ScummVM AGI Sound Support Update

[MusicallyInspired]

So months and months ago I submitted a bug report about ScummVM's horrid sound emulation and today I finally hear something of it. Here's the whole email:

Category: Audio
Group: None
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Fixed
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Brandon Blume (musiclyinspired)
>Assigned to: Eugene Sandulenko (sev)
Summary: AGI: Proper Tandy 3-Voice/IBM PCjr Sound Support

Initial Comment:
Currently, the sound support in AGI plays back the 3-channel sound resources plus the white noise but it sounds awful (perhaps because the Sarien interpreter was originally meant to imitate the Amiga?). The voices sound very Amiga-like (sort of like a bad electric piano Casio keyboard sound) and the white noise is just a bland hiss without pitch-shifting capabilities. Since ScummVM currently has the ability to produce proper IBM PCjr sound for SCUMM games would it be difficult to move the same capabilities over to the AGI engine as well? NAGI (another AGI interpreter) and DOSBox (when machine type is set to "tandy") both produce the proper sound if reference is needed.

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>Comment By: Eugene Sandulenko (sev)
Date: 2010-06-15 19:23

Message:
Implemented in SVN. Now it is default mode for DOS games. Old emulator is
left for Amiga and Atari.

Rejoice! AGI emulation in ScummVM is now practically perfect! I haven't tried it yet but I will shortly...

EDIT: It works!! It really works!!!!

[Collector]

I noticed a buzzing in The Black Cauldron that was less pronounced in DOSBox. I'll have to try a few more games when I get more time tonight.

[MusicallyInspired]

Is it possible to change the sample rate of the audio output in ScummVM? Maybe it's a little high.

[Collector]

I'll have to experiment this evening. It was just the default settings. It is curious that the default sound for AGI games is not PCjr.

[MusicallyInspired]

Hmm? When I add a new AGI game to ScummVM now it automatically plays with PCjr sound....or am I misunderstanding you?

[Collector]

The Black Cauldron did not. As I said, I'll have to play around with it when I get a little more time.

[MusicallyInspired]

It did for me. Was Black Cauldron already in your game list when you ran it? I noticed that I had an AGI game already in my list and when I tried it it defaulted to the Amiga-like instrumentation. But when I deleted it and readded it and readded other AGI games it defaulted to PCjr sounds correctly.

[Collector]

No, until now, I have not run any AGI in ScummVM on this machine, except from the command line. And I just tried KQ3 with the same results. Ah well, it is the SVN of it. I would rather have to choose the audio for each AGI game than to have the ugly old square wave sound that it used to.

[MusicallyInspired]

That's very strange. It's all automatic default for me. I'm sure by the time it's officially released in an actual version update it'll work well enough. And yes PC Speaker emulation in ANY form (DOSBox included) is simply awful.

[Collector]

Perhaps different SVNs?

[MusicallyInspired]

Maybe? I got mine right from the downloads link. I didn't go through buildbot or the SVN repository at SourceForge or anything.