24 replies to this topic

[Eviljubs]

I've looked around for a while, but I couldn't find any solution to mute only the rom music, but people seem to have done it for use with pup packs like in this video here:

 

 

I tried the metallica and simpsons treehouse of horrors ones... but I couldn't find a way to mute them.  Supposedly there are muted roms? But I wasn't able to find any of those either.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[wiesshund]

You want to mute the ROM audio entirely?

 

or you want to selectively only mute the ROM music but leave the sound effects?

[Eviljubs]

Only the music, ideally.  I looked into a few different solutions, but a lot are either outdated and no longer work, or never worked to begin with.  It seems like something like pinsound would work (it looks like pinsound studio is updated, and doesn't support roms though now, or at least, for the moment), or if there was an altmusic setup with the music muted or something, but I couldn't really figure out a solution that did achieved what I wanted.

[wiesshund]

If you want to selectively mute stuff, there is no easy answer you are going to like

You could try running the ROM in pinmame and see if it has a dedicated music channel you can mute
maybe the yamaha processor channel.

 

More than likely, you will need to make your own altsound

 

Not sure what you are actually trying to do, but the best option might be just writing your own table logic and not using a ROM at all

[Eviljubs]

Basically just mute the music in the roms, so I can use the alternate music for some of the pup packs, but, I suppose I'll just wait until pinsound supports that more again.  They have everything already appropriately setup for that kind of thing as it is, it's pretty neat, just doesn't work with vpx anymore like it used to.  Not sure if it ever will again either :-/ no real mention of it anywhere I could find.

[wiesshund]

I am not sure that they ever intend to support vpx like that again?

Not from what i have read anyways

[scutters]

I still run my old solution using pinsound studio to remove the in game music but leave sound effects etc in place.

 

Latest version of pinsound for visual pinball is 18.8.3... link here

If you run SSF replace the openal32.dll file with this one

 

It works for me! 

 

You could probably achieve the same with the altsound = 1 packages, but the newer format makes the music files harder to identify amongst all the effects etc.

Edited by scutters, 15 June 2022 - 03:25 PM.

[mrjcrane]

Simpsons a great example of that. I could be wrong but I think where an "Official" rom is in play you may have to mute the ROM audio in it's entirety unless you can decompile the rom and reprogram it. So I kind of have this dream and idea in the back of my head without the skill to implement it. Basically I would create pointers in the ROM instead of triggering a sound, it would trigger a pointer to external sound library.

 

I know this can kind be done if you mute the audio rom and map most of the sounds directly into the table script. But like I said I still lack the skill and knowledge of how this can be done correctly.

 

So with Cactus Canyon Continues, you can see how the audio track was cleaned up a lot. I like that idea in general of remastering the entire audio track. Twilight Zone is good candidate for it as a lot of the samples have some distortion in it. WhiteWater could use some clean up too .... but that was the best technology at the time with sampling, for a price that was affordable to consumers.

Edited by mrjcrane, 06 September 2021 - 09:32 PM.

[wiesshund]

Simpsons a great example of that. I could be wrong but I think where an "Official" rom is in play you may have to mute the ROM audio in it's entirety unless you can decompile the rom and reprogram it. So I kind of have this dream and idea in the back of my head without the skill to implement it. Basically I would create pointers in the ROM instead of triggering a sound, it would trigger a pointer to external sound library.

 

I know this can kind be done if you mute the audio rom and map most of the sounds directly into the table script. But like I said I still lack the skill and knowledge of how this can be done correctly.

 

So with Cactus Canyon Continues, you can see how the audio track was cleaned up a lot. I like that idea in general of remastering the entire audio track. Twilight Zone is good candidate for it as a lot of the samples have some distortion in it. WhiteWater could use some clean up too .... but that was the best technology at the time with sampling, for a price that was affordable to consumers.

 

One of the simpsons tables uses a hacked ROM
but i do not know how it was hacked, i forget which, i think it was a horror themed mod?

 

One could do an entire altsound pack for it
it requires dumping and then sorting through and editing all the sounds you want to change.

