Snes9x MSU-1 Support

[qwertymodo]

Yes you can open them in Audacity, Import> Raw Audio>16 Bit/2 Channel/Little Endian/Skip First 8 Bytes. Use the Normalize effect, -12dB is a good starting point but you'll need to try it out to find a good level. Then save as 16 bit PCM WAV, and then run it through WAV2PCM (I'm on my phone and don't have a link, sorry). Finally, you need to copy the 8-byte header from the original file into the new one using a hex editor (really it's just bytes 4-7, but either way, you want to paste OVER the existing 8 bytes, not insert). Sorry if that's hard to follow, like I said I'm on my phone right now.

[nintendo_nerd85]

Yes you can open them in Audacity, Import> Raw Audio>16 Bit/2 Channel/Little Endian/Skip First 8 Bytes. Use the Normalize effect, -12dB is a good starting point but you'll need to try it out to find a good level. Then save as 16 bit PCM WAV, and then run it through WAV2PCM (I'm on my phone and don't have a link, sorry). Finally, you need to copy the 8-byte header from the original file into the new one using a hex editor (really it's just bytes 4-7, but either way, you want to paste OVER the existing 8 bytes, not insert). Sorry if that's hard to follow, like I said I'm on my phone right now.

Okay so I was half right with Audacity, WAV2PCM should be easy to find, which offsets does the head start and end? I can use HxD to open and close it.  I'll figure something out.


Edit: Found them, reduced db by -10, not as loud, I'll try -12 next, but no more distortion. This gonna take a while XD

Edit 2: -12 db is the sweet spot, sounds good, now to repeat for the others XD

[qwertymodo]

Start offset is 8 bytes, end is 100%

[nintendo_nerd85]

Start offset is 8 bytes, end is 100%

Got it, converted some PCM files, this is gonna take a while to fix Mega Man X's since IDK if the ROM hacker will.

[qwertymodo]

Yeah, it's just a really unfortunate situation all around, and it really all came down to timing.  The MSU-1 gained popularity really quickly following Conn's initial aLttP release, which very quickly unearthed the SD2SNES issue which had largely gone unnoticed before then, but ikari wasn't able to patch it quickly enough to stop people from coming up with a workaround, and then by the time he did patch it, these hacks were released this way and their authors had moved on and didn't want to go back and fix them properly now that the workaround was no longer necessary.  I know there's one guy that's trying to collect all of the audio packs he can and fix them all, but I don't what the status is on that currently.

[nintendo_nerd85]

Yeah, it's just a really unfortunate situation all around, and it really all came down to timing.  The MSU-1 gained popularity really quickly following Conn's initial aLttP release, which very quickly unearthed the SD2SNES issue which had largely gone unnoticed before then, but ikari wasn't able to patch it quickly enough to stop people from coming up with a workaround, and then by the time he did patch it, these hacks were released this way and their authors had moved on and didn't want to go back and fix them properly now that the workaround was no longer necessary.  I know there's one guy that's trying to collect all of the audio packs he can and fix them all, but I don't what the status is on that currently.

I mean, I can try to mess with them a bit, reducing the volume, it's a daunting task. Now that the Wii U has RetroArch working (still pre alpha), the team discussed porting over Snes9x 1.54 to it.

[Kallisto]

This is incredible! Nice! Are you planning on making snes9x msu compatible with the Wii, and other systems?

I remember Retroarch staff said doing so for the Wii might not be strong enough (unless there can be a workaround with it).

[qwertymodo]

I'm not going to port it, no, but I can say that the amount of processing power required is trivial (literally, read a file and add two numbers together), so it absolutely should be portable to any system. I'd love to see it on the Wii.

[nintendo_nerd85]

I'm not going to port it, no, but I can say that the amount of processing power required is trivial (literally, read a file and add two numbers together), so it absolutely should be portable to any system. I'd love to see it on the Wii.

What about Wii U?

Wii U would be more practical, given its raw power; the RetroArch team would love to port it over at some point, but they need to give it time as they're pretty busy fixing up the Wii U port, which was released as pre-alpha last Saturday.   There's been so much going on in the Wii U scene the past few weeks.

[qwertymodo]

I haven't paid much attention to the WiiU scene, but yeah it would be great there as well. Like I said, there is almost 0 computational overhead, so there is no need to think of this as a resource-constrained feature. You just have 2 read-only file handles, one of them you just read a byte and return it, the other one you read the audio samples and add them to the DSP output (literally sample_a + sample_b = sample_out). There's no fancy processor to emulate, it's basically just a giant 32-bit mapper with raw audio streaming. I can easily hit 1200-2000fps with MSU on my desktop. The Wii/U won't have any problem with it at all.

[Bahamut ZERO]

Finally I can try an MSU-1 hack on an emulator I like! Thank you very much!

And the possibility of it running on Wii (maybe even PSP if hell were to freeze over) one day is epic. 

[nintendo_nerd85]

I haven't paid much attention to the WiiU scene, but yeah it would be great there as well. Like I said, there is almost 0 computational overhead, so there is no need to think of this as a resource-constrained feature. You just have 2 read-only file handles, one of them you just read a byte and return it, the other one you read the audio samples and add them to the DSP output (literally sample_a + sample_b = sample_out). There's no fancy processor to emulate, it's basically just a giant 32-bit mapper with raw audio streaming. I can easily hit 1200-2000fps with MSU on my desktop. The Wii/U won't have any problem with it at all.

Right, again the Wii U scene has been catching on like wildfire, full kernel/IOSU access is achievable, a few exploits, RedNAND (NAND emulation), so the Wii U with MSU-1 will be pretty sweet.

[qwertymodo]

https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x/commit/27e6bc1b0114b088bf9000a2bd51c0d2108cf474

[nintendo_nerd85]

https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x/commit/27e6bc1b0114b088bf9000a2bd51c0d2108cf474

Nice work, man Can't wait to see this ported over to the Wii U 

[sindrik]

Wii U would be more practical, given its raw power

i would rather have the Wii port first, it would work on vWii too, and the snes9x gx emulator is much much more stable and mature than the retroarch port. It also works on sharp 240p

hope it happens on both, but wii is THE best option

[nintendo_nerd85]

i would rather have the Wii port first, it would work on vWii too, and the snes9x gx emulator is much much more stable and mature than the retroarch port. It also works on sharp 240p

hope it happens on both, but wii is THE best option

Eh, Wii U port already has perfect sound and speed on Snes9x, there's a Snes9x 1.54 core, it's not final, it all depends on what the team does.

[Bahamut ZERO]

True, but the Wii port's come a long way. Outside of maybe some sound effects in Chrono Trigger and a speed issue with Star Fox it's just about as stable.

[nintendo_nerd85]

True, but the Wii port's come a long way. Outside of maybe some sound effects in Chrono Trigger and a speed issue with Star Fox it's just about as stable.

Sound effects should be spot on, Snes9x uses Blargg's S-SMP audio core; the Wii VC however, doesn't and the game sounds weird.  Again, it's up to the team to do it.

[qwertymodo]

Snes9xGx (the Wii port) is still based on 1.52 with the old APU.

[nintendo_nerd85]

Snes9xGx (the Wii port) is still based on 1.52 with the old APU.

Not as old as the APU from 1.51, I remember when 1.52 has superior sound to 1.51.

http://www.snes9x.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?t=4542

- Highly acculate SPC700 and S-DSP emulation.               (Blargg)
- Replaced APU emulation cores (SPC700 and S-DSP) with
  ones provided by Blargg's SNES_SPC library. This renders
  savestates incompatible with older versions

1.54 however, implemented Byuu's S-SMP core, making it even more accurate.