SPU2ghz - Gigaherz's Spu2 Plugin
#1
(This is a straight copy-paste from ngemu)

Latest Stable Version: (none yet!)
Latest Beta Version: Public Beta 1.9!
Latest Experimental Version: Public Beta 1.9r2! [latest]
Rant:
It has been more than 4 years since I started this plugin. Back then pcsx2 didn't have any sound plugin except for spu2null. I remember getting into the pcsx2 IRC channel (#pcsx2 on efnet) and asking for help to make a sound plugin. One of the pcsx2 developers kindly gave me some documents and wished me luck, and I promised I would do my best.

After some days, or weeks, I had enough registers implemented that the bios would start to play sounds. It was a revolution. First sounds ever to come from pcsx2!!

Too bad the sounds were completely wrong, as I had misunderstood the ADPCM algorithm. I kept working on it after that, but not regularly at all: I can spend a few days working on something, but once I'm stuck debugging for too long, I get bored.

After me, there were a few other attempts at doing spu2 pugins. One of them, ps2sp, was a bit more successful than mine. These attempts caught pete's attention, so he decided to hack up a spu2 plugin too.

For some time, pete's plugin has been the best choice to many, and recently Zerofrog, annoyed by the relatively bad results of our plugins, also decided to code his own.

With so much competition, it has been hard for me to get my plugin to have acceptable results, and even if I'm releasing, it still fails to compare with zero's in most games. But on the other side, my plugin has always been coded with compatibility in mind, so even if it's few, there's some games where it gives better results.

I want to make clear there's some known problems with the plugin:
  • If the game runs slow, the plugin will be all loopy. This is the expected result given the way I coded it. I might improve the output system someday if I get better ideas. (the newest versions of the plugin include a timestretcher which reduces around 99% of the looping).
  • Some games don't like to work with the plugin. I'm specially interested in knowing about them, so I can fix the problem(s).
  • Some people seem to get problems with audio output. Make sure you are using the DSound module, and your sound card supports 48000hz output correctly.
  • When the emulator crashes, there's some chances that the ASIO output module will not have the chance to shut itself down. In those cases it will leave the device used, and a reboot is required in order to "unlock" it.
  • Savestates might still be broken, but should work fine most of the time.

Note 2: The plugin has its own speed limiting system. While it's unstable on its own, together with the emulator's own limiter, it works better.

Note 3: The DPL2 dematrixer has configurable gains. To tweak them you will have to edit the .ini file directly. A value of 256 equals 1.0 gain.

Note 4: If anyone is interested, the code can be downloaded from the SVN server in SourceForge.net .

Note 5: The playground version, while not officially supported, is generally more stable and "better" for playing, at least for now (Tongue2).

Downloads are available at the sourceforge.net project page.

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#2
Many appreciate your work Smile

Has skipping sounds, delays, and the likes when playing
SquareEnix games like Final Fantasy X-2 so I'll be sticking
with ZeroSPU for now.
#3
Yeah, spu2ghz doesn't like SquareEnix games.
It's a nice plugin for most of the other games though,
and in some it's way better than ZeroSPU2 Smile
#4
Hey gigaherz!

I saw the ASIO output option in your plugin and whoah I needed that badly for my RockBand. I was hitting the notes and only 1 second later did the sound come for other sound plugins Wacko
(AND THE WINAMP DSP EFFECTS WOOHOO!)

Yeah I saw that ASIO output was "BROKEN", and checked out the INI and theres one section which read "Asio_Driver_Name="
I already had asio4all and copied out the DLL and pasted it in the root directory of the emulator and added in the DLL's filename.

It's working, except that the pitch is a little low and maybe the speed is a little lowered but I'm not too sure (Heck, makes it so much easier to play Expert songs anyway Biggrin)
Maybe you could check it out?

I need ASIO output because RockBand is a very audio-synchronized game and I wanted to play it on my computer because I had a dedicated sound card, awesome speakers, AND DSP effects on it! Compared to the crap tv speakers yeah? ;-)

DS output would have worked fine but that's only without the DSP in. That defeats the whole of my purpose right? Rolleyes

Hope you can solve that out Biggrin

Great plugin btw. Biggrin
#5
(01-30-2009, 03:09 AM)KrX Wrote: Hey gigaherz!

I saw the ASIO output option in your plugin and whoah I needed that badly for my RockBand. I was hitting the notes and only 1 second later did the sound come for other sound plugins Wacko
(AND THE WINAMP DSP EFFECTS WOOHOO!)

Yeah I saw that ASIO output was "BROKEN", and checked out the INI and theres one section which read "Asio_Driver_Name="
I already had asio4all and copied out the DLL and pasted it in the root directory of the emulator and added in the DLL's filename.

It's working, except that the pitch is a little low and maybe the speed is a little lowered but I'm not too sure (Heck, makes it so much easier to play Expert songs anyway Biggrin)
Maybe you could check it out?

I need ASIO output because RockBand is a very audio-synchronized game and I wanted to play it on my computer because I had a dedicated sound card, awesome speakers, AND DSP effects on it! Compared to the crap tv speakers yeah? ;-)

DS output would have worked fine but that's only without the DSP in. That defeats the whole of my purpose right? Rolleyes

Hope you can solve that out Biggrin

Great plugin btw. Biggrin

From what I know giga said he doesn't have a ASIO compatible soundcard to work on this output module ;(
#6
That's right. I don't have ASIO-compatible drivers for my sound card, so I'm stuck with asio4all, which isn't "perfect".
#7
Sounds in GoW sounds great but music can stop an than start again
Ninja(NGemu nickname: xcedf)Ninja
#8
Yeah I get the same issues in Tales of Destiny PS2 remake. But in their defense there is a lot more issues in that game then just that.
#9
In Tales of The Abyss, there is random chance that all sound except background music will go off. In that case, if you enter the battle the game crashes. It starts to be a pain.
#10
Yeah i meet same isu (not hear a music) in game dawn of mana with spu2ghz and zerospu2. Only peops spu2 1.9 working with flawless.
Notebook ASUS A43TA|CPU AMD Llano APU A6-3400m Triple core (1 core disable) OC to 2.6+Ghz|GPU CF|HD 6520 400Mhz/667Mhz iGPU|HD6650M OC 780Mhz/985Mhz dGPU|RAM 8GB DDR3 1333|Windows 7 Ultimate Sp.1 x64 bit.
>> Emulation speed differs for each game. There will be some you can run fast easily, but others will simply require more powerfull hardware <<.




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