Troubleshooting RetroArch Audio Skew Issues

What is RetroArch Audio Skew?

RetrArch includes a setting called audio_max_timing_skew. The audio timing skew feature is helps RetroArch know when to resample the audio when it is making adjustments like resampling NTSC console games that display at rates like 60.0988Hz to sync on displays that run at 60.0Hz.

Issues with Audio Skew in mame2003

In certain cases, mame2003 emulates games that always trigger the audio skew because of their native video refresh rates. With default settings, RetroArch 'resamples' both the audio and the video to run at true 60 Hz.

There are only two general approaches for games which need to be 'resampled' for 60 Hz environments, and both have drawbacks:

1. You "speed up" the emulation in order to have enough frames to reach 60 Hz, meaning the audio is "pitched higher" and the gameplay is faster.
2. You keep the emulation running at the original speed, with the original audio pitch but there will be video issues like judder from held video frames. With vsync disabled this means that the image does not tear, and with vsync enabled this means that RetroArch will occasionally hold a frame for the time of 2 frames in order to keep at 60 Hz.

On one hand, audio skew is part of a very useful system that allows the video emulation to work smoothly for those titles on the wide range of video hardware that is supported by RetroArch. On the other hand, it results in changes to audio that many users find inaccurate or distracting.

Games with known Audio Skew issues

If the game you are playing is listed below, it is known to have issues with the default audio_max_timing_skew setting of 0.05. For those games you can create a game-specific configuration that lowers the audio_max_timing_skew to 0.02 but be aware that you may have less polished video emulation unless your system's native refresh rate is similar to the native refresh rate of the original emulated game.