PSX Rearmed and slow music playback (Wild Arms)

Einherjar

Found something rather odd today while trying out Wild Arms.
The games generally works like a charm (like pretty much everything i tried so far) but whenever the game enters combat, the music runs at what feels like 50% speed.
The gameplay itself runs at the proper speed, doesn't lag or eat inputs.

My best guess is, that it, like, say, Final Fantasy VII, has some timing issues since its music isn't played from file but rather processed on the fly (not sure if that's the case with Wild Arms)

Does anyone know of SPU sync options i might have overlooked or other fixed for this issue ?

Beretta9

Could be a bad disc image.
Have you tried using a different iso?
I use PBP files for all my PS1 games and ive had zero problems.

Einherjar

Yup, sadly, not a disc image issue.
I ripped the first one myself and got 3 different ones from "certain sources" on the net.
All in various formats (BIN/CUE, PBP, ISO etc)

Region was NTSC in all cases. Haven't tried a PAL image yet due to obvious reasons i might not go into on here ;)

jrburke99

I had this same issue. I saw this post, but sadly, there was no fix. I did actually figure this out, however!

I am using lr-pcsx-rearmed. I see the same slow music issues you describe. I thought I should try another emulator to see if that works. The only other one is the non-libretro version of rearmed. I tried it out anyway, and it too has the slow music. I tried looking through its menu, and I noticed a message being displayed that said it was running as PAL. This made a lot of sense to me!

So I went back into lr-pcsx-rearmed, and loaded up Wild Arms, and went into the R-GUI Retroarch menu. If you go to options (I think), the second option is Region. It is set to Auto. I set that to NTSC, and that fixed it! However, after I exit and start Wild Arms again, it is still slow. If I look back in that menu, it still says "NTSC". I found that I have to go into this menu, and flip the Region to something else, and back again to NTSC (no need to exit out of the menu.....just push left, and then right on the joystick so it says NTSC again). Then the music is once again fixed until I exit.

I also had bad stuttering audio after I did that, but I just turned off threaded video as well, and that straightened it all out.

jrburke99

So anybody else reading this, any ideas how to FORCE NTSC for a ROM, or for the entire lr-pcsx-rearmed? Or even for all Retroarch? Maybe in a config file? I have no PAL ROMs, and no desire to. Thanks!

backstander

@jrburke99

any ideas how to FORCE NTSC for a ROM, or for the entire lr-pcsx-rearmed? Or even for all Retroarch? Maybe in a config file?
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/retroarch-configuration#core-input-remapping

After you made the changes in RGUI you'll want to Save Core Remap File or Save Game Remap File for just this game only.

jrburke99

I did that as well. When I start up Wild Arms again, and check the menu, it still says NTSC, but I have to toggle it for it to actually run normal again.

backstander

@jrburke99
I'm not at my RPi, can you look in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg and see if there's anything about "region" in there?

jmoral14

Old thread, I know, but I'm having the same trouble with the European ROM for Mickey Mania for PSX. He runs just too darn slow for me in PAL, and I can change it to NTSC speed, but I have to keep opening the RGUI and changing it to NTSC/changing it from NTSC and back every time I launch it. Anyone find the fix for this?

Capeman

Also aware this is an old thread, but just loaded up Wild Arms and noticed this same issue. I'm guessing its probably a retroarch problem with this particular game, but i figured i'd see if anyone was able to solve this, haha.

SavedByZero

Old thread, sorry, but I can't seem to get WA2 to run past the title screen in pcsx-rearmed. It fades to black when I press start, then hangs. Is this a known issue? Can I fix it with specific settings? (I forced NTSC and 640x480, but that didn't fix it). I'll take slow battle music over this any day...