Sound in Secret of Mana not decoding properly

[Joelgp83]

Title says it all. Not surprising considering the current state of the emulator, but getting squaresoft's particular style of sound programming right is probably an important milestone. As it is, sound is scratchy in-game.

That said, kudos to staplebutter for whats been done so far. It does super metroid right, so that's always a plus.

[DiscostewSM]

Are you experiencing this at some point in the game, or does it happen immediately? If the latter, is it when you start up the emulator for the first time in your session, or had you launched other games prior in the same session? From my own experience with the game during my tinkering, it sounded fine if it's the first game launched, but can go off if it follows from a previously loaded game.

[Joelgp83]

Now that you mention it, I had been playing other games first before trying Secret of Mana. I'll try booting SoM first the next time I have free time, hopefully the results will be more pleasing to the ear.

[Joelgp83]

So, ran a test, booting SoM first, and yea, sound works good in that situation. Some things are still a bit off (Weapon charge sound seems a little tinny, for example), but I figure that's due to square's spu driver kung-fu more than anything else.

[DiscostewSM]

Well, Square is one of the few, if not the only ones, that did use pulse modulation for their audio (Lavos scream, FFVI/CT wind, etc), and that weapon charge uses it too. It sounded off because pmod wasn't quite working at the time when it was first implemented, so it was disabled. Still not sure why this one game causes corrupted audio after playing games prior to it. Might be that some audio settings aren't reset like they should.

Yes, I know this is an old issue, but still...