05452: spyhunt: Spy Hunter Sound Effects Bad

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
05452	Sound	Minor	Always	Feb 7, 2014, 05:28	Oct 9, 2021, 19:40

Tester	spyhunter	View Status	Public	Platform	MAMEUI
Assigned To		Resolution	Open	OS	Windows Vista/7/8 (64-bit)
Status [?]	Confirmed			Driver	midway/mcr3.cpp
Version	0.122u1	Fixed in Version		Build	Normal
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	05452: spyhunt: Spy Hunter Sound Effects Bad
Description	Several of the sound effects, including all of the weapons, and especially the chopper in the game are missing their full sound spectrum and or distorted, as if they are just static, or blips and bleeps. I don't know why this hasn't been discovered and fixed in over 10 years, but every other very popular arcade game that I play with MAME has perfect sound compared to this. I have used many different computers and many different Mame versions, and still these sounds are never fixed. Was it a bad batch of roms or an actual bug, or a limitation of Mame in some way (can't imagine)? Thank You for your time!
Steps To Reproduce	Just play the game.
Additional Information
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version
Affected Sets / Systems	spyhunt

Attached Files	sound.jpg (2,086,088 bytes) Feb 13, 2014, 04:22 Uploaded by spyhunter
	SH.mp3 (1,091,075 bytes) Nov 9, 2016, 09:56 Uploaded by Fujix (recompressed) original posted by spyhunter
	Oil+-+Smoke.mp3 (130,387 bytes) Nov 9, 2016, 09:56 Uploaded by Fujix (recompressed) original posted by spyhunter
	spy+hunter+comparison.mp3 (135,412 bytes) Nov 9, 2016, 09:57 Uploaded by Fujix (recompressed) original posted by zaxxon

