Mana Khemia 2 Japanese Voice Problem

[darkincubo]

I'm playing Mana Khemia 2 in PCSX2 1.4 

The game has dual english/japanese audio. My problem is that there are scenes (usually the quest scenes) when the japanese voice doens't sound. I though at first that the game wasn't fully voiced, however I remember that I played a scene that was voiced, then close the emulator without saving, and the next day when I played the same scene it wouldn't reproduce the voice. I search on the web to be sure and found in RPGfan that the game doesn't have english voices for some events (like quests and unimportant events), but all this events are fully voiced if you choose to play with japanese voice (here the link to the review: http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/manakhemia2/).

I tried from the begining and all the japanese voices play fine, however when I get to that part the voices dissapear again, in the same scene. I play further and there is no voices, however when the new chapter start, they appear again. It's like the game is only playing the voices in the parts that have english voices as well.

As I said before It was working fine at first with full voice in all scenes, so I don't know what happened. The only thing that was different from before was that, before that scene I formatted the memories (since I just downloaded the last version of PCSX2) and saved the game. But then the voices were playing fine afterwards, it was the next day when continue playing that the voices dissapear. I have searched for this problem but found nothing. Please I would appreaciate your help.

Edited: I found something else. The Register windows shows this:

DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥SOUND¥STREAM¥STREAM.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥SOUND¥SSE¥SSE.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V00000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V01000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V02000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V03000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V04000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V05000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V06000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V07000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V08000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V09000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V10000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V11000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V12000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V13000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V14000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V15000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V16000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACK¥V17000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V00000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V01000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V02000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V03000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V04000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V05000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V06000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V07000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V08000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V09000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V10000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V11000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V12000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V13000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V14000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V15000.AFS;1"
DVCI: File cache was not hit. "¥VPACKJ¥V16000.AFS;1"

So I think that's the problem, since VPACKJ folder is the part in the DVD that has the japanese voices. (VPACK has the english voices I think) So it appears but for some reason the emulator is not reading them. I hope someone can explain what this means.

[FlatOut]

Are you playing the game from DVD? If not, try playing it from the original DVD and see if the issue still exists.

[rama]

The "DVCI: File cache was not hit" messages are just the game working normally. It hasn't got the files cached so it loads them from disk.
You're problem is somewhat known though. Gust games tend to drop voices sporadically. We suspect a bug in SPU2-X or its sync with IOP.

[darkincubo]

The "DVCI: File cache was not hit" messages are just the game working normally. It hasn't got the files cached so it loads them from disk.
You're problem is somewhat known though. Gust games tend to drop voices sporadically. We suspect a bug in SPU2-X or its sync with IOP.

Thanks for the replies so soon. So I understand that there isn't a known solution for this problem? Should I change the sound plug-in? What's IOP?


What really bothers me is that the game was working just fine the first time I played it. And the next day appears this problem out of the blue. If it was like that from the begining I probably wouldn't care, but since I know that the game can be played fully voiced and it was playing all the voices just fine, now it's really annoying that that it doesn't play properly. Something might have changed from one day to the other, just what, I can't tell.

More advice would be appreciate it if possible.

[jesalvein]

Are you playing the game from DVD? If not, try playing it from the original DVD and see if the issue still exists.

[darkincubo]

I'm playing from an ISO since I read the emulation is faster that way. I tried to play from the original CD and the problem is still there.

[darkincubo]

Is there a way to extract AFS files from the DVD? Maybe I can extract the voices.

[darkincubo]

Ok, it seems it was the DVD after all. I used AFS Explorer 3.7.1 to extract the AFS files and found out that the files that won't play were significant smaller than the ones that play. Also there are some files that are corrupted so only play halfway. I don't know if it's a problem with my copy (maybe is scratched or something) or is a problem with NIS America. I bet is the second and they screw up when trying to stack the english dub in the DVD. I guess my memory was playing tricks on me when I thought that the unvoiced parts were voiced before.

I'm thinking on gettinga copy of the japanese game and replace the voice files from that to the english version to fix the problem, but I don't know how to do it. Could you recomend me a good guide please? I don't think it would be as simple as copying the files from the ISO to a folder, replace the audio files with the ones from the japanese dvd and make a new ISO right? (or is it that simple?). I apreciate your advice in this one, well first I have to get a JAP version of the game, I think that won't be easy.

On the other hand I think I discover something that could interest you. I read a lot of threads about Gust games, and a lot of them talked about the voiced beeing glitched and chopped when a sprite first shows up. Since I tried the game in both the 1.2. and 1.4. version of PCSX2, I discover something interesting. In the 1.2 version I experimented that problem as well (voice chopped or glitched), but in the 1.4 version the voice, sound and the game itself plays almost perfectly (except the problem with corrupt files). However when playing in the 1.4 version it shows and interlace in the backround when the sprites shows up, I mean horizontal and vertical lines interlacing, it's actually not very bothersome, I think the glitches in the voices are far more annoying. I played it with the default PCSX1.4 settings. I hope that probably could help the people that were experimenting glitchess with the voices in Gust games. (English is not my first language so I hope my explanation is understandable, if not please let me know, I'll try to explain again).