[FIXED]Muting sound in GB(C?) games.

Vague Rant · Post by **Vague Rant** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:15 am

I don't have much experience with running GB/C games in VBA-M, and Kirby's Dream Land 2 is the only one I've got at the moment, but I was attempting to play with the sound muted just now, and no luck. Even though the Mute option was checked (and worked fine for GBA games), sound played anyway, the only way I could get it to shut up was to turn sound off outright, which of course makes the game run at ridiculous speeds until you throttle it. Even so, the emulator is still running at 108-110%, which, while not particularly bothersome, probably isn't exactly optimal.

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My setup right now is to use SGB, with the border displayed. Switching to other Game Boy modes didn't help any. Throttle is "100%", frame skip of 0. Audio is turned off, but is nominally DirectSound, sync game to audio is checked but obviously pointless with audio off, volume is at Mute, 25%, sampling rate is 44100Hz. I'm running Windows XP SP2, and the March 10 precompiled binary (461). If there's any other info that'd be useful, feel free to ask.

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Summary: "mute" doesn't work on GB games.

Squall Leonhart · Post by **Squall Leonhart** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:49 pm

Bug expanded,

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Mute does not affect GB and GBC games,

Mute Does effect GBA games, but once enabled, mute cannot be disabled.

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Effects

OpenAL

Xaudio

DirectSound

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Submitted to source forge bug tracker.

Vague Rant · Post by **Vague Rant** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:05 am

Hmm. I've been fooling with it some more, and it doesn't seem like that's 100% accurate. You can get sound to unmute again on GBA by hitting Options > Audio > On. After hitting mute in GBA, neither On or Off is checked in that menu, but once you hit On, audio becomes unmuted again. Obviously this isn't how it's supposed to work, and you're right that once you've muted you can't unmute by unchecking the mute function, but hey, the more details, the easier the problem can be found, I imagine.

mudlord · Post by **mudlord** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:20 am

Okay, which SVN version did this first break in?

Vague Rant · Post by **Vague Rant** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:52 am

Well, I'm actually pretty sure it's two separate problems. The muting on GBA issue is actually pretty minor, old SVNs and the original 1.8.0 and such had in the sound menu "Off", "Mute" and "On". In the more recent SVNs, "Mute" has been moved to the "Volume" menu, but it's really still one of the three options; that's why "On" is how you get the sound back. In other words, "Mute" is still working fine by the old system, it's just a bit more confusing the way it's been rearranged.

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Whether it was this rearranging that caused the other problem, with the GB/C refusing to mute, I'm not sure, but I'll edit this post once I've found the SVN where it happened.

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EDIT1: OK, they're definitely two separate bugs. Check out SVN 156; "Mute" has been moved to the "Volume" menu and works on GBA in the semi-confusing way described above, but GB/C muting still works. I've almost got the exact version where this bug was introduced, so expect another edit soon.

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EDIT2: Well, I've found the offending SVN update to the best of my ability. Somewhere between 157 and 176, the GB/C muting bug was introduced. I can't pinpoint it exactly because I don't know jack about compiling stuff, so I'm just using the precompiled versions from the site, but in 156, GB/C muting works fine, and in 176, it doesn't work at all. Hopefully this will make it easier for someone who actually knows what they're doing to find the culprit SVN. Good luck.

Squall Leonhart · Post by **Squall Leonhart** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:08 am

well, how about we remove mute completely and just make a 0% volume to mute?, technically its the same thing.

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Edit

What the heck, Volume itself is nuked for GB/C

xKiv · Post by **xKiv** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:41 am

well, how about we remove mute completely and just make a 0% volume to mute?

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Because mute is "supposed" (= users [1] expect it) to toggle between no-sound and whatever-it-was-before-muting (which might have been something else than 100% volume, all channels enabled, ...)?

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[1] at least users who are used to TV remotes ...

mudlord · Post by **mudlord** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:31 pm

Somewhere between 157 and 176, the GB/C muting bug was introduced.

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blargg's sound core perhaps..?

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His core is a entirely different animal to what was in there previously.

spacy51 · Post by **spacy51** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:25 pm

An easy workaround would be to remove the mute and volume stuff from the core and just let the sound output plugin handle it.

Squall Leonhart · Post by **Squall Leonhart** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:52 pm

not really, because then that leaves us with the problem of people wanting to play without vba sound, and since turning off sound can break audio related events.