Frame time deviation with dsound, resampling issues with xaudio

RetroArch
#1

I was using dsound audio driver due to this issue pointed by @James-F with xaudio where the resampling is of very bad quality. Now I realized it was dsound which was giving me so bad core frame time deviation so I’m a bit trapped in the middle, has xaudio issues been ironed out? Didn’t want to necro the thread. It also looks like wasapi messes with framerate.

#2

Have you tried WASAPI with your own setup? I believe some people have no issues with it.

I don’t think anything has been done with xaudio driver since that thread, no.

1 Like
#3

Yes I’m testing with wasapi and so far looks like it doesn’t have the frame time issues, I will try to run a longer test. By the way what means audio_wasapi_sh_buffer_length? it’s set to “-16”

EDIT: Whoa, wasapi is a mess, even with exclusive = false it functions as exclusive, and makes very ugly pops and crackling when switching on the driver.

#4

yeah, I think the ‘always exclusive’ thing is known. Non-exclusive was either never merged or dropped because it was even more of a mess :open_mouth:

#5

I’m testing with openal and so far seems good, if you know any other quirk about this driver please tell now, haha

#6

lol no, I think it should be okay, though I don’t know that anyone like James-F has given it a deep analysis.

1 Like
#7

I could check all cores I use and here are the worst offender, some of them couldn’t get them to improve any better. What I do is set a modeline to the system cycle rate (or should I set it to core reported cycle rate?), set estimated frame rate in RetroArch, and use OpenAL audio driver as stated.

system, deviation, estimated video refresh (improvements)
v n64-angrylion 50% 60.002 (nothing helped to improve it)
CPS 3 16%, 59.602 (rewind off fixed it, to ~1%)
CPS 2 16%, 59.641 (rewind off fixed it, to ~1%)
v DC-flycast 50% 60 (26% with rewind off)
kronos 20% 59.827 (but core reports 50fps because I set it to PAL otherwise bad performance/stutter)
v psx-hw 13%-20% 59.827 (13%-20% with rewind off)

While the testing I found out that a few cores have wrong cycle rates.

DS: 59.826098288081 (desmume rounds it to 59.83)
N64: 60.130001
Naomi: 61.702586Hz (has a 60Hz mode though)