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19. September, 2004    Version 1.9

- LDChen is currently working on a free psx emu for PDAs, 
  called FPSEce (check out www.fpsece.net for more infos),
  and of course one of his biggest concerns is speed.
  Therefore he improved the ADSR handling speed of the 
  P.E.Op.S. sound plugin... dunno if PC users will also
  note a speed difference, give it a try.

- LDChen also suggested to change some global variable 
  handling for improving the speed of his port, so Pete
  adjusted a lotta functions... hopefully it will help
  as well :)

- LDChen noticed that Crash Team Racing used a SPU IRQ
  address inside the decoded sound buffer area. Well, it
  seems that ePSXe has its own way to handle such IRQs, but
  other emus may need support from the spu plugin, so Pete
  added a new option called "Handle IRQs in decoded sound
  buffer areas". Suggestion: at least turn it on if you are
  not using ePSXe, or if you're encountering special problems,
  like a game locking up. There is no guarantee that the
  option will fix your problem (after all, CTR is the only
  known game with such IRQs right now), but who knows...

  

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25. April, 2004    Version 1.8

- Pete fixed finally (harhar) the frequency modulation 
  emulation. So certain sound effects (for example in
  some Sqaresoft games like Vagrant Stories, FF9, LoM) 
  will be much better.

- Pete added the ZiNc sound plugin interface. That means
  you can now use the P.E.Op.S. spu plugin with the ZiNc 
  emu (by renaming the plugin to "sound.znc" in Windows 
  or "libsoundznc.so" in Linux). 

  Please note that in Windows you will need a psx emu 
  like ePSXe to change the plugin settings (since you 
  cannot access the plugin's config window with the
  ZiNc Windows version... well, maybe some ZiNc frontend
  coder will take care about that). 

  Also note that the ZiNc sound plugin only emulates
  the psx spu which is used in some ZN games. So there
  will be a) no differences in the qsound music compared
  to my old sound.znc, and b) of course games which are
  using a different type of spu will still be silent.
 

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09. Juny, 2003    Version 1.7

- Xodnizel suggested to change the internal Reverb 
  handling, to get some better music in FF7. OK,
  done :)

- Eric adjusted his cubic interpolation algorithm. No
  big change, but more correct (prolly nobody will
  hear a difference anyway :)).

- Pete added a special compiler switch to disable the
  Linux pthread usage. If you are having troubles to use 
  the MesaGL gpu plugin and the P.E.Op.S. spu plugin
  together, you can now set the NOTHREADLIB switch
  in the Makefile, and compile your own plugin (simply
  type 'make').
  That will prevent seg faults on startup with RedHat/
  Mandrake distros, of course there is a small penalty:
  without the thread mode it is more likely to get small
  sound breaks, especially if your cd drive is having an
  hard time reading psx cds.


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05. April, 2003    Version 1.6

- Eric added another interpolation mode, called "cubic
  interplation". That one offers a better treble than the
  gaussian mode (imho), so give it a try.

- Xodnizel has coded a xmms audio plugin, based on the
  PCSX and P.E.Op.S. spu open sources. You can find his work
  here: http://xod.starmen.net/sexypsf/ 
  Doing this he found some apparent bugs in the spu plugin,
  and he was kind enough to inform me (Pete) about them:
  a small buffer overflow did happen when gaussian interpolation
  was used, prolly that's the reason for the distorted sounds
  some users reported.
  So I've decided to increase the interpolation helper buffer, that
  a) will fix the issues and b) it gives more room for even 
  better interpolation techniques in the future.
  Because of that change I had to clean up the save state loading,
  though... maybe some of your old save states will have no
  sound after loading, sorry. Of course easy to repair: play a bit 
  until the sound reappears, or save the game to a memory 
  card file, restart the game, and load that save instead.
  I've also fixed a small bug with save states, which could cause 
  crashes when the state was loaded with a different interpolation
  mode as it was saved before.

