Dragon: Bruce Lee volume?

[MasterMotorola]

I'm wondering if there is a way to boost the volume on the music/sound effects or is this game just quieter than others?

 

- Steve

[Punisher5.0]

The Jaguar stock has pretty weak sound. Here is a good tip that I got from Gunstar:

 

If you have a Catbox you can hook up the sound through the headphone jack to your reciever or TV (you can find the cable at Radio Shack). Then turn the volume knob all the way up on the Catbox. It makes a huge difference.

[Gunstar]

The Jaguar stock has pretty weak sound. Here is a good tip that I got from Gunstar:

 

If you have a Catbox you can hook up the sound through the headphone jack to your reciever or TV (you can find the cable at Radio Shack). Then turn the volume knob all the way up on the Catbox. It makes a huge difference.

 

The headphone jack available at B&C or the Scatbox may improve the sound quality too, but I've never tried either so I can't say for sure, it depends if they have a pre-amp like the Catbox. I no longer have a catbox though, but I have a surround sound system and a pre-amp I have the stock Jag/cable plugged into now, and that also makes a huge difference. If your just using the TV speaker(s) for gaming, that's your main problem, hook the Jag up to a stereo amplifier, though the Catbox pre-amp is still the best way; I still have to turn the volume up a bit on my amp if I change from another system to the Jag and vice-versa. But just using the TV sound or even some self-amplified PC speakers is bad, as far as sound quality goes, though even PC speakers will be an improvement over the TV speaker(s). Some Jag games are just at a lower volume for some reason than others, I figure it must be format, e.g. redbook or FM synthesis, etc.

[MasterMotorola]

All of my other games have about the same volume but only the Dragon: TBLS is much lower. In order to enjoy the game, I have to turn up the television volume which adds a bit of white noise.

 

I'll check into the Catbox though. Thanks.

 

- Steve

[Gunstar]

You're only place(s) to get a Catbox these days is to watch for them on E-bay or other onlike auction houses (Bidiots, Yahho!, etc.) It's expensive too. Dragon: BL volume is lower with any copy and any Jaguar, and you might notice a couple of other games like this too, but not as badly. It really depends on the quality of the audio format,compression, etc. they used for the game, there is only so much memory in the cart and they may have opted for lesser quality sound to save memory. But overall, the Jaguar's sound anperage/ouput level coming out of the rear connector is not as powerful as most other consoles for some reason, the Catbox's headphone jack solves this, but hooking it into a good soundsystem is really all that's needed, so you have to turn it up a bit more for the Jaguar, so what? The end result is still quality sound do to the amplification.

[Gunstar]

Another trick is if you have an older stereo/amplifier/reciever that has PHONO inputs, plug the Jaguar in through it, as turntables traditionally had very low amperage output so PHONO inputs always had pre-amps built in before going to the main amplifier circuit.

[K3V]

Also make sure the in-game volume is turned all the way up. You can do this by pausing the game, pressing A for Music or B for Sound effects. Move left and right to adjust the volume.

 

Sounds like that could be the problem since you're only having trouble with this one game.

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

I'm wondering if there is a way to boost the volume on the music/sound effects or is this game just quieter than others?

 

The volume of the sound in games is determined normally by the

algorithm used to generate it. Volume isn't as simple as one might

imagine. For example, even though your TV volume is constant,

when the commercial breaks start, you may have to turn down the

volume, rather than scare your cat and let the neighbours hear too!

 

The Jaguar has no volume setting as such, it is controlled by the

software. If the programmer just outputs the same simple sample

(like a .WAV file) to both stereo output of the speaker, then this

will be very loud. However, he/she may decide to have 3 channels,

a left, a right, and a centre channel. The centre might have music

and the left and right, sound effects. So now if he outputs the top

volume to left and right and middle, the volume will exceed the

maximum allowed, and you would get distortion effects instead.

 

Technically mixing sound is done by addition - adding the parts

of the sample together, so if range is 0-9, 8+8 would not work!

So, to make it work, each sound would be maximum 5, but if

only one sound is playing, each sound is only half as loud as

it could be, if it was the only sound which could be playing at

any one time. If you have 5 channels, each is only 20% as

loud as it could be... so by default, all the sound is very quiet!

The sample is the same, but each is divided by "n" channels!

 

Of course, on Jaguar, it's got 16-bit sound, (not to be confused

with the 32-bit chip, Jerry, which generates the sound - the 16

bit sound indicates the range of the "detail" of the sound, the

range isn't 0-9, it's 0-65535 in theory, mostly 15-bits are used.

If ever the sum of the channels is out of range, crackle results!

 

There are techniques to handle these situations, but with such

a simple solution as I've described, perhaps used in Dragon,

then of course by default, volume will be quiet. Thus, as with

the TV adverts, the same TV volume can give different results!

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

Yes, i am one of those lazy programmers too!

When i wrote my first 4-channel-sound-engine i just

computed:

 

ChannelValue1 + ChannelValue2 + ChannelValue3 + ChannelValue4

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4

 

(Sum of all values divided by the number of channels)

 

which might be ok if you really use all four channels, but if only you

use only one the "explosion" will sound like a honey-bee

 

 

Regards

Matthias

[Tyrant]

Of course' date=' on Jaguar, it's got 16-bit sound, (not to be confused with the 32-bit chip, Jerry, which generates the sound - [/quote']

...or the 16 bit data bus found on Jerry.