Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

About BasiliskII, a 68k Mac emulator for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux that can run System 7.x through MacOS 8.1.

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manyserious
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Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by manyserious »

Hi, new member. Joined to ask a burning question regarding the audio in Basilisk II, which is a truly awesome emulator with a few quirks for audio geeks like me.

I'm wondering why I can't adjust the volume in the Sound Control Panel. I pull the lever down and it pops back up and gives me a warning tone.

I ask because I mainly want to use it for MacInTalk, but some of the voices come out a bit clippy and distorted. I played with the settings for audio out and found that didn't do much, so I recorded the output in Audacity and had a look at the wave form. It clips like crazy on many syllables, meaning the volume's too high -- but I can't adjust it.

Used Google site search to see if there were any other threads on this, only one similar one that was unresolved. I've tried various ROMs (yeah, I had to be a little unethical there, but do have a legit one from my Dad's old Mac).

Another curious thing: SoundLeech, a utility for capturing audio from any application in Windows XP (still using that, yeah), doesn't catch audio from Basilisk. Never seen it fail before.

Thanks for any input, apologies if this is an inadvertently noob question...
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Cat_7
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

Depending on what cpu and OS you run some control panels will work or not.
For example: when running 8.1 with a 68030 cpu, the monitors and sound control panel doesn't work. It does work when running 8.1 with a 68040 cpu, but only allows you to set the volume for alerts ;-)

Emulating sound is heavy on the host cpu, and perhaps some corners were cut in making it behave with acceptable performance. Using data chunks (which have to be stitched together again) instead of a real data stream might be part of that.

What additional issues are introduced when using different roms? Who knows.

Basilisk142 (see forum) does allow you to set the volume for both system and alert sounds ;-)
Perhaps you should give that a try. But beware, it is a different Basilisk, with its own GUI etc. So best to keep it, and the rom/disk files in a folder of its own.

Best,
Cat_7
Last edited by Cat_7 on Wed Nov 20, 2013 12:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
manyserious
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by manyserious »

Thanks for your time, Cat_7, I'll fool around with it today, and maybe try Basilisk142, and post if I come up with a solution. I've found that Audacity's built-in "click remover" processor minimizes the clipping effect nearly enough to make it sound about right, but it'd be nice to get it working clean without that extra step.

Thanks again.
manyserious
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by manyserious »

I hope double-posting is OK...

Basilisk 142 works brilliantly for MacInTalk! All voices sound exactly as they should with no clipping or distortion, even on 44khz/16bit/stereo. Overall, it's much heavier on CPU (stays around 50-70% usage on the old Pentium 4 and rides up to almost 100% when using audio), as you said, but as long as it works, I'm more than happy.

Thanks so much for your help, this means a pretty neat music project I've been wanting to get into can get off the ground.

Edit: for anyone with a similar problem to the one I describe in OP and wanting to use Basilisk 142 instead, I followed this guide: http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basilisk_142_setup

The only problem I encountered was that I couldn't launch 142 from the GUI app, it would crash, so I had to close it and launch 142 independently.

Used the included Mac OS ROM file.
. Thanks again.
Adam P
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by Adam P »

The audio out (quality) varies mostly on the emulator of Basilisk II being used.

The older builds have better, more customizable sound than the newer, but only up to CD quality.  Builds 142 (more stable) and 143 (faster) work almost perfectly in Windows XP — just avoid switching out to another task, or if using a custom window/screen resolution avoid switching to full screen at all costs, and, as you found out, launching from the GUI may not work.

The later builds (after 143) lack adjustable output sound volume (disabled/removed) — the volume would always be 100% and latency became weaker (sound channel streaming for things like Speech require low latency).

ROM: the only significant change with the range of Macs in question that Basilisk I/II run was with the change in hardware I/O, going from the earliest 68000 systems with basic 11KHz mono sound to the 68020+ necessarily equipped with the Apple Sound Chip. The Sound Manager code specs are pretty consistent (I know this from experience debugging it).

However, the Mac ROM shouldn’t matter here since Basilisk II completely overrides these parts of the ROM with native code patches; the version of B2 is what matters there. The sound must be pretty direct for SoundLeech not to pick it up— something with SDL, perhaps.
Adam P
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by Adam P »

Cat_7 wrote:Depending on what cpu and OS you run some control panels will work or not.
The regular 7.x "Sound" control panel works fine in 8.1; the volume level in later B2 builds will still always be 100%.
Cat_7 wrote:[…] beware, [Basilisk142] is a different Basilisk, with its own GUI etc. So best to keep it, and the rom/disk files in a folder of its own.
I’m actually quite comfortable stuffing it all in one folder… provided that I modified the binaries with a hex editor to use different preference file names for each version, even adding the .ini extension to quickly open them with NotePad instead of the GUI.  (Necessary, given that I haven’t gotten the newer GUI to run at all— too many external parts to download.)

And yes, you can double-post.  This double-post (that seemed necessary) answers that question.
manyserious
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Re: Volume adjustment in Basilisk II (Win)

Post by manyserious »

Adam P wrote: The sound must be pretty direct for SoundLeech not to pick it up— something with SDL, perhaps.
SoundLeech works as expected with 142, for some reason. I don't have a very sophisticated understanding of these things, but I think the fact that it couldn't pick it up from the newer build I was using was due to the loudness problem -- it might just ignore input it perceives to be consistently over a certain dB level because the results will be poor anyway, like it has a built-in limiter. I'm just assuming that because Audacity, which can record direct from system audio as well, didn't have a problem picking up audio from the newer version, but with heavy clipping/artifacting on all transients and mild distortion, as though it had been run through an amp.

Just glad it works. And glad also to have a fascinating new thing to play with. Thanks for the input.
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