Ppsspp: Cannot start when Windows audio on Bluetooth earbud

[vintotal]

What happens?

When the Windows default sound output device is a Bluetooth earbud (Motorola H730), PPSPP crashes when starting a game (in the case, Gensou Suikoden I&II).

What should happen?

The emulator should start the game.

What hardware, operating system, and PPSSPP version? On desktop, GPU matters for graphical issues.

Thinkpad Helix 20CG (Intel graphics 5300), Windows 8.1 PPSPP Gold v.1.8.0.
The problem is not present when using the integrated sound card.

[unknownbrackets]

Can you verify with the latest git build?

If you change the audio backend from WASAPI to DirectSound while not defaulted to Bluetooth, and then quit, switch to the Bluetooth device, and start PPSSPP again - does it crash? Also, if you start it while the Bluetooth device is not the default, but set it as default while PPSSPP is running - does that make it crash?

If it only happens when starting a game, that makes it sound like it crashes as soon as it tries to output sound. What if you highlight a recent game in the menu using the arrow keys on your keyboard? Some play background music while selected. If that doesn't crash, it'd be useful information.

-[Unknown]

[vintotal]

Here are the results with PPSPP 1.8.0 gold (is this different from « the latest GIT build »?):

Change default output from speaker to Bluetooth while runinng the game: crash

Start the game
with automatic sound output: crash
with wasapi sound output: crash
with DirectSoung output: working I will leave it like this.

Start the emulator with Wasapi sound output with Bluetooth as default also sometimes cause a « Critical » error. Please see attached file.

[unknownbrackets]

There's nothing different between gold and stable versions. The latest git build can be found on the download page, or here:

https://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/

It has about ~285 changes since v1.8.0. In many cases, these will fix bugs, improve performance, make more games and devices work, etc. In some cases, these changes may have introduced bugs. Git builds are like "beta" versions, but they are normally pretty stable.

Sounds like it's an issue with WASAPI (most likely "Auto" is selecting WASAPI.) Also, it's very interesting that you see that Critical error message. I'm not sure how that could happen, though.... hm.

-[Unknown]

[vintotal]

I downloaded the latest version from the link you provided and the consequence is the same as before (see screenshot). The first two attempts show a normal crash message, while the third attemps show the « Critical » message.

[hrydgard]

I'll look into this soon.

[hrydgard]

I experimented a bit with a pair of Bose Q35 and could not get it to crash.

[unknownbrackets]

Have any of those changes helped? Does the latest git build still crash?

-[Unknown]

[vintotal]

In my case, using the same Bluetooth earbud as before (as default output in Windows), I still have the same issue when Sound is set at automatic. Sometimes it crashes on game load, sometimes it crashes on PPSSPP load.

[LunaMoo]

It's a sound driver issue, unlikely to be fixed on the PPSSPP side, if you can install a different driver for those earbuds or for your motherboard sound chip(if they don't have their own), that's one thing to try.
By different drivers I don't necessarily mean newer, I had a system once in the past where latest audio drivers were more buggy than older one and was also crashing or glitching sound when using WASAPI.

[hrydgard]

Just merged a related fix that probably won't fix this, but you never know..

[vintotal]

It seems to be only on some devices and also to be Windows-Specific. Since all Windows version now have DirectSound and that using it instead of Wasapi works perfectly, I feel fine with the current situation. Perhaps it could simply be included in a help file or a readme that the faulty Bluetooth should not be set as the default output device when first starting the emulator: this way we can reach the sound option and set it to DirectSound.

[hrydgard]

Well, ideally I want things to work no matter what you have plugged in.... crashes on startup is not good.

[Anuskuss]

@hrydgard What about ditching WASAPI in favor of cubeb? IIRC it already uses WASAPI under the hood and most importantly, it's cross-platform.

[hrydgard]

@Anuskuss It would definitely be an option, but getting new dependencies working on all platform is a big job in PPSSPP. So yeah, can be done but the switch is not trivial.