One could mute the sound entirely, and go with all table driven sounds based on what is hit and what lamps or solenoids activate
that does not cover all things though always

PUP is able to scan the DMD for specific images i believe
and one could enhance the sound using PUP to watch the DMD and play certain music or sounds when the DMD displays a given scene.

 

On a simpler non DMD type of table it is easier

Feel free to look at LTD Alien Warrior
That ROM had to be totally muted because the ROM dump is bad, it is only half there, and we had to patch it together using parts from another LTD ROM
unfortunately, those parts also contained the audio, the end result was a ROM with the logic %100 functional but the audio was totally fubar.

 

So all the audio comes from the table itself
And i can read the LED scoreboard on that kind of ROM and even tell it to play sounds based on numeric events, like if your score
exceeds 1 million, play a happy birthday jingle or something.

 

But on a DMD ROM, i think you would have to rely on PUP?
As i dont know how, if at all, to read DMD scenes being displayed directly from VPX or VpinMAME

[Eviljubs]

I actually got around to checking out some altsound stuff, that seems to be pretty awesome.  Particularly Frankenstein and Jurassic Park I liked a lot. Although a few of them I've come across seem to be broken.  Starship Troopers for instance, the audio wouldn't trigger for stuff sometimes, and would others and things like multiball wouldn't play even though I know the files were there for it, because they'd play other times...  I assume that was an error within the altsound pack, and not on my end, because the other stuff worked fine.  Unless it's an issue with VPX 10.7?  But then, I probably don't want to mess with it anyway, as I'm quite happy with it so far.

 

I still run my old solution using pinsound studio to remove the in game music but leave sound effects etc in place.

 

Latest version of pinsound for visual pinball is 18.8.3... link here

If you run SSF replace the openal32.dll file with this one

 

It works for me! 

 

You could probably achieve the same with the altsound = 1 packages, but the newer format makes the music files harder to identify amongst all the effects etc.

 

I will look into this as well as a solution, as I like those tables, but I'd like to have them setup properly to run them well.  Thanks for the link to the old version, I really appreciate it.

 

 

I would think rather than even having muted roms, people could go through and flag lines of music/sound effects, so they could be muted by table creators / pup pack creators without having to go through all the extra trouble.  It doesn't seem like it would take too long necessarily, as most music stuff would be larger size / longer run time.  Although there are a crapload of roms out there.  I'm not sure if maybe these are just crappy packs I'm looking at and they weren't designed well (i.e. maybe there's some solution they're not using for that problem?), I don't use pup packs very much at all (mostly for this reason, they're a pain in the ass to set up it seems), except for with tables that were made exclusively for use with them.

[wiesshund]

Unless it's an issue with VPX 10.7?  But then, I probably don't want to mess with it anyway, as I'm quite happy with it so far.

VPX has no bearing on ALTSOUND at all

It is a function of MAME not VPX

 

 

 

I would think rather than even having muted roms, people could go through and flag lines of music/sound effects, so they could be muted by table creators / pup pack creators without having to go through all the extra trouble. 

 

Flag them where?

Sounds that come from the ROM have no existence in VPX itself
there is no reference to them in the table script or anything, they are handled internally in the ROM emulation itself

[Eviljubs]

I meant flag them so you could just have a checkbox option for sound effects or music within vpinmame for that table, sort of like how altsounds work, just easier.

 

I thought I read somewhere that VPX 10.7 was causing some issues with altsounds, not sure why that'd be, but that's also why I assumed it was the actual altsounds packs themselves and not the software.

[wiesshund]

I meant flag them so you could just have a checkbox option for sound effects or music within vpinmame for that table, sort of like how altsounds work, just easier.

 

I thought I read somewhere that VPX 10.7 was causing some issues with altsounds, not sure why that'd be, but that's also why I assumed it was the actual altsounds packs themselves and not the software.

