Yoghoo wrote on 2026-06-04, 11:42:

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-04, 10:27:

I can try to adapt Nuked OPL3, but this will take a long time since it is not built for speed, but for precision. But I can test it whether the Pico 2 is fast enough for it.

Maybe take a look at https://github.com/tgies/Nuked-OPL3-fast. He's still optimizing it further but it runs on a Pico 2.

Thanks for sharing. I have tried it and it seems to be still a bit too slow. I have removed channels c and d (since only stereo is needed), but still it needs about 20 percent improvement. Please, can you show me it running on Pico 2? Not really sure whether I have coded something badly.

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-04, 15:20:

Yoghoo wrote on 2026-06-04, 11:42:

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-04, 10:27:

I can try to adapt Nuked OPL3, but this will take a long time since it is not built for speed, but for precision. But I can test it whether the Pico 2 is fast enough for it.

Maybe take a look at https://github.com/tgies/Nuked-OPL3-fast. He's still optimizing it further but it runs on a Pico 2.

Thanks for sharing. I have tried it and it seems to be still a bit too slow. I have removed channels c and d (since only stereo is needed), but still it needs about 20 percent improvement. Please, can you show me it running on Pico 2? Not really sure whether I have coded something badly.

I didn't try it but you can probably ask him on Discord (agovtman). There was a discussion about it on the PicoGUS Discord channel. They were using an overclocked Pico 2 btw (with 0 underruns etc).

Please forgive my ignorance, but seeing as these are now available for pre-order I wonder: what is Stereo-on-1?

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2026-06-04, 18:03:

Please forgive my ignorance, but seeing as these are now available for pre-order I wonder: what is Stereo-on-1?

Stereo-on-1 is a device supported in a few games (mostly built on top of ModObj sound library) that is similar to Covox Speech Thing, but it works in stereo (it has some channel-switching logic). It was more popular in MOD players (e.g. ModPlay Pro, Inertia Player). As far as I know, it has never been sold commercially, but multiple schematics were released for DIY construction.

Ah, it's not what I hoped it was. A handful of games support stereo FM only via dual-OPL2. Fagear's FMonster (WIP) includes this capability, and it logically is doable on any device with the requisite hardware plus address routing.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2026-06-05, 13:46:

Ah, it's not what I hoped it was. A handful of games support stereo FM only via dual-OPL2. Fagear's FMonster (WIP) includes this capability, and it logically is doable on any device with the requisite hardware plus address routing.

Yes, dual OPL2 was used on the original Sound Blaster Pro I think. The question is whether it has any advantage over emulating OPL3 (which is already working quite well and if we manage to make the modified Nuked OPL3 run on the picovox, would be almost perfect). In the worst case, the ADLiPT driver can support dual OPL2 via using some translation to OPL3LPT I suppose.

Seems like even optimized version of Nuked OPL3 is still not running fast enough. But! I was able to remove most of the features of fast Nuked OPL3 used for OPL3-specific tasks and I will (hopefully) be able to use the reduced version for pretty good OPL2 emulation (right now it seems like it supports properly even Wizardry VII sound effects). Sadly, at the cost of full OPL3 emulation.

So I have decided to try to implement the OPL2 mode using the reduced version of Nuked OPL3 fast and leave both OPL2 mode and OPL3 mode (as of now running on DBOPL). In the future, if Nuked OPL3 becomes efficient enough, I will replace DBOPL with it, but for now I feel like this is the best solution.

New version of PCVX.COM will be coming too since OPL2 and OPL3 modes will be separate (but if you cannot exchange your PCVX.COM for whatever reason, you can safely switch to MP3 for OPL3 mode, since MP3 is not implemented just yet).

When I will have final complete version (I hope pretty soon), I will let you know.

Great news everyone, seems like I was able to make the Nuked OPL2 lite running fast enough. It took me a couple of hours and it will definitely require several more to properly test it. But at least sound effects in Wizardry VII sound much better and I hope that the emulation is fast enough and not degraded by some of the speed optimizations (they all should keep the sound same).

