Input Lag/Audio Sync with GBA Games

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hi all, I’ve been trying to run GBA games through the mGBA core and have been okay for the most part, except for Mother 3.

Mother 3’s rhythm battle system depends on low latency between input and audio (forgive me if I don’t use the right terms). The only way to get the lag low enough for the system to be usable is to disable “Audio Sync Enable” in audio settings, but this also creates an enormous amount of crackling in the audio, which I have no idea how to fix.

Has anyone found a way to get games like this to work? Any ideas are appreciated. I don’t want to have to go out and buy a GBA!

#2

Try increasing the max timing skew in the audio settings until the crackling disappears. If it’s a latency issue, do you have hard gpu sync enabled?

#3

Turning hard gpu sync on and turning the audio latency to the lowest I could (32) seemed to do the trick! I don’t think it’s quite on the level of a real console but it’s definitely very close. Thanks!

#4

Ah yeah, that’s a good point. Since you’re syncing up your button presses with the audio, getting that latency as low as possible would be very important.

#5

Did you also try disable desktop composition? It only works on Windows Vista and 7. It helps with the lag on windowed mode and I get more response time with snes cores than without it. Another solution is to switch to exclusive fullscreen without vsync, which helps with the lag too, especially for windows 8 and 10 without desktop composition option.