Dont know if that is even possible

Not all ROMS even have sound or music in the sense that you think of it

 

Lets take black hole and cavalier negro for example
no wav forms in those
the voice is made by commands send to the votrax as to what phenomes to generate

other sounds are instructions sent to designate what noise to make at what frequencies etc

 

other roms do have recorded wav forms, but they are probably not designated as to what they are
 

some ROMs are a mix of recorded and generated

 

some use opl fm synth for music, that you can kill the volume on the synth chip at least

 

That isnt really how alt sound quite works anyways

altsound does not work in real time, not when you are creating the alt sound
It also doesnt know the different between a song, and elvira inviting you to lunch, that is up to you later, when you are replacing the sounds etc.

and when you are playing, all it is doing is reading from a set of instructions that you made, and playing what ever you put there.

 

make an altsound, it will make more sense to you

 

it isnt exactly a top priority, mame and pinmame's 1st priority is to emulate a given machine as accurately as possible.

 

The best way to modify the audio on a ROM for it's correct table is to make an alt sound

 

The best way to replace the audio when using the ROM for something else is either make an altsound
if that just doesnt cut it, do a PUP pack

Or, just write the table as an original, forget the ROM entirely, and have the table make what ever sound you want when ever you want
Or if you are not talking a terribly complex ROM, mute the ROM (AND UNMUTE IT AT TABLE EXIT) and have the script call the sounds

[scutters]

Sorry, i missed the the reason for wanting to mute the rom music only earlier. 

For the purpose of a pup pack then i don't think pinsound studio is the way to go. It works well for me to easily mute music for lots of tables but just for a one off table pup pack it might be a bit much to ask people to install pinsound too.

 

Weisshund's right, making an altsound (mode = 1) pack or editing an existing one is probably the best way for your purposes. 

[Eviljubs]

 

Dont know if that is even possible

Not all ROMS even have sound or music in the sense that you think of it

 

Lets take black hole and cavalier negro for example
no wav forms in those
the voice is made by commands send to the votrax as to what phenomes to generate

other sounds are instructions sent to designate what noise to make at what frequencies etc

 

other roms do have recorded wav forms, but they are probably not designated as to what they are
 

some ROMs are a mix of recorded and generated

 

some use opl fm synth for music, that you can kill the volume on the synth chip at least

 

That isnt really how alt sound quite works anyways

altsound does not work in real time, not when you are creating the alt sound
It also doesnt know the different between a song, and elvira inviting you to lunch, that is up to you later, when you are replacing the sounds etc.

and when you are playing, all it is doing is reading from a set of instructions that you made, and playing what ever you put there.

 

make an altsound, it will make more sense to you

 

it isnt exactly a top priority, mame and pinmame's 1st priority is to emulate a given machine as accurately as possible.

 

The best way to modify the audio on a ROM for it's correct table is to make an alt sound

 

The best way to replace the audio when using the ROM for something else is either make an altsound
if that just doesnt cut it, do a PUP pack

Or, just write the table as an original, forget the ROM entirely, and have the table make what ever sound you want when ever you want
Or if you are not talking a terribly complex ROM, mute the ROM (AND UNMUTE IT AT TABLE EXIT) and have the script call the sounds

 

 

Aren't you telling it what sounds to replace though, via the rom?  the CSV files seem to have certain instruction codes/addresses for certain lines/blocks of code that are being executed, so if that is the case, in theory it would be possible to also just tell it to play blanks, or nothing, in those slots.  Which would also mean, you could have code that effectively does the same thing.  All you'd need is a blanked file, that it always pulls from, and then it just has to know what's flagged as a certain type (sound effect, or music).  I understand that different cabs did things differently, and it depends on how they're generating the music and sound effects, but, if nothing else it'd be useful to have for people that are creating these other custom tables and things.  Ideally, you could just have those tables not be able to use the function or whatnot. Even within the table scripts or something, to have the sound split up into different categories would be nice/useful.

 

Also, obviously in that video I linked, he has the sound effects going, and the music muted.  I just don't know how he's doing it, and it's not well explained anywhere.

