P.E.Op.S. PSX Sound emulation plugin --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The P.E.Op.S. spu plugins are based on Pete's DSound/OSS plugins for Windows and Linux. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows requirements/installation: ---------------------------------- DirectSound, and a sound card which can do 44100 stereo/mono 16 Bit sample playing. And of course a fast enuff pc to run the psx games at the "right" speed (50 or 60 fps). That's very important for XA audio, otherwise there will be cracks and/or noise. Use the "fps limitation" option of the gpu plugin to play your games at the right speed! Installation: Just copy the file spuPeopsDSound.dll into your \plugin(s) directory, (in FPSE \plugin\psemu), that's all. Linux requirements/installation: -------------------------------- Well, if the PSX emu has its own "plugin" directory, you simply have to copy the file "libspuPeopsOSS.so.x.x.x" into it :) The files "spuPeopsOSS.cfg" and "cfgPeopsOSS" should be copied together into another directory: There's a text file called "spuPeopsOSS.cfg" and an executable called "cfgPeopsOSS". Copy both of them together into a) a main emu sub-directory named "cfg" (recommended) or b) directly into the main emu directory or c) your home directory If the main emu has a gui to select the plugins, there will be propably a "Configure" button for the plugin. Use it... a window with all possible options will appear. The options are stored into the "spuPeopsOSS.cfg" text file. So, if there is no gui, you can use a simple text editor to change the options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Configuration: There ain't much options in the spu plugin... only a rough volume control, an option to turn off XA music and some misc special options. I've tried to combine a relative large sound buffer with a technique to get short reaction times... the result should be no stuttering when the emu gets very busy (for example while heavily accessing the cdrom drive), but also no delays when starting to play a sound sample. Well, at least it works fine on my system :) Some advice: the plugin is supporting the spu irq function, so you should turn off the "SPU irq hack" (or similar option) in the main emu with most games. 1) General settings ------------------- Mode: The mode setting affects how the plugin will feed the sound data to your sound card. With "SpuAsync" the spu plugin will run completely synchron to the main emu (so don't ask me why the mode is called "async", ehehe), which will usually produce the best timing, at the cost that if some other emu component (like the gpu or cdr part) is consuming much cpu time, the sound will break up. "Timer event mode": that mode is needed on some systems to fix stuttering effects. It also helps with very timing critical games, so you should enable the option, if your system is fast enough to handle it. This mode is MSWindows only. The "thread mode will be a little bit faster, and OK with most games, so you can use it on slower PCs. Volume: You can choose between "Low", "Medium", "Loud" or "Loudest" depending on your speakers. Of couse you can also adjust the volume with the Windows/Linux sound mixer ;P Reverb: There are three different settings: no reverb (fastest mode, but the sound will be very thin sometimes), fake reverb (easy reverb mode) and psx reverb (fully emulated psx reverb effects - thanx to Neill Corlett). Choose whatever you like best. Interpolation: Four different modes: "no interplation" will be fastest, but the sound can have some scratching effects. "Simple interpolation" will smooth the sound somewhat, still the sound will be thin (or, some people claim: "clean"). The "gaussian interpolation" (added by kode54) will prolly be the best choice for most users. But also the "cubic" mode (added by Eric) is very nice, it offers a better treble than the gaussian one (imho). 2.) XA Audio ------------------- If a game needs to play XA for compatibility, but for some reasons it sounds too bad, you can turn it off... yup. It's _not_ the same option as the one in the main emulator: you can just disable the XA audio output! If XA is enabled in the main emu, XA audio data will still be decoded... you just can't hear it anymore. As mentioned, the XA decoding is done by the main emu, so if there are bugs (unwanted noise even if the game speed is right), send a mail to the main emu team, not to my mail address ;) If you are playing XA at the wrong speed (not using the fps limitation of the gpu plugin), you will get some noise, because XA will get cut off. Or you enable the "change XA speed" option, that way all XA sounds will get played, but at a faster speed... if the fps is not constant, the sound will get very weird, though. 3.) Misc ------------------- - "SPU IRQ - wait for CPU action": an option for playing Metal Gear Solid and Valkyrie Profile... you also have to enable the "High compatibility mode" with that game. Ususally you can leave that option enabled with all games, only a few ones (like Chrono Cross or Legend of Mana) will produce sound glitches. - "Mono sound" mode: if enabled, all sound output will be mono. Doesn't sound that great, of course, but it can be helpful on slower systems/ sound cards, since only half of the usual data has to get transfered. - "Developer debug mode" (MS Windows only): a window will pop up when the spu gets started, showing the current spu usage of the game. I have enabled that mode for interested users, but keep in mind that the debug mode will slow things a bit down, so prolly you will need a fast cpu and video card. Also don't use the debug window in a fullscreen window mode, and make sure that your desktop has at least a 800x600 resolution. Most useful is the debug window if you are trying to improve the plugin yourself :) - "Sound recording window" (MS Windows only): another small window will be displayed on spu startup (don't try to use it in fullscreen mode), you can use it to easily record the psx sounds into standard WAV sound files. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For version infos read the "version.txt" file. And, peops, have fun! Pete Bernert ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- P.E.Op.S. page on sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/peops/ P.E.Op.S. spu developers: Pete Bernert http://home.t-online.de/home/PeteBernert linuzappz http://www.pcsx.net kode54 http://home.earthlink.net/~kode54/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer/Licence: This plugin is under GPL... check out the license.txt file in the /src directory for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------