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GDemu audio questions

Vee

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Sep 12, 2020
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Hey everyone,

I've been playing around with the GDI format, .bin/.raw and .iso conversions, removing padding etc. I can't tell how it is on original GDEmus with the latest firmware but on my cheap clone, when I convert a game to .iso, it works fine, but it'll never play CDDA (if any), only a quick scratching sound once. Also I'm not really a friend of the .raw audio tracks wasting so much space - so 2 questions:

a) does anyone know why GDEmu behaves this way, or has found a way to make it play CDDA even when using .iso for the data tracks? I know GDEmu only supports .iso officially "for homebrew"... but nerfing CDDA on purpose seems a bit weird to me, unless of course .iso is loaded in an entirely different way than .bin tracks which somehow prohibits CDDA use.

b) what are the chances of converting .raw CDDA audio tracks to MP3, Opus, ADX etc. and having them play regularly, using a GDEmu? Obviously this is not supported right now with GDEmu+GDMenu, but I'm wondering if it would be possible using some kind of homebrew audio layer that gets hooked when CDDA tracks should be accessed, looks up the track file in the game folder and plays it. There are of course MP3 player apps for DC but none that I know of that could be used for/while playing a game.

This would probably, even if it were possible, introduce more or less significant performance issues with games, depending on the game - maybe not ChuChu, since the decoding would take some processing power; unless of course the DC was overclocked, or had some unused (audio) processing power left over somewhere that could be (ab)used for that?

I'm sorry to ask so unspecifically but I literally have no idea about both and am currently still working on other fronts where I feel more productive. Hoping for your insights.

Thanks!
 

megavolt85

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a) GDEMU fine work with ISO tracks, but need convert only data tracks
b) no chance, you have to develop your own ODE

This would probably, even if it were possible, introduce more or less significant performance issues with games, depending on the game - maybe not ChuChu, since the decoding would take some processing power; unless of course the DC was overclocked, or had some unused (audio) processing power left over somewhere that could be (ab)used for that?

CDDA is played in hardware, the console does not waste resources when playing
 
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Vee

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Sep 12, 2020
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Coming from you I guess I can skip looking into this any further, thanks a lot!

EDIT: When you say GDEmu works with ISO, you mean without CDDA track04+.raw, correct? Or does that work for you as well? I've only changed the GDI file to 2048 for the data tracks, changed nothing on the audio, but CDDA doesn't work with my GDEmu clone when I use 2048/iso data tracks.
 
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FamilyGuy

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When converting to iso, you should only touch the data tracks and their lines in the gdi file, nothing else. You can check out my GDIShink tool too.

If you do that properly, everything works well on the original hardware. Your issue is probably because of a shitty clone. And you probably can't update your shitty clone to fix it.

I get that GDEmu availability is spotty at best, and I really think Deunan business decisions on that front are incomprehensible, but in the end the price isn't too high. It's really worth it to get a genuine one.

Universal mp3 support like you described would have to be done on the ODE firmware. It'd need to decode mp3 to CDDA stream on-the-fly and send that to the DC.
 
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Vee

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Sep 12, 2020
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Yeah, I've been trying to get my hands on original GDEmus but so far without any luck. It kind of sucks, because I'm stuck with 2 number folder names as well due to the shitty low firmware, but I guess there's nothing I can do about it then. I was writing a tool to manage a DC collection from GDI files and transfer it to SD one-click-style but then I guess because of my shitty clone any further work on it would just be a waste of time -.- Shame.

...or does anyone know of any alternative ODEs in development? I can't believe there's only this one by one guy who is entirely unwilling to sell it. WTF. I've been waiting for years but this is beyond retarded. I still have a lot of love for the DC and would like to contribute to the scene again but... *sigh* this is so frustrating, if I'm wasting my time devving things for shitty clones because they're buggy and I can't get the original because... reasons!??! -.-'

Thanks for your help & the info though, but then I guess I'm out again.
 
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darcagn

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You're definitely doing something wrong here. You need to convert the BIN files to ISO files, then modify the .GDI file to use the filenames with .iso extensions and change the 2352 bytes per sector to 2048.

This should work on all GDEMUs whether real or clone. I have both a real and a clone and it's the same on both. The firmware on the clones is all the same version. The "version number" you see when buying from eBay or AliExpress or whatever is just a hardware revision, not firmware. For that reason I bought the low version for my clone. It works just fine, and I always use ISO files.

There are already multiple tools to do what you're talking about. The most commonly used one is madsheep's GDEMU SD Card Maker.

Your GDIs are sourced from TOSEC, not Redump, correct? Redump-based GDI files have a different gap sizes for CDDA and are incompatible with GDEMU. Games with more than 3 tracks (i.e. with CDDA) sourced from Redump will have problems on GDEMU.
 

megavolt85

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MetalliC

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REDUMP does not cut all tracks correctly, do not use these dumps
right, Redump.org's GD images have tracks as per CUE layout, and just use them in GDI, which is obviously wrong and cause problems here and there.
that's why they moved to a bit customised CUE format instead of GDI.
 

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