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Full Version: Sound and video playback micro-freezing
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Long story short: before a new voice line/sfx plays, or in the middle of the new voice line/sfx, the emulation freezes for a moment and continues normally afterwards.
Same with FMVs except worse, the emulation freezes every odd second making it unwatchable on first load, on every subsequent playback however works without a problem.

Examples:

Soul Nomad, Front Mission 4
Voice lines randomly hang the emulation for a second and continue normally. May affect every line in an entire dialogue, may not affect the entire dialogue at all.
Armored Core 3
When a new map is loaded, the emulation starts micro-freezing every odd second and gets worse with any new sound or 3d model introduced. Setting the game or the emulation on pause for a minute solves the issue on current and subsequent visits to the same mission via save/load.
Viewtiful Joe
FMVs freeze every odd second, pausing-resuming the emulation momentarily fixes the problem for current and subsequent playbacks of the FMV. The issue reappears when the emulator is completely closed and restarted.

All 3 examples are present in every other game across the board in some way or another.
All 3 examples persist across all hardware and software modes.
All 3 examples persist across 1.4.0 stable as well as latest nightly.

Appears visually as a short freeze as well as sound dropping out and FPS counter in the window dropping from 60 to 40 and back up to 60. Log window doesnt show anything when that happens.

From what little understanding of tech Ive got Ive narrowed down the possible causes of the issue to the following:
Decompressing issues working the disc image
Data streaming bottleneck of some kind
Obscure codec issues that only ever appear in the context of this emulator, which doesnt explain hitching when loading new models in AC3

Hardware:
i7 7700k stock clock
8gig Hyper X DDR4 2400
Intel HD630 Integrated Graphics (runs everything across the board at 60 FPS without non-default speedhacks despite claims of incompatibility, no other issues whatsoever)
Run of the mill HDD
Win7

EDIT:
Aight so after a little more experimenting I figured out that data streaming from the HDD has to be the problem, since running from a RAMdisk eliminates the issue entirely.
I still dont have a solution tho since the HDD itself never had made any problems of this kind and performance analysis and testing for faults did not show any issues with it.
So far I disabled windows indexing for good measure but that did not help sadly.
Did you try adjusting your SPU2-X latency and other sound settings?
(05-16-2017, 12:08 PM)Uncle Benis Wrote: [ -> ]Long story short: before a new voice line/sfx plays, or in the middle of the new voice line/sfx, the emulation freezes for a moment
Intel HD630 Integrated Graphics and/or game(s) ISO(s)  and /or PCSX builds you're trying to use.
(05-16-2017, 12:08 PM)Uncle Benis Wrote: [ -> ]without non-default speedhacks
Why?
(05-17-2017, 07:30 PM)CK1 Wrote: [ -> ]Did you try adjusting your SPU2-X latency and other sound settings?

I tried doing that first, its not tied to the issue tho.
Its definitely tied to the way the emulator streams data from the iso file, since the issue is gone when mounting the disk image from a RAMdisk.
(05-20-2017, 11:26 AM)Uncle Benis Wrote: [ -> ]Its definitely tied to the way the emulator streams data from the iso file, since the issue is gone when mounting the disk image from a RAMdisk.
Emu streams data from the iso just fine. Why to invent the bicycle if you can use speedhacks?  If your fps jumps from 40 to 60, will be audio lags . FM4 can run on a potato without any issues Smile Ofc if used legit iso and dedicated video card. Whats your hdd speed? I don't have any problemos with my Seagate Barracuda. Your approach - why to use emu features if i can upgrade my pc Smile
(05-20-2017, 05:39 PM)Bombaya Wrote: [ -> ]Emu streams data from the iso just fine. Why to invent the bicycle if you can use speedhacks?  If your fps jumps from 40 to 60, will be audio lags . FM4 can run on a potato without any issues Smile Ofc if used legit iso and dedicated video card. Whats your hdd speed? I don't have any problemos with my Seagate Barracuda. Your approach - why to use emu features if i can upgrade my pc Smile

I will repeat very slowly just for you lad: I have 60 FPS at 2x native in dx9 in all games that I played so far across the board without speedhacks. I dont use the speedhacks because I dont need to use the speedhacks. I dont get FPS jumps or drops, I get micro-freezes and hiccups. The emulation runs perfectly from a RAMdisk at 60 FPS. It starts micro-freezing when iso file is loaded from one of the 2 SATA HDDs installed in my computer.

The issue is somewhere between the HDD and the emulator, and its a software issue because I used this exact HDD on a previous installation of win7 on older hardware, which had ***** FPS but no problems with streaming the data. I am looking for a software solution for a software problem here.
Did you read all of your S.M.A.R.T. data to make sure the drives are still in good condition?
Your laptop is likely using a 5400RPM HDD hence the stutters. I don't see any when running my isos from a 7200rpm hdd on my desktop.
Been trying to post for several days now.
The issue turned out to be dying HDDs on a second look.

Much thanks for the help.