MSU-1 games: music goes bad sometimes

[vanfanel]

Hi all,

Have you guys noticed that in MSU-1 games with streamed music (*.pcm files) music distorts and/or skips sometimes?
It has happened me on practically every MSU-1 game.

I don't think my SD card is to blame, it's a Kingston Canvas Select Plus (256GB) which has excellent performance and even good write speeds.
Also, my MiSTer RAM module is working perfectly well with every other core, including Saturn, and is stable at 150 according to the tests: it's a 2.9 RAM module by RetroCastle which is a trusty manufacturer, not some El-Cheapo Villena 4-chip counterfeit.
Of course every non-MSU-1 SNES game performs exactly as expected.

So, any idea on what's with the flaky MSU-1 audio on this core? Hasn't anybody else noticed how unstable streaming music seems to be with it?

[neogeo81]

Didn't notice on my Mister. Maybe the fault is with the roms itself?

[FPGA64]

Works without issue for me.

[AngelicLiver]

No problems here. How are you outputting the audio, HDMI? Is everything up-to-date and are you using the stock MiSTer main?

[vanfanel]

Thanks for the answers, fellow MiSTer-ers

Yes, my MiSTer is up to date and I am using latest stable main MiSTer and latest stable SNES core: I run update_all on the MiSTer on a weekly basis so everything updates regularly.

I am outputting the audio via HDMI, but I don't have any problems with audio in general, only with MSU-1 streamed musics, and it happens once in a while, it's not a constant problem.

[vanfanel]

What filesystem do you guys use for the /media/fat/games directory?
I mean, the MiSTer supports exFAT and NTFS, apparently.

[Relikk]

MSU1 doesn't exactly function as it should on MiSTer, anyway, so who knows what other underlying issues it has along with the ongoing audio looping problems that were never fixed since it was added to the SNES core. Check that you're not using zipped packages, in that the ROM, MSU and PCM files are extracted to their own individual game folder, would be the only recommendation I can give.

[vanfanel]

MSU1 doesn't exactly function as it should on MiSTer, anyway, so who knows what other underlying issues it has along with the ongoing audio looping problems that were never fixed since it was added to the SNES core. Check that you're not using zipped packages, in that the ROM, MSU and PCM files are extracted to their own individual game folder, would be the only recommendation I can give.

I don't use ZIPed games, and every game is decompressed on it's own directory. But thanks for the suggestion.

[Relikk]

Did you download packs from Archive or did you patch the ROMs and assemble the files yourself from the sources at Zeldix?

[paulbnl]

MSU1 doesn't exactly function as it should on MiSTer, anyway, so who knows what other underlying issues it has along with the ongoing audio looping problems that were never fixed since it was added to the SNES core.

See, it is good to keep reminding :

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/pull/380

[vanfanel]

@paulbnl Good to see it being worked on again! Many thanks!

@Relikk For the Infidelity releases, I use his "official" packs on Archive. And for other releases, like Donkey Kong Country with restored soundtrack, I take the Zeldix packs and add the patched ROM myself. There are no errors on the roms or PCM files, it's the MSU-1 implementation not being able to play them correctly sometimes. I know my way around these things very well.
And it seems I was right and there are MSU-1 problems remaining as you guys can see from the recent developments.

[Relikk]

The only thing I can think of is card fragmentation, maybe. It might be worth trying another, smaller card purely for testing, if you have one to spare. Or try loading from a freshly formatted USB key.

See, it is good to keep reminding :

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/pull/380

It's appreciated. Thank you.