I may have just uncovered the holy grail for sound problems, well, the numerous and tedious steps to fix what seems to be plaguing a lot of cabinet SSF users in general. This all needs to be tested and confirmed for other setups, but I finally have EVERY one of my 400 tables playing all sounds (mechanical AND music/effects) at great volume levels, my PUP front-end volume is at a slightly lower (appropriate) volume, the sound levels don't fluctuate randomly when loading a table (looking at you PinVol). All volumes, system, frontend, table, rom, etc. stay where they are and were. I'm sure I'm leaving out some of the great benefits that this has given me and taken away so many headaches. So, I'm REALLY hopeful that this works for other setups and configs. Anyways... the process (dedicated pinball cabinet/pc).
My physical setup: External 7.1 audio card; 2.1 backglass (connected to audio card); 2 x stereo amps (connected to audio card); 4 x exiters/transducers (connected to audio card via Amps) -- VPX and FP running through PUPFrontend
1. Get rid of EQ and Pinvol, not needed (if you have them) also make sure they aren't still in start-up processes.
2. Set your system volume AND your backglass speakers (if they have additional built in control) AND your SSF amps to something comfortable near the 50% range (it's important that the system volume be close to this number for now).
3. Winkey + R, run "mmsys.cpl" - make sure your primary default audio is your 7.1 output, disable every other output. Click "configure" your 7.1 device, make sure you have 7.1 selected from the drop down and click test make sure you get the correct sounds from FL, FR, SL, SR, RL, RR. You probably won't get anything from Center or SUB, that's fine. Click "next" until you are able to DISABLE centre and sub speakers, finish and apply.
4. Run "setup" in the vpinmame folder, choose test, now test play a ROM that has startup sounds (I used DINER) if you get sound continue to step 7, if you don't go to the next step.
5. Open your 7.1 software (likely in your systray) it is probably set to 7.1 surround. Set it to 4.0 or quadraphonic (Yes, really, this was the magic step for me), go back and do step 4 again. If you hear the ROM sounds go to the next step, if not... I'm not sure what to do with your setup and config at this point.
6. Winkey + R, "mmsys.cpl", windows should show 7.1 still and then run the sound test, you should still get all 6 speaker sounds, even though we set the software output to 4 speakers.
7. We are at the point where we have "7.1" (6 speakers) working AND ROM sounds we can hear. YAY! that's 90% of the battle, now comes the tedious part for volume balancing.
8. If this is a dedicated cabinet make sure in PUPconfig / Global / Main that start up volume is -1, IF your PC is shared or multi purpose, set this to 50 (what we originally set our sys volume at in step 2)
9. In VPX audio settings make sure both sliders are at MAX.
10. Run Popper Frontend, go through each table demo (don't launch them) and listen to each one, take note if most are quiet/loud/perfect. You want to do the least amount of work going forwards, so choose whichever is the majority. Write down each table that needs to be changed and whether it needs to be louder or quieter (making everything quieter for the next step is the best option if there is no clear winner). I took a photo of the wheel image being high or low to represent that instead of writing it all down.
11. Open PUP Config and go to media manager, go through EVERY table choose the offending file(s) (usually 'sound' 'backglass' or 'playfield' AND 'loading' if you are using custom loads) click on 'convert' at the bottom and apply increase or decrease volume 50%, as many times as necessary to match your "ideal/majority" volume from the previous step. Get a drink/food sit down and get comfy... it's going to be like this for a while.
12. Once you have completed your journey, get up and stretch/go to the bathroom. Start up the frontend again, this time adjust your system volume to get between 50-70% while adjusting your 2.1 backglass speakers down until you have a comfortable listening volume.
13. Play one table, if the backglass volume is perfect go to step 17 (If you find later that other tables are not, come back here and continue on). Take note if the volume is too high or too low (don't change anything just listen).
14. Now, increase your desktop volume until you're happy with the in-game table backglass volume. (For me I went all the way up to 100%). Go here https://www.calculat...-calculator.php - put in your starting volume and your final volume, calculate then add 100% to that percentage. eg 50 -> 80 = 60% + 100% = 160%
15. Open up PUPConfig Game manager, on the right side, half way down is "Game Volume ____%" copy and paste your new 1XX% here, if you use the scroll wheel you can transition through the games while keeping the cursor inside the box so you can ctrl-v in that number really quickly through the list. Go back and double check each game (down arrow in the list is quickest) that they are all the correct % ( you didn't miss any or double down and make it 160160% percent!!!) Save and close.
16. Go back into the front end and load a table, is the volume perfect now? It should be, if not you can SLOWLY increase your desktop volume until it is, seriously 1-2 at a time, the table volume is going up multiplicatively now.
17. Now your mechanical sounds, open a table in popper clickity clack your flippers etc and adjust your AMPS volume until you are happy.
18. If you like your attract mode volume lower than your browsing volume, go to pupconfig / global / attract and set "attract mode volume" to less than 100, 75 works well for me (its a % of system volume not an absolute level)
19. Done, never touch anything again. (If this is a shared pc where people/programs etc MAY adjust your system volume, go back to the Pup Config where you originally set the startup volume to 50 and set it to the new volume number from step 14, the sys volume number not the % one)
20. Fine tuning, IF YOU HAVE TOO! and you don't want to follow step 18, you can still adjust the in-table ROM volume for further tuning, you can also open the volume menu in VPX table editor using F2 to adjust individual table sounds (important too, as some tables have the music and sounds set to 'table' instead of 'backglass' which needs to be corrected) and since not all tables are created equally, you may have to go back into Game Manager and adjust those tables volume percentages to suit.
21. At this point everything should be perfect, from here on you should never touch your system volume, speaker volume, amp volume. If anything is too loud or quiet, you should be adjusting it PER table through ROM, Game Manager % or VPX F2 menu.
I Just figured this out and it's late so formatting might be off or I missed writing something, PLEASE let me know if this helped you or let me know where you are stuck or if I wasn't clear. I only have the one cabinet and the one setup so I can't test out other configs. My cabinet is a scratch build so I'm not familiar with prebuilt cabs. This could work for other situations/configs/front ends. Comment if it worked and what your setup is etc etc.
Cheers!
Edited by Violaetor, 14 March 2023 - 05:41 AM.
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