- Also please note (Linux users only): the newest RedHat 9 
  will come with a new thread library (Posix style). I don't know
  how it will affect the spu plugin (which is using the pthread
  library), but there are already known problems with the nVidia
  drivers or Wine, for example. So, if you are in doubt: feel free
  to compile your own plugin... the full sources can be found, as 
  always, on: http://sourceforge.net/projects/peops/
  The same applies to the ALSA port, some users (including me,
  ehehe) had trouble to run linuzappz's ALSA port, so prolly
  it would be best if you compile your own plugin version (didn't 
  help on my system, though ;))


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06. March, 2003    Version 1.5

- linuzappz added a 'mono' mode for better speed on slower 
  systems/soundcards. He also created a Linux ALSA port of the
  spu plugin, give it a try on your Linux box. Please note: the
  config files are still called "...PeopsOSS...", even if you are
  using the ALSA version.

- yokota created a patch to compile the Windows version with the
  free mingw compiler. It's included in the "mingw" subdirectory,
  if you are interested in compiling (and maybe improving? :)) the 
  Windows plugin without owning MS Visual C.

- kode54 made the biggest and most important changes in this release.
  He added a gaussian interpolation algorithm, which improves the
  sound quality largely. He also adjusted a few register writes, the
  ADSR handling and the internal sound flags, so be prepared for an
  higher compatibility as well... for example check out the frequency
  modulation effects in Vagrant Stories, the game never sounded better
  with the P.E.Op.S. spu... big cheers to kode54 :)

- Pete did nothing. Ahem. Well, he mixed it all together, added 
  linuzappz's mono mode to the Windows version, modified the
  Windows/Linux config dialogs (now you can choose between 3 
  different types of interpolation: none, simple or the new gaussian
  one), and re-adjusted some of kode54's adjustments to prevent 
  some games from breaking ;)


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06. February, 2003    Version 1.4

- All changes were done by Pete - but a special big 'thank
  you' goes to Neill Corlett for his psx reverb investigations.

- A sound recording feature has been added to the MSWindows
  plugin: if you activate that option in the spu config, an additional
  recording window will appear on spu startup. Using that window
  you can specify a WAV filename and start/stop the recording.
  The sound will get saved as a 44.1 khz 16 bit WAV stream,
  so you can use any media player for playback. But be aware that
  such files will grow quickly while the recording is active.

- The biggest spu improvement is a good emulation of the psx reverb
  effects - based on the reverb notes of Neill Corlett. I've added
  a new reverb config option: now you can choose between
  "no reverb" (fastest, but boring), "simple reverb" (my old fake 
  reverb mode) and "psx reverb" (the new mode, recommended).

- I've also added an easy up/downsampling interpolation, to improve
  the sound quality. This will produce somewhat smoother sounds...
  it's not like a real sampling or low-pass filter, but on the other 
  hand there should be no real speed impact as well.


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07. January, 2003    Version 1.3

- All changes were done by Pete: first a small crashing bug
  on plugin close has been fixed, when XA was enabled.

- The internal reverb handling has been improved. It's a bit 
  faster now, and even sounding better than before.

- Spu IRQs are slightly better handled (see FF8 intro mdec), 
  and also the frequency modulation and loop handling has
  been changed. Means better sound and compatibilty in some 
  games :)

- Biggest change: the ADSR volume envelope is now done 
  according to the timing notes of Neill Corlett (thanx to _Demo_
  for the hint). Neill's ADSR timings are sample-based, which 
  means a much better precision compared to my old millisecond-
  based ADSR functions. Result: very nice sound, but prolly also a 
  bit slower (I haven't noticed any slowdowns on my Athlon XP 2000+ 
  system, though ;))
  

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09. November, 2002    Version 1.2

- linuzappz replaced the "spuupdate" with the newer "spuasync"
  interface. That will improve some critical spu timings.
  Note: since the last available epsxe Linux version doesn't
  support "spuasync" yet, the Linux plugin port has both
  interface functions available.

- Pete fixed a small bug with Linux cfg reading, now the cfg
  file will be read even if it's not in the "cfg" subdirectory.

- Pete added an "additional reverb effects" option, which will
  make the overall sound somewhat fuller, but it will need
  more cpu power as well.


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16. May, 2002    Version 1.1

- First release of the P.E.Op.S spu plugins, same funcs
  and features as Pete's DSound/OSS spus version 1.15
  Check out https://sourceforge.net/projects/peops/ for future 
  releases.


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