#7412 closed feature request
PCjr + PC Speaker Emulation Sound Muffled
| Reported by: | SF/tbcarey | Owned by: | SF/hoenicke |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Component: | Audio |
| Version: | Keywords: | ||
| Cc: | Game: |
Description
This is probably not a bug, as I'm sure it's there by design, but the PCjr + PC Speaker emulation both employ some sort of [undocumented, as far as I'm aware] bandpass filter that makes them sound incredibly muffled and also accentuates the low-end far too much compared to the originals.
It would be desirable to have any sort of filter be optional, as it really makes the music sound far worse than it ought to. I've included a comparison of ScummVM's PCjr emulation in Monkey Island 1 as opposed to the PCjr output under DOSBox, and a clip of the MI1 intro on a real PCjr as well. The DOSBox [non-bandpassed] version sounds much closer to the original.
Ticket imported from: #1158455. Ticket imported from: feature-requests/228.
Attachments (3)
Change History (15)
by , 20 years ago
| Attachment: | MI1 PCjr ScummVM.mp3 added |
|---|
by , 20 years ago
| Attachment: | MI1 PCjr DOSBox.mp3 added |
|---|
comment:1 by , 20 years ago
| Summary: | PCjr/PC Speaker Emulation Sound Muffled → PCjr + PC Speaker Emulation Sound Muffled |
|---|
by , 20 years ago
| Attachment: | MI1 PCjr.mp3 added |
|---|
comment:2 by , 20 years ago
comment:3 by , 20 years ago
| Component: | --Unset-- |
|---|
comment:4 by , 20 years ago
| Owner: | set to |
|---|
comment:5 by , 20 years ago
I assume this is a consequence of the Player_V2::lowPassFilter() function. If I disable this, and enable the line that has been commented out from Player_V2::squareGenerator() "because the lowPassFilter does it for us", I get a much sharper sound.
But I don't know anywhere near enough about this to say what should be done. Obviously the filter function was added for a reason.
comment:6 by , 20 years ago
I added the low pass filter because I found in the hardware description for old PCs that the internal speaker had a low pass filter. It also helped to minimize the artifacts that were produced by the square-wave generator.
After hearing you samples I agree that the sound produced by scummvm is muffled, so the current low pass filter is too strong. You can easily adapt the low pass filter by changing the constant PCJR_DECAY. This is a value between 0 and 0xffff, where 0 means no low pass filter at all. The value is kind of exponential so 0x4000 means almost no low pass filter and 0xc000 is a weak low pass filter.
Since you have a real PCjr, can you try to get the value that produces the most similar sound? Maybe it is really 0. For PC speaker sound the low pass filter is defined by SPK_DECAY.
Both constants are at the beginning of scumm/player_v2.cpp (and again in scumm/player_v1.cpp for the old V1 games).
comment:7 by , 20 years ago
Low-pass filters on actual PC Speakers are for totally different reasons than you might expect, at least as far as I'm aware. It's because they frequently used Pulse-Width Modulation, and Pulse-Width Modulation output requires using a low-pass filter to convert the signal to analog levels capable of driving an amplifier and speaker. So, when emulating the PC Speaker, there should be little reason for actually employing a low-pass filter except perhaps to minimize aliasing above a certain frequency.
I'll check into modifying the values and let you know what sounds most comparable to the original. Thanks for your help.
comment:8 by , 20 years ago
0xa000 sounds correct to me on both accounts. I did an audio recording/comparison and both came out fairly similar to their hardware counterparts' recordings. Hope this helps.
comment:9 by , 20 years ago
With "both accounts" you mean PCjr and PC speaker, right? I'll change the constants and check it in.
comment:11 by , 20 years ago
| Status: | new → closed |
|---|
comment:12 by , 6 years ago
| Component: | → Audio |
|---|
Forgot to mention that I'm using the latest CVS Win32 build [March 07 12:13:50] and that, obviously, this issue affects all games using PCjr or PC Speaker emulation.