 

Scutters, unfortunately the altsound stuff isn't labeled that well either, but I will look into that as well.  I do like it just for drag/drop replacement packs, it's great.  But for editing it looks like it'd suck pretty badly, although I haven't looked into making my own yet.  They should have another column in the csv that tells you fx, or music sort of how the new pinsound studio does (I mean, basically I'm just asking to rip off their idea I guess lol).  I have no way of knowing which is which unless I go through each one tediously and turn down the gain after playing each file.  I don't mind doing that necessarily maybe for one table or two... but man what a hassle that's going to be.

Edited by Eviljubs, 07 September 2021 - 07:24 PM.

[wiesshund]

 

 

 

Aren't you telling it what sounds to replace though, via the rom?  the CSV files seem to have certain instruction codes/addresses for certain lines/blocks of code that are being executed, so if that is the case, in theory it would be possible to also just tell it to play blanks, or nothing, in those slots. 

 

 

 

 

You need to heavily read the docs on altsound

 

The CSV is basically only telling pinMAME, hey when we get to this spot and do this thing, you can play this file instead
call it a redirect if you will

 

 

 

Which would also mean, you could have code that effectively does the same thing.  All you'd need is a blanked file, that it always pulls from, and then it just has to know what's flagged as a certain type (sound effect, or music).  I understand that different cabs did things differently, and it depends on how they're generating the music and sound effects, but, if nothing else it'd be useful to have for people that are creating these other custom tables and things.  Ideally, you could just have those tables not be able to use the function or whatnot. Even within the table scripts or something, to have the sound split up into different categories would be nice/useful.

Have code where exactly?
First you need to heavily read the altsound docs, then you need to go and create an altsound
And then you will understand that you have to do this for each and every single ROM, and even for each ROM revision
And that some times they do not work as intended, and some ROMs are totally non cooperative with altsound

 

I dont think anyone is going to do that and go through every ROM and then hard code the CSV's into VpinMAME

and then document a list of sound maps for every ROM, since you would need to know what to name said sounds, what the sound is for when you replace them, and how long they should be etc.

 

There is not remotely enough interest to bother doing that, look at the relatively small number of altsound packs.
They have already provided the tools for someone to take that on themselves, and it is not really the mission of pinmame itself
It's mission is to emulate the hardware, as it was, as accurately as possible.

 

I replaced the entire set of table sounds, with out the help of altsound or pinsound

I have replaced the sound and added a DMD to a ROM that has no DMD and no wav form sound at all
i helped Michael do the Force, complete with music (i only helped with the sound part, the table is all him)

and i used nothing but VPX and Audacity
And for a DMD type of ROM, PUP has it's own further solution in that it can scan the images being displayed on the DMD and do a PUP event based on the image
being shown to add even more options.

[Eviljubs]

You need to heavily read the docs on altsound

 

The CSV is basically only telling pinMAME, hey when we get to this spot and do this thing, you can play this file instead
call it a redirect if you will

 

 

I did read a bit on altsound, but, it was actually very difficult to find too many good/deep resources on it, like most things with virtual pinball it seems.  (Maybe since vpinball went down?  That sucks btw, they were partly how I got into this whole thing a while ago). 

 

I understand what it's doing though and how it works, I just don't see why you couldn't replace those files with a blank .ogg (maybe a .00001 second one that's just silent?).  The only problem I could foresee there is if an error is occurring and it's repeating playback of that silent file, but then, that wouldn't be an issue because it would be silent anyway and the pup pack would be playing audio anyway, so you'd never notice unless there was a memory overflow or something caused by it.  Which, I don't think would happen, otherwise the same problem would be present with the altsound stuff, and none of the problems I've seen with it have caused a memory overflow error yet.  Usually the sound either just fails to play, plays incorrectly, or repeats.  That is, if I am understanding the how the errors are occurring anyway.

 

 

Have code where exactly?
First you need to heavily read the altsound docs, then you need to go and create an altsound
And then you will understand that you have to do this for each and every single ROM, and even for each ROM revision
And that some times they do not work as intended, and some ROMs are totally non cooperative with altsound

 

I dont think anyone is going to do that and go through every ROM and then hard code the CSV's into VpinMAME

and then document a list of sound maps for every ROM, since you would need to know what to name said sounds, what the sound is for when you replace them, and how long they should be etc.