No.10247 Tafoid Administrator Feb 7, 2014, 15:05 edited on: Feb 7, 2014, 15:41	Ok. We need some proof here - direct recording from PCB is the only way to tell there is not any effects coming for cabinet or other hardware hooked up to the audio subsystem. Just saying it's "bad" is not enough. Without reference (how it should sound) material, this cannot be accepted. Given the other recent posts you've done in other forums - you report you have a cockpit version of Spy Hunter. If you truly own it, recording it should not be much of an issue to support your claim. MAME also does not have an romset specifically made for the Spy Hunter Cockpit. Just like the Discs of Tron Environmental Cab, there is a difference in how those cabinets present and project sound along with romset differences. If that is the case, the ROMs from your machine itself would need to be read and compared.
No.10253 spyhunter Tester Feb 8, 2014, 13:09	Hard to believe that you need proof when it's such a successful game with thousands of collectors and the Mame playing population is so huge, but I will attach it here when I get a chance. This is like if pac-man wore the bow on his head instead of Ms. Pac-man... SH
No.10255 Tafoid Administrator Feb 8, 2014, 16:50	Well, If it were an issue before, given the thousands of collectors/mame playing public would have reported something earlier than now. This all makes me believe it's more of a Cockpit specific audio experience (w/panning/filtering/vibrato) which is part of the hardware of only certain styles of machines and not from a common upright. Sorry if you feel put out at all by this but without any references MAME will never be able to change to mirror your audio experience. .
No.10257 NekoEd Senior Tester Feb 8, 2014, 18:46	MAME is like the courts, everything is evidence. If you have any information; recordings, schematics, pictures, videos (especially videos) then all of this will assist your case. As it stands, it's your word against everyone else's, and if you have a cockpit version that has some kind of difference we are very interested in what the differences are so they can be properly emulated. But without any information beyond your word, we can't take any action. I'm going to acknowledge this for seven (7) days. If you have no further usable information by then, I will close this bug as invalid.
No.10258 spyhunter Tester Feb 9, 2014, 03:28	I'll record my machine, but even though the sound boards are technically different in the upright, I grew up playing several uprights and they didn't really sound any different. I'll get the recordings to you in the next couple of days. It would be great to be a part of the history of a fix for this, I just hope it will be able to be fixed. Thanks!
No.10275 spyhunter Tester Feb 10, 2014, 05:04 edited on: Feb 10, 2014, 05:05	Recording above added with the car bumping sound first, followed by the full sound test screen in the settings. I'll also attach a separate oil and smoke as they are the most messed up. You will so easily be able to tell the difference as the real sounds have depth, and the smoke actually has a billowing sound to it, nothing like the original... SH
No.10281 NekoEd Senior Tester Feb 11, 2014, 00:08	Okay, thanks, that's a good start, and I'll lift the time restriction. Is there any difference in the sound board on your machine? If you could get some nice quality photos of it that would also help, if you're willing to get in there and snap away a bit. :3
No.10282 zaxxon Tester Feb 11, 2014, 13:35	hi, i have added a wav file above for easy comparison of hearing the difference between the spy hunter cabinet and mame version (0.152) it plays as follows: first sound: cabinet oil sound second sound: mame oil sound third sound: cabinet smoke sound fourth sound: mame smoke sound
No.10283 spyhunter Tester Feb 13, 2014, 02:11	There is nothing special about my board, I played many arcades and they all sounded exactly the same, plus if you listen to some of the game console and pc ports of the game, while they are not perfect, they are more closely related to the machine sound then the ones on Mame. Can you shed some light on this, have there been other games in Mame with sound issues related to a bad ROM dump or something like that? I will try to snap some pictures tonight...
No.10348 NekoEd Senior Tester Mar 8, 2014, 20:36	We've got someone working on this now, thank you for all the information.
No.10350 hap Developer Mar 8, 2014, 23:15	we do? ;p I was hoping it was due to high level emulation of AY8910 modulation in audio/midway.c (see line 170 for info), but I can safely assure it's not due to that. Doing low level(accurate) emulation of this won't have an audible difference and just makes it slower. /me unassigns for now
No.10351 hap Developer Mar 9, 2014, 17:57	ah, a note from AWJ: AWJ: we fake the volume control, but that's not why the smokescreen doesn't sound like a real board AWJ: we're missing lowpass filtering after the volume controls. the smokescreen noise is white when it should be brown
No.11945 spyhunter Tester Aug 8, 2015, 02:33	It still pains me to see youtube videos of this game with horrible sounds, any movement on this?
No.12547 trebor Tester Apr 23, 2016, 15:36	Note from R. Belmont: "[The] problem is quite esoteric in a technical sense (it involves analog electronics, a foreign subject to most hobbyist emulation developers). There is one developer in all of MAME with anything like the necessary skill set, and as you might imagine he's quite valuable at his paid day job. He'll probably get to this eventually, but it may be many more years; he's currently fixing similar defects in the sound of IREM games like Moon Patrol and Kid Niki." Source: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=353386
No.13338 Fujix Administrator Nov 9, 2016, 09:57	Recompressed attached wav files.
No.13742 spyhunter Tester Mar 29, 2017, 19:55 edited on: Mar 29, 2017, 19:56	Would this be a problem with MAME or the actual ROM uploads. It's funny how the other sounds are good, just about half of them are jacked. Also the music is noticeably slower than it should be, but that's a minor problem.
No.19322 spyhunter Tester Oct 9, 2021, 01:59	SO, I just fired up the latest version of MAME (0.236) on my PC, and to my disappointment, the main sounds that I was complaining about, Helicopter/Smoke/OIl Slick are still wayyy off. The music seems to have improved, as well as possibly a couple of sounds such as the machine guns. Previously I was on a very old version (0.122), so I don't know at what point the little improvement was made, may have been prior to my original filing of this bug in 2014. Could this just be a ROM issue and the ROMs need to be re-read? Is there a way I could be a part of that? Thanks again, I understand it is not a big priority, but it would be nice to know that someone has it on their "to-do list". Many of the sounds are spot on and sound great! It is only a matter of time before Arcade 1UP or someone else reproduces the game and will not know the difference of the real/MAME versions of the sounds, and I feel that would be a terrible shame!
No.19326 Haze Senior Tester Oct 9, 2021, 15:31 edited on: Oct 9, 2021, 15:32	As mentioned already, it looks like a case of a netlist filter being required to do some low-pass filtering at least. Basically it looks like it's the analog components on the PCB that make the difference. There's are only really one or two developers working on this type of thing / who understand it, and neither are active at the moment to my knowledge. Even if Arcade 1UP did put out a machine they'd probably use older emulators without the filtering, as it can be very expensive to emulate properly and those things use the cheapest hardware possible. I think what you're not realising is that MAME has a tiny core development team, most improvements are done by people external to the team, users just like yourself. There's no real expectation, at least on my part, that the core team is ever going to look at this, it'll take somebody external who cares about it beyond just stating it's wrong.