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PCSX2 / pcsx2

PCSX2 - The Playstation 2 Emulator
https://pcsx2.net
GNU General Public License v3.0
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[BUG]: Inferior sound compared to 1.6.0 #11860

Open solid1353 opened 1 month ago

solid1353 commented 1 month ago

Describe the Bug

I have various pcsx2 builds installed on my PC with surround sound setup (v1.6.0, v2.0.2, nightly). Surround sound only works properly on v1.6.0, so this build offers a vastly superior experience compared to later ones, despite having outdated UI, so I'm still stuck with it. I don't know what the issue is, but sounds feel heavily compressed in newer versions and rear channels are outputting heavily distorted/laggy sound. The sound is also a lot quieter. No combination of settings makes a noticeable difference.

Also even if we're talking stereo, all the issues persist, except for rear channels outputting gibberish, obviously.

Reproduction Steps

To my knowledge, it should be easily reproducible in any game. My personal favorite for this is Naruto Shippuden - Ultimate Ninja 4 (SLUS-21862). Just open up a free battle in 1.6.0 and latest nightly and you should notice the difference right away. To hear compressed-like sounds just do basic attacks with Naruto.

Expected Behavior

Current build should sound at least as good as 1.6.0, I guess

PCSX2 Revision

v2.1.177

Operating System

Windows 11

CPU

i7-12700KF

GPU

RTX 4090

GS Settings

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Emulation Settings

image

GS Window Screenshots

image

Ziemas commented 1 month ago

To my knowledge nobody doing PCSX2 development has a surround system to test with.

solid1353 commented 1 month ago

To my knowledge nobody doing PCSX2 development has a surround system to test with.

Stereo sound issues are just as easily reproducible, I updated the initial post to make it more clear. Surround-specific and stereo issues also probably have the same root cause. Maybe someone could try fixing stereo and I could check if surround gets fixed as well.

Ziemas commented 1 month ago

I feel like the only change we've made since then that would impact stereo audio quality is that we changed to an interpolation algorithm that is accurate to what the hardware does. But I guess I can take a look at some point.

crashGG commented 1 month ago

Since we are discussing audio, shouldn't post the audio-related settings to help you find the problem?

solid1353 commented 1 month ago

I already posted in support channel in Discord a while back and we already tried switching between different configuration to no avail, but sure. My current settings are these apparently:

image image image

crashGG commented 1 month ago

Currently, pcsx2 does more like using software methods to cut stereo to get virtual 5.1 or 7.1 channels.This will inevitably lead to a decrease in the original front 2 channel sound quality.So my suggestion is to set audio expantion to Disabled(Stereo) for PS2 games to get the best sound quality.

solid1353 commented 1 month ago

As far as I know, Sony only started to support 5.1 channels surround starting with PS3, so there are no PS2 games developed for 5.1 channels surround.This can be easily found from the public PS2 detailed technical documentation.

Currently, pcsx2 does more like using software methods to cut stereo to get virtual 5.1 or 7.1 channels.This will inevitably lead to a decrease in the original front 2 channel sound quality.So my suggestion is to set audio expantion to Disabled(Stereo) for PS2 games to get the best sound quality.

I am well aware of that. How does this suggestion help with both stereo and surround being vastly inferior to the same setting in v1.6.0?

Ziemas commented 1 month ago

It's kinda surprising surround would be worse, pcsx2 now uses freesurround to decode dolby prologic 2. 1.6.0 used some home grown decoder that wasn't even finished.

solid1353 commented 1 month ago

It's kinda surprising surround would be worse, pcsx2 now uses freesurround to decode dolby prologic 2. 1.6.0 used some home grown decoder that wasn't even finished.

It's actually not that surprising for me after you mentioned that. 1.6.0's interpolation sounds like a fairly simple algorithm that spreads all the sound evenly without trying to isolate specific sounds that stand out. Freesurround probably tries to do just that, but does so poorly, while 1.6.0 sounds great.

Does freesurround affect stereo in any way though? Since stereo is just as bad as surround compared to 1.6.0.

dudecars53 commented 1 month ago

Just installed the stable release of 2.0.2 today from 1.6.0 i noticed these audio issues immedietly, used SSX (2000) as a test while comparing both games opened side by side 2.0.2 sounds alot more distant/muddier sounding to me

lightningterror commented 1 month ago

I mentioned this a while back that sound was different/worse on Qt compared to Wx, maybe it's some hidden setting behaving different, who knows, needs to be looked over. For me the test case was DBZ BT3, the ranged/beam attacks sfx sound worse.

Ziemas commented 1 month ago

It's hard for me to know what to do about reports that are basically "sounds bad" because what I care about is how it sounds compared to real hardware, not objective quality.

Ziemas commented 1 month ago

Things of mine you could compare: before/after changing to gaussian interpolation (#4195), before/after adding the DC filter (#10007). Idk what others have been up to that could have changed anything.