Low ESFM synth volume

[Torinde]

Question

@d-sphinx from dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging#3911 says:

When using new ESS sbtype the midi music (in-game) sounds very faint. About 4x times lower than normal OPL syth.

• set sbtype = ess and configure the ESS Technology ES1688, ES1788, ES1888 Enhanced FM Audio MIDI music driver in the game > - setup utility
• install and run any ESFM game (e.g. Heroes 2).
• very weak music... The digital effects sound fine. The problem is that the midi music exists but barely audible.

My guess that ESS init procedure resets FM volume after game starts to some very low settings (like -13dB or so).

A synthesizer drop of -13 dB is observed. This is independent of the game and its settings (as long as it is set to ES1688).

It seems he observes the same problem both in Staging and X.

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• I have searched and didn't find any similar question.

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[johnnovak]

It seems he observes the same problem both in Staging and X.

Yeah because I ported the code from X. I'm not gonna put work into this because it works well enough; just raise the OPL channel's volume. If this is an emulation bug and the original author fixes it (if...), then I'll port over the changes.