 

There is not remotely enough interest to bother doing that, look at the relatively small number of altsound packs.
They have already provided the tools for someone to take that on themselves, and it is not really the mission of pinmame itself
It's mission is to emulate the hardware, as it was, as accurately as possible.

 

Have the code built into a vpinmame build or extension, just like they do for altsound already (or even into the table script as an option to send to vpinmame, or get from vpinmame?).  Basically, just so you wouldn't have to download altsound packs for that blank/silent .ogg (or multiples of them), you just have that as a default it always points to when you want to mute just the music.

 

I don't mean people should go through every rom and do it ahead of time, I mean, the people that are creating these table remixes and mods with pup packs and things could do it if they wanted to, to make it easier for end users to be able to play their tables properly with less or easier setup (or for others to use in their own creations/mods/updates?).  It seems like that'd be a much better option than offering a muted rom, as essentially that is what they're doing with those I assume, is just deleting the sounds out of the rom that they don't want to play, or replacing them with blanks.  Then again, I guess they could also do the entire code base themselves within the table instead of emulating a rom in the first place... but that seems like a lot more work than a lot of people are willing to put in or have the skill to do to begin with... That or, you know, they could provide some proper instruction on how to set them up in the first place I guess.

 

I realize I'm just getting into this hobby again, but that seems somewhat logical to me.  The only thing I didn't consider was that some roms don't like altsound for various reasons, I wasn't aware of that but that explains some things.  Obviously there is some interest in that if pinsound is doing what they're doing with all that stuff (although they do seem sort of small, as far as I can tell).  Hell, there might even be more interest if there was an actual good/easy solution like that for people to use.  That's half the reason I didn't really want to bother with it in the first place is it was yet another thing to download, setup, test, and adjust for each table yet again on top of everything else.  If it was able to be integrated in an easy way, or with something that already exists that people are working with, that'd be much better and usable.

Edited by Eviljubs, 08 September 2021 - 02:41 AM.

[wiesshund]

 

 

 I just don't see why you couldn't replace those files with a blank .ogg

 

You can, not an ogg i think it has to be wav?
But, if you are replacing the sound, may as well replace it with what you intend to use

I dont know if you can replace it with a super short sound, i have never tried, but i think if wont actually care, though it is going to assume the time duration is filled up

 

 

 

I did read a bit on altsound, but, it was actually very difficult to find too many good/deep resources on it

the cvs file is kind of hard to understand anyways

and yes unfortunately some of the docks are lost from vpinball going down, so no one can get to them to repost them
they may or may not have gotten cached in archive.org

 

 

 

Have the code built into a vpinmame build or extension, just like they do for altsound already

 

Altsound IS VpinMAME
That isnt some 3rd party nonsense, that is VpinMAME doing it

But no one is going to sit and generate a CSV for ever rom dump and prepack VpinMAME with them
It would be a thankless project that 99% of people would have no interest in, and VpinMAME would be bloated for it, plus then the dev team becomes responsible
for it.

 

 

 

I don't mean people should go through every rom and do it ahead of time, I mean, the people that are creating these table remixes and mods with pup packs and things could do it if they wanted to, to make it easier for end users to be able to play their tables properly 

 

But you DO mean it, you DO mean do it all ahead of time and go through every ROM

No 2 ROMS are the same (Unless it is the same exact table) there is no standard among them, there is no generic altsound one size fits all
Even if you set VpinMAME to use only samples for sound, you would still need to know the name of every single table's audio asset it needs to be using at a given time
ANd then you need to hard code into VpinMAME a human name for the crap, just like MAME did for the ROMs that required samples for certain sounds
They had to hard code that in, and they only did it where it was necessary.

 

You are talking about doing something akin to that, for every ROM

 

As far as being able to run the tables "Properly"
That is exactly what pinMAME does now

It runs them properly, it operates the ROM as close as it possibly can to the ROMs real environment.

