Odd sound problem with mame 80es games

griffon

Hello,

I'm running retropie 4.3.3 on my Rpi 3B, and I'm having this really odd problem with sound. My Pi is connected by a Samsung TV/Monitor via HDMI, and sound works normally on retro station UI, and all the emulators, except for a handful of 80es mame games: Lady Bug, Popeye, Donkey Kong and Green Beret. There might be a few more, but those are the ones I noticed it, and yes, donkey kong has the right samples installed.
The odd problem is parts of the sound suddenly mute or pop for several seconds, then come back in for a second or two, just to disappear a few seconds later. I t happens only on those, and only via hdmi.. cause if I plug, say, a headphone into the 3.5 connector of the pie, and switch the audio to it, the games' sounds works perfectly, like it is supposed to.... It's really driving me nuts.
Anyone has any suggestions I can try? I've tried to modify config.txt and changiing hdmi_drive to 2 as it's suggested around, but no dice... Ah, and the tv has game mode off. I tried it both ways. No change.

caver01

@griffon It might help if you included what version of mame you are using. There are nine. Actually, there are a bunch of details you "forgot" to include from here.

pjft

The answer I have may not be what you're looking for, but it might be a TV thing handling the silent-to-sound transition via HDMI. You may check in the TV menu if there's something around audio that you may change. Alternatively you may try to boost some of the HDMI settings in the /boot/config.txt file and see if it helps.

griffon

@caver01 said in Odd sound problem with mame 80es games:

@griffon It might help if you included what version of mame you are using. There are nine. Actually, there are a bunch of details you "forgot" to include from here.

You sir, are correct. The missing detail according to the post are the following:

Power Supply used: 2.5A micro USB PSU
Retropie Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: USB Keyboard
Controller used: PS3 controller
Error messages received: none
Guide used: no guide, mainly the wiki and a lot of testing
Emulator: lr-mame2003; When the rom worked in other mames without needing to change it, has been tested on all mames available in binary that I could find and support it (mame4all, lr-mame2010, advmame[all three versions])

griffon

@pjft said in Odd sound problem with mame 80es games:

The answer I have may not be what you're looking for, but it might be a TV thing handling the silent-to-sound transition via HDMI. You may check in the TV menu if there's something around audio that you may change. Alternatively you may try to boost some of the HDMI settings in the /boot/config.txt file and see if it helps.

Thanks for your suggestions! Unfortunately I tried to change the (albeit limited to 2) sound settings on the TV already with no results.

Since the time of posting I also been able to try the very same hardware (so same retropie settings and all) on another, bigger and more expensive Samsung tv at a friend's... and there, the audio works perfectly. I guess it is just my tv then... Still odd and very annoying, but I guess I can't do anything about it.

pjft

@griffon I hear you. Others have reported similar or related issues, and I have a similar problem on my TV as well, whereby sometimes the audio won't play until I change channels and then come back to the HDMI input on my Toshiba LCD TV.

Clumsy HDMI handshake implementations is my best guess.