11 replies to this topic

[robhol]

So, I'm a fan of the Pokemon series, and have a particular soft spot for the Gameboy Advance versions. However, when I play Ruby or LeafGreen on Gameboid, there's this annoying sound issue - there are a number of "tracks" playing the melody, some harmony and some effects plus rhythm and so on. It seems that Gameboid can't keep these straight - so the accompanyment isn't synchronized to the main tune like it should be - instead, the "drums" are half a second or so too late. It's like the drummer is drunk, and it doesn't sound nice at all.

This problems happen on both my Android devices: I own a HTC Desire Z and an Acer Iconia A200 tablet. The latter has a dual core processor with 1GHz.
From what I can see, a lot of people either don't have these problems or simply don't notice them. For me, music is an important part of these games, so it's a bit annoying when something like this messes it up. Several people have told me that they're running Gameboid on slower devices than mine, without this issue.

I've googled and asked around, and there are a few settings I've messed around with. I tried "flooring" all settings: no scaling/2x/scale/stretch, automatic/manual frame skip mode and maximum (and 0) allowed skipped frames. Refresh rate Default/30/etc... and just about any possible combination of all of these. I don't use any widgets, I've tried killing every other app, and nothing seems to fix it. The problem seems slightly reduced when refresh rate is set to 30, but it still goes out of sync after a while.

So:
- Is there anything else I can try?
- Are there any other GBA emulators with better emulation, or at least more settings? Is Gameboid (and for that matter, yongzh's other emulators) "dead" and not being developed any more?
- Can anybody who's not experiencing this issue post any specific configs I can try?

Sorry about the looong post, and thanks in advance!

Oh, and for the record, I own both games and a GBA-SP legitimately.

[bdfull3r]

So:
- Is there anything else I can try?
- Are there any other GBA emulators with better emulation, or at least more settings?

Yes there are other emulators you can try. Some do cost money
https://play.google....W9qby5nYmEiXQ..
https://play.google....S5mbXMudmdiYSJd

Is Gameboid (and for that matter, yongzh's other emulators) "dead" and not being developed any more?
- Can anybody who's not experiencing this issue post any specific configs I can try?

Sorry about the looong post, and thanks in advance!

Oh, and for the record, I own both games and a GBA-SP legitimately.

Yongzh's emulators, as you probably know, where pulled from the Android Market/Google Play store around the release of the Xperia Play. For the most part his emulators are rock solid stable, i haven't have any issues with music on my copy of gameboid. Did you grab an older version while it was in the Market or did you get it from Slideme?
https://slideme.org/user/yongzh
As far as i know of there hasn't been any development on the app since he moved them. If you have the latest version and it is causing your sound issues you will have to try another app

[robhol]

Oh, I forgot mentioning those. VGBA has the same problem (I didn't dig around in the settings too much, though..) and Mojo doesn't even load anything. It is the only android app I've ever seen that somehow manages to "crash to desktop"...
Yes, the version was originally downloaded from Android Market, but I also tried the Slideme one.

Did you try either of the Pokemon games? I think it pretty much only happens there.
There aren't any open source GBA emulators, are there?

[bdfull3r]

Oh, I forgot mentioning those. VGBA has the same problem (I didn't dig around in the settings too much, though..) and Mojo doesn't even load anything. It is the only android app I've ever seen that somehow manages to "crash to desktop"...
Yes, the version was originally downloaded from Android Market, but I also tried the Slideme one.

Did you try either of the Pokemon games? I think it pretty much only happens there.
There aren't any open source GBA emulators, are there?

Played Fire Red and Emerald on my Optimus V with Gameboid and i have had NO issues with sound.

[robhol]

Is there any chance you could post the settings you're using?

It seems so pathetically unlikely that both my devices should have this exact issue - it seems rare enough, based on how little I've seen it mentioned on the internet.

[bdfull3r]

the settings are largely stock. I don't often tweak settings for emulators.
It's odd, i've never had issues with gameboid
Do you have an audio equalizer that is tweaking your sounds?

[robhol]

Not that I know of. HTC Sense on the phone, but I don't know if it'd tamper with the audio (just bloat the device otherwise >_>), and I got the impression that the tablet runs a more "vanilla" version of Android. Can you think of a simple way to check that, though? I can guarantee I didn't download such a thing on purpose.

[bdfull3r]

Have you considered you have a bad ROM? I really can't think of any other reason for your sound to be faulty

[robhol]

I just tried another rom, this time for FireRed(J) instead of LeafGreen(J), the problem actually doesn't SEEM TO exist here... that's weird. I'll try another "release" of the LeafGreen and hope the save is transferrable.
I originally thought the ROM couldn't be corrupt since I'd already tested it on a PC, and it seemed to work fine.

[bdfull3r]

Well good luck. lets hope it is just your ROM liking your PC emulator better then your Android one, other wise i have NO other ideas.