I had no idea I was openimg such a can of worms mentionimg the wiz7 digital sounds issue. :$

I *am* happy to see an opl softsynth that's able to do the task though!

Fantastic!

In case you want to preview the library itself, feel free to check it out: https://github.com/jansakos/Nuked-OPL2-Lite-fast

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-07, 20:52:

In case you want to preview the library itself, feel free to check it out: https://github.com/jansakos/Nuked-OPL2-Lite-fast

There is nothing to preview (yet?) - the only changed files are LICENSE and README.md.
And in README.md you claim that Nuked OPL3 fast uses GPL, which is not true - it uses LGPL.

M-HT wrote on 2026-06-08, 08:46:

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-07, 20:52:

In case you want to preview the library itself, feel free to check it out: https://github.com/jansakos/Nuked-OPL2-Lite-fast

There is nothing to preview (yet?) - the only changed files are LICENSE and README.md.
And in README.md you claim that Nuked OPL3 fast uses GPL, which is not true - it uses LGPL.

Oh shoot, you are right in both cases (not really sure how I managed to make empty commit). Regarding the GPL, I got confused by the text at the top of the OPL2.C file (which mentions only GPL 2, not LGPL), but since the LICENCE files for both emulators are LGPL, I have changed the licence too. Thanks for report, everything should be fixed I hope.

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-04, 15:20:

Yoghoo wrote on 2026-06-04, 11:42:

jansakos wrote on 2026-06-04, 10:27:

I can try to adapt Nuked OPL3, but this will take a long time since it is not built for speed, but for precision. But I can test it whether the Pico 2 is fast enough for it.

Maybe take a look at https://github.com/tgies/Nuked-OPL3-fast. He's still optimizing it further but it runs on a Pico 2.

Thanks for sharing. I have tried it and it seems to be still a bit too slow. I have removed channels c and d (since only stereo is needed), but still it needs about 20 percent improvement. Please, can you show me it running on Pico 2? Not really sure whether I have coded something badly.

https://github.com/tgies/opl3-pico2-demo/

wierd_w wrote on 2026-06-01, 21:43:

Yeah, it's there, but more like what happens when you try to play this game in a dos window on 9x, with real hardware. :D […]
Show full quote

Yeah, it's there, but more like what happens when you try to play this game in a dos window on 9x, with real hardware. 😁

If you want to know what it should actually sound like, the game's audio files are essentially naked PCM, of the 8bit mono variety (specifically unsigned 8bit mono, no endianness, 11025 rate), with a small 8 byte header at the front. Stripping the header off, and loading them as raw PCM, you can mess with them easily.

edit:

Just used audacity's raw importer to "convert" a few for comparison.

The attachment ouch.mp3 is no longer available

The attachment bullfrog.mp3 is no longer available

The attachment drip.mp3 is no longer available

The attachment nightbird.mp3 is no longer available

Names given to describe the sounds, not what the files they came from were. Attribution: These come from Wizardry VII, and are the closest to direct rips as you can reasonably get.

"Ouch" gets its frequency manipulated to sound deeper for male characters, but is the same sound file.

For comparison, this is the current version using OPL2 mode (OPL3 sounds the same as before). It is not perfect, but it's much better I would say.

Cricket, cricket, cricket, bullfrog, cricket, ouch, bullfrog?

It's better for sure, but yeah. Still not quite there.

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 15:21:

Cricket, cricket, cricket, bullfrog, cricket, ouch, bullfrog?

It's better for sure, but yeah. Still not quite there.

It doesn't get any better actually. When I tested it with the original OPL3LPT, it sounds about the same. If the sounds are still not on par with native AdLib, then it is a problem of the redirection driver (or anything other LPT-related).

It's close enough that I know what's being played, and that's a huge leg up over other options, so I am very grateful for your time and attention.

A shame this wont get the attention of vsbhda maintainers, but then again, maybe I can do a local fork of that myself some time.

Thanks for looking into this.