Doing altsound or PUP etc is not running a table "Properly"
It is technically running it improperly by choice, it is changing the table to something outside of it's actual existence

pinMAME already makes it possible to do that, but it should not be its job to have to do it for you.
One can argue all day that they are fixing the sound, but the sound was never broken, that is how the sound was, it never was perfect, that cost too much at the time.

Nothing wrong with it if someone wants to do that and give the table stereo 96Khz music, but they are going to do it at their own labor expense.

 

 

 

Then again, I guess they could also do the entire code base themselves within the table instead of emulating a rom in the first place... but that seems like a lot more work than a lot of people are willing to put in or have the skill to do to begin with...

 

JP Salas and 12,000 tables later might disagree with you.
JP has written many tables, based on REAL tables, and made them without a ROM
And he is happy to explain to anyone that will pay attention and put in some effort, how to make something work and point you to table examples all day long.

 

 

 

or even into the table script as an option to send to vpinmame, or get from vpinmame

 

VPX is not designed to talk to VpinMAME in that manner

that would result in a lot of comms overhead i think, which would probably slow the simulation down

 

Many ROMs do not work with altsound, because they do the whole sound thing in a weird way, at least as far as the alt sound part goes.

 

And technically, there is not that big of a need.
There is not a table made, that can not be done romless and run entirely in vpx alone.

It is just logic routines, it is not insanely hard, it takes a bit longer but you can have the table do what ever you want, even modify the rules or modes.
And you can even dump all the DMD frames from the ROM and re-use them to make your own DMD if you arent into doing a custom one

 

You wish your table had different or better sound?
Let me direct you to JP Salas's Deadpool, which could super easily have a Spike2 style PUP pack or FlexDMD, since you can actually do that with flexDMD
But JP stuck with the standard DMD format and made his own custom DMD frames, actually he made it double resolution if you use an LCD display.
He could have made it 720p but since that isnt something he hasnt any place to display on his setup, one can not expect him to make what he can not see

[scutters]

@Eviljubs - My understanding is that the altsound mode 1 packs using the csv file are the newer method, but there are some legacy altsound packs knocking about where the packs used sub folders for jingles/music/voice etc like pinsound studio. I'm not sure if they are available to share anywhere (possibly pulled when pinsound studio came out?), this may be one that is still available though. Cloudy on the details as a bit before my time with virtual pinball, maybe someone else will know more about those.

[Eviljubs]

@Eviljubs - My understanding is that the altsound mode 1 packs using the csv file are the newer method, but there are some legacy altsound packs knocking about where the packs used sub folders for jingles/music/voice etc like pinsound studio. I'm not sure if they are available to share anywhere (possibly pulled when pinsound studio came out?), this may be one that is still available though. Cloudy on the details as a bit before my time with virtual pinball, maybe someone else will know more about those.

 

Yeah, it was super super difficult to find the altsound files I managed to find to begin with, or even find out that they existed in the first place, took me a good 3-4 hours of searching around probably attempting to solve this issue when I ran into them.  I like the CSV solution well enough, it has enough options, and I'm familiar with working with csv's from doing quite a bit of scripting in excel in VBA and all that, so I could probably write some code to adjust things with all of them very quickly.  That's sort of the thing though, it'd be awesome to be able to script up something in excel to be able to just turn down the volume on certain flagged sounds, etc.  I actually wouldn't mind doing that, it's just the flagging process that would be a pain in the ass.

 

 

 

Altsound IS VpinMAME
That isnt some 3rd party nonsense, that is VpinMAME doing it

But no one is going to sit and generate a CSV for ever rom dump and prepack VpinMAME with them
It would be a thankless project that 99% of people would have no interest in, and VpinMAME would be bloated for it, plus then the dev team becomes responsible
for it.

