Yet another ZSNES sound issue

[elvis_a_presley]

I was running ZSNES 1.36 and 1.40 quite happily, with sound. All ALSA stuff is installed and working fine (I've never liked OSS, and have always used ALSA since kernel 2.6 was released as stable). All other software using ALSA for sound output works fine. I'm running ~x86 on gentoo sources kernel 2.6.10-r4.

A few days ago I upgraded world, and with it ZSNES to version 1.42. Upon running, it doesn't give me any sound. Here's the error output:

ALSA lib pcm.c(snd_pcm_open_conf) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_softvol.so
Sound init failed!
freq: 44100, channels: 2, samples: 1024

Sure enough, there is no /usr/lib/alsa-lib/ directory. I have the latest versions of alsa-headers, alsa-mixer, alsa-utils and sdl-mixer all insalled.

Any clues as to where I've gone wrong?

[elvis_a_presley]

Sorry to be a nag, but has anyone else come across this?

Gentoo-bugs doesn't mention anything, nor does the ZSNES WIP site. Currently the latest WIP source fails to compile for me (Can't find OpenGL) but to be honest I haven't invest great deals of time trying to make that one work, as I'd rather concentrate on getting the portage version working first.

I have a very bad feeling it is something stupid I've done somewhere. But as mentioned, all other ALSA stuff works fine, as does everything else SDL and SDL-sound related, which is puzzling.

TIA for any advice offered.

[windex82]

Well I was figuring re-merging the package that contained this file would fix it so I did a:

Code: Select all

equery b /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_softvol.so

But it turns out I don't have the file either, however sound works just fine.

Perhaps try remerging alsa libs? Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[elvis_a_presley]

I will try that tonight when I get home and let you know. Thanks for the help!

[elvis_a_presley]

I've re-emerged alsa-lib and zsnes. Neither had any complaints during the emerge, but still no sound.

I tried changing around a few sound-related USE flags, as well as dropping back to more conservative CFLAGS, but still no change.

Doing some googling led me to a Belgian website that suggested running revdep-rebuild. I did that too, but still no change.

I'm totally stumped.

[windex82]

Have you changed any of the default sound settings in zsnes? I find changing any of the interpolation or lowpass options will lead to no sound. Incase your wondering what the defaults are:

Enable Sound - Checked
Stereo Sound - Checked

Sampling rate 32000hz
vol level 100%
Reverse Stereo - Not
Surround Sound - Not
Sound Buffering - Not
Disable SPC Emulation - Not

And of the bottom 6; Gaussian is the only item with a check mark.

[elvis_a_presley]

I had a funny feeling that my old config file might have been at fault (typical post-upgrade problem), so I delete my entire ~/.zsnes/ directory, effectively setting all configuration back to default.

The same error still occurs. No change.

It's still complaining about this "/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_softvol.so" file which I've obviously never had. My guess is something in the config part of the emerge is telling it that's where my alsa volume control lives. How I tell it otherwise is beyond me.

Is there any way to turn on more verbose error logging in zsnes?

[canceritispox]

here's my take on the situation:

on my old linux install (FC2) i had ZSNES 1.40, and I had some sound problems. after a while the sound would start to lag behind the graphics, and eventually would break down and become a horrible noise. when i restarted ZSNES it would work great again.

upon installing gentoo and emerging ZSNES 1.36, i have had no problems whatsoever. Give 1.36 a shot... it might fix it, you never know.

[elvis_a_presley]

I was thinking the same thing, but when trying to emerge 1.36 it complains about missing SDL, despite the fact that I have verison 1.2.8 installed.

Was there much change in file locations between 1.2.0 and 1.2.8?

Here's the error message:

checking for sdl-config... /usr/bin/sdl-config
checking for SDL - version >= 1.2.0... no
*** Could not run SDL test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means SDL was incorrectly installed
*** or that you have moved SDL since it was installed. In the latter case, you
*** may want to edit the sdl-config script: /usr/bin/sdl-config
configure: error: SDL >= 1.2.0 is required

!!! ERROR: games-emulation/zsnes-1.36 failed.
!!! Function egamesconf, Line 59, Exitcode 1
!!! egamesconf failed
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, NOT this status message.

Perhaps my problem is with SDL itself? I might try dropping back to 1.2.7 and see what happens.

[elvis_a_presley]

SUCCESS!!!

Falling back to libsdl-1.2.7-r3 fixed the ZSNES sound issue!

I'm currently running ZSNES 1.42 with full sound.

An interesting note: the default sound settings where awful. I had to change the sample rate from the default 32000 to 41000 and turn Sound Buffering from the default Off to On, and things sounded MUCH better.

Thanks to all for their input along the way. I'll do some reading on the latest libsdl bugs/changes and see exactly what's going on.

[edit]

Amoungst others:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79025
and
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81082