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#5307 SCI: PQ3: channel volumes are wrong when using Adlib
Game versions: EGA&VGA/DOS/English/1.000
ScummVM version: 1.2.0svn52375
Platform: Windows7 32bit
Selected audio: Adlib emulation
In the intro, (around the time after the name of the game ("The Kindred") disappears, and executive producer is shown) the main music channel is mixed too low compared to the rhythm section channel. I compared with DosBox (and my memory) and it is very noticeable.
I suspect this is relevant for the mt32 emulation as well, but I have no way of verifying this.
This seems to be a duplicate of bug #1159581, so I believe this is a bug in the Adlib emulator, not within SCI itself
I am not sure how this is supposed to be a bug in the AdLib emulator. The emulator itself is not responsible to setup the volume, but the code using it is, either via setting the volume of the audio stream the AdLib emulator is hooked up to (that's how it should not be done usually) or by properly passing the AdLib emulator proper volume settings.
I checked it again, and noticed that the problem manifests only when using the DOSBox OPL emulator, and not the MAME OPL emulator.
That's odd but I just diffed the current DOSBox OPL emulator sources against DOSBox's sources and there's no behavioral difference in it (at least how it is setup currently) as far as I can tell. So this is probably still a bug in the SCI code. To rule out any other sources: What's your DOSBox version and what's your oplemu setting in your DOSBox config?
I tested it using ykhwong's svn build 09-03-2011, with the following opl settings:
oplmode=auto
oplemu=default
oplrate=44100
However, I'm pretty sure the dosbox mix is the right one, as far as I can remember when playing this game on my old 486: the main melodic line is much more quiet in scummvm w/ dosbox opl emu. just give it a listen - it's right at the beginning - and you'll see for yourself.
I found PQ3 on youtube, here's a link to the point in time to which I'm referring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9m7Lgo_TPk#t=26s
And here is scummvm playing PQ3 demo, and you can hear the low mix of the main melodic riff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mud3iZxb_pA#t=62s
That should be the same OPL emu as we use, at least if ykhwong's build doesn't change anything there.
Could you try setting the music etc. volume in ScummVM to the max and see if it makes any difference, i.e. just makes the melody part louder?
changed music & sfx vol to 256.
didn't help.
I don't know what's the cause of this bug then. Since the code we use for the emulator is from DOSBox and nearly identical, just some hook ups to the sound output are different, but those should affect all sounds it produces then, it shouldn't be related to that. So probably a bug in the SCI AdLib code.
I just verified that this bug still exists in v1.6.0git240-g52a1a6e.