 

 

 

I don't mean people should go through every rom and do it ahead of time, I mean, the people that are creating these table remixes and mods with pup packs and things could do it if they wanted to, to make it easier for end users to be able to play their tables properly 

 

But you DO mean it, you DO mean do it all ahead of time and go through every ROM

No 2 ROMS are the same (Unless it is the same exact table) there is no standard among them, there is no generic altsound one size fits all
Even if you set VpinMAME to use only samples for sound, you would still need to know the name of every single table's audio asset it needs to be using at a given time
ANd then you need to hard code into VpinMAME a human name for the crap, just like MAME did for the ROMs that required samples for certain sounds
They had to hard code that in, and they only did it where it was necessary.

 

You are talking about doing something akin to that, for every ROM

 

 

I think we're talking past eachother here a bit, I don't mean do it ahead of time and go through every rom (that would be a totally ridiculous ask), I specifically said, for people to have the option when creating tables, to be able to do that rather than creating muted roms (which is in effect, doing the same thing, but crowding and potentially ruining rom collections for no real reason).  Obviously if they're going through and muting the sounds in the rom, they would be able to just flag them instead and use a regular rom, were that feature to exist.

 

 

 

 

No 2 ROMS are the same (Unless it is the same exact table) there is no standard among them, there is no generic altsound one size fits all
Even if you set VpinMAME to use only samples for sound, you would still need to know the name of every single table's audio asset it needs to be using at a given time
ANd then you need to hard code into VpinMAME a human name for the crap, just like MAME did for the ROMs that required samples for certain sounds
They had to hard code that in, and they only did it where it was necessary.

 

You are talking about doing something akin to that, for every ROM

 

As far as being able to run the tables "Properly"
That is exactly what pinMAME does now

It runs them properly, it operates the ROM as close as it possibly can to the ROMs real environment.

Doing altsound or PUP etc is not running a table "Properly"
It is technically running it improperly by choice, it is changing the table to something outside of it's actual existence

pinMAME already makes it possible to do that, but it should not be its job to have to do it for you.
One can argue all day that they are fixing the sound, but the sound was never broken, that is how the sound was, it never was perfect, that cost too much at the time.

Nothing wrong with it if someone wants to do that and give the table stereo 96Khz music, but they are going to do it at their own labor expense.

 

 

 

Yeah, I know that they're not all the same lol.  When I said run them properly, I meant in the case of modded/remixed tables like Treehouse of Horror, if it's the author's intent to have the music muted and replaced with pup pack music then they'd be able to run it "properly" - i.e. the way THEY intended.  I don't mean when recreating the actual authentic table, of course I realize that those are actually being run properly already (or at least, as properly as they can be, to some extent).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then again, I guess they could also do the entire code base themselves within the table instead of emulating a rom in the first place... but that seems like a lot more work than a lot of people are willing to put in or have the skill to do to begin with...

 

JP Salas and 12,000 tables later might disagree with you.
JP has written many tables, based on REAL tables, and made them without a ROM
And he is happy to explain to anyone that will pay attention and put in some effort, how to make something work and point you to table examples all day long.

 

You wish your table had different or better sound?
Let me direct you to JP Salas's Deadpool, which could super easily have a Spike2 style PUP pack or FlexDMD, since you can actually do that with flexDMD
But JP stuck with the standard DMD format and made his own custom DMD frames, actually he made it double resolution if you use an LCD display.
He could have made it 720p but since that isnt something he hasnt any place to display on his setup, one can not expect him to make what he can not see

 

 

Yeah, I realize that, there are some fantastic tables that are done purely in VPX without emulation at all.  They're really impressive, but they seem to be few and far between compared to others is all I mean.  I'm not really a big fan of the ones that are basically just reskins/mods of authentic tables generally, but there are a few that are nicely done.  I just think if there were a bit more options to be able to do that and still customize things a bit more than just reskin the tables, without having to do all the extra coding required necessarily, there might be more and they might be better.  But again, I guess at at a certain point, it'd just be easier to do the entire thing without emulation.

 

In general, I actually prefer the more authentic sound, just generally in higher quality if I'm able to do that without compromising the original too much.  I don't mind a bit of crunchiness here or there necessarily, I actually make music myself that's pretty crunchy to begin with.