FAQ - dgrfactory/spcplay GitHub Wiki

Sound stops suddenly while playing music, but indicator appears to be working.

SPCPLAY will stop playback to protect your ears and equipment in the event of unexpectedly loud volume.
If you want to disable this behavior, lower volume in settings, or edit SPCPLAY.INI.

EARSAFE  0 : 1
    ⬇️
EARSAFE  0 : 0

Window is too small on high-resolution display, I want to larger more.

You can increase window scale to 150% or 200% by editing SPCPLAY.INI.

SCALE    0 : 100
    ⬇️
SCALE    0 : 150
    or
SCALE    0 : 200

* If SCALE set to 150, the display may be slightly corrupted.

Text displayed in indicator is corrupt, I want to change to another font.

You can change a font by editing SPCPLAY.INI, please try specifying a name for an evenly spaced font.

FONTNAME 3 : 
    ⬇️
FONTNAME 3 : Lucida Console

Menu bar does not displayed in English.

Try editing SPCPLAY.INI to force it to display in English.

LANGUAGE 1 : 0
    ⬇️
LANGUAGE 1 : 2

Sound is broken when loud echoes are used, returns to normal when sound is reduced.

  1. Try set to 🟥OFF in the "Settings" - "Expansion Flags" - "SNES Echo/FIR Method".
  2. Try set to ✅ON in the "Settings" - "Expansion Flags" - "Disable FIR Filter".
  3. Try set to ✅ON in the "Settings" - "Expansion Flags" - "Disable Echo".

If this problem does not occur on the actual device, or if the song is from a game that made by a game manufacturer, it may be a bug in SPCPLAY.
I would appreciate it if you could report issues.

My homebrew SPC is not playing properly.

  1. Try set the output to the same as the actual device.
  2. Try set to 🟥OFF in the "Settings" - "Expansion Flags" - "SNES Echo/FIR Method".
    • If solves problem, the same problem may occur when playing a song on the actual device.
      Probably not enough memory capacity of the SPC700, not your PC.
    • Try reducing echo delay, changing echo address, or changing position of BRR data.

If this problem does not occur on the actual device, or if the song is from a game that made by a game manufacturer, it may be a bug in SPCPLAY.
I would appreciate it if you could report issues.

Why can other players play fine?

DSP of SNES is designed for 16-bits and 32kHz, and DSP data in processing is then stored in 64KB RAM.
However, some emulators support larger bits and sampling rates for high-quality sound reproduction.
To achieve this, sound buffer is allocated separately from 64KB APU RAM, where DSP data is stored.

SNESAPU similarly allocates memory for echo separate from the APU RAM.
SNESAPU mimics behavior of DSP overwriting to APU RAM just like the actual device when "SNES Echo/FIR Method" option is turned ✅ON.
However, the values ​​written to the APU RAM are not used for echo.

Numeric fonts changed after updating to v2.19.2 or later, I want to change it back.

[UPDATE] Since v2.21.0:
You can now select numeric font from the "Settings" - "Information Viewer" - "Numeric Font" menu.

Try editing SPCPLAY.INI to revert to the previous font.

BMPFONT  0 : 0
    ⬇️
BMPFONT  0 : 1
Value Font type
0 Font like analog (presents by OffGao6502)analog font
1 Font like 7-segment display7-segment font

I want to prevent the leading blank time from being adjusted when some channels are output.

When some channels are muted, leading blank time is not adjusted regardless of the setting.
You can disable blank time adjustment all time by editing SPCPLAY.INI.

WAVBLANK 0 : 500
    ⬇️
WAVBLANK 0 : -1

I scanned the package using VirusTotal, so some malwares were detected.

Malware may be detected in some vendors by VirusTotal, but this is likely a false-positive due to heuristic scanning.
For minor software developer, false positives are giving a headache.

[UPDATE] Since v2.21.0:
The compiler for building SPCPLAY.EXE has been changed since v2.20.1 from Borland Delphi to Free Pascal to prevent false positives from VirusTotal.
Now, false positives are almost not reported except SecureAge and Yomi Hunter (and rarely Bkav Pro).
Fortunately, SecureAge has a false positive reporting page, so I plan to report on the stable version, but please note that I will not on the BETA version.

Are there any other reliable alternatives?

If you are worried about using SPCPLAY, I recommend using other players what can use my improved SNESAPU.

My recommendation is "Kuroneko SPC".
It supports all SNESAPU proprietary extension options, and has been adapted to English recently.
Since the initial state is display in Japanese, please operate as follows to display in English:

  1. Download Kuroneko SPC (黒猫SPC), and extract the compressed file.
  2. Download Lang.ini from here (Right click -> Save link as...), and save to same folder as "KuronekoSPC.exe".
  3. Run KuronekoSPC.exe, and make sure the display is in English.

* Display in English is supported from version 220806 or later.

This player takes a little time to change the speed, seek, etc. while playing.

By default, the sound buffer is set to about 500ms.
Therefore, SPCPLAY will take 500ms for any configuration changes to actually be applied.

This behavior is effective in preventing sound loss when the PC is overloaded, but may be inconvenient for some purposes.
If you want faster response, change the sound buffer to a smaller size by editing SPCPLAY.INI.

BUFNUM   2 : 22
    ⬇️
BUFNUM   2 : 4

* If the number is too small, sound will be cut off. If you are concerned about sound skipping, increase this value gradually.
* Do not set this 3 or below. The system may become unstable.

Modern computers are so powerful that prioritizing latency is not a problem in most cases.
The following settings render at about 60Hz and provides balanced latency:

BUFNUM   2 : 8
BUFTIME  2 : 17

I want to create 8 .wav files easily, one for each channel.

[UPDATE] Since v2.21.0:
To create multiple .wav files at once operation, try using the command-line option.
For example, by creating a .bat file with the following content and running it, you can create output-1 ~ 8.wav from input.spc file.

start spcplay.exe
timeout 1
FOR %%I IN (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8) DO start /wait spcplay.exe -wav -s %%I -o output-%%I.wav input.spc

** The method using SPCCMD.EXE is deprecated, please update SPCPLAY.EXE to v2.21.0 or newer and use the command-line method of SPCPLAY instead. **

I want to display in dark theme.

Since v2.20.3:
Try editing SPCPLAY.INI to change theme.

THEME    0 : 0
    ⬇️
THEME    0 : 1

SNES SPC700 Player - Dark Theme

* Dark theme can be enabled on Windows 10/11 (22H2 or later). Other operating systems or versions may work, but are not confirmed to work.
* Uses some non-public APIs in Windows to achieve the dark theme. If SPCPLAY cannot start after changing, please revert THEME value.

What is the left number of the colon in each item in SPCPLAY.INI?

THEME    0 : 0
        ⬆️

This number is the version for each item.
If the fix makes the item's numeric value incompatible, this number will be incremented.
If the version changes, the right value of the colon reverts to the default value.