair bit of distortion in the Altirra audio, which didn't go away when I turned down the volume. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 Yes you can turn the overscan off etc in View, Overscan mode. Watch out for MrDo, some versions still have a protection check on loading speed which leads to very odd things happening, if you go to System, Disk Drive and uncheck the SIO patch you will find it plays fine and you get the lovely SIO noise from loading.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 One thing: On Yoomp!, the game didn't register the stereo version when stereo sound was selected in Altirra - maybe a bug to fix in the emulator? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 Did you reboot the game after you enabled it? Just tried it here, works fine... Make sure you are using the latest beta from the Altirra 2.40 out thread in here, 2.5 beta 27 is the latest official release although Serj has posted the v28 beta to emuFrance as news. Best to wait for Avery / Phaeron to do the real release as it may be an unfinished beta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 Did you reboot the game after you enabled it? Just tried it here, works fine... Make sure you are using the latest beta from the Altirra 2.40 out thread in here, 2.5 beta 27 is the latest official release although Serj has posted the v28 beta to emuFrance as news. Best to wait for Avery / Phaeron to do the real release as it may be an unfinished beta. I think I'm using 2.40, the first entry on the VirtualDub site that is your sig, and I reset both the Atari and restarted the emulator. It could've been an earlier version of Yoomp! I used, which was the one on the Top 50 of the Atarimania site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 (edited) Update to this one, there's a zillion and one changes in the Emulator since 2.40 Final.....Not quite a zillion but a hell of a lot is new and improved. http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.50-test27.zip Avery only links to the Finals on his main site, 99% of beta's get publish here on AtariAge in this forum. Edited February 23, 2014 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 I hope that doesn't mean there's vast improvements in the audio subsystem, as it means another re-recording session! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foebane Posted March 8, 2014 Author Share Posted March 8, 2014 So I've got two sets of MP3 recordings from 24 A8 games, with two different emulators with two different sound qualities used. Whilst I think that the Atari800Win 4.0 PLus files lack accuracy with the default settings, I don't like some harmonic distortions introduced in the Altirra emulator. Anyone think I should keep both? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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