![]() ![]() Obviously, the reason the AX-HLE rewrite was prioritized over Zelda-HLE was the sheer number of games. Just as before, users were forced to use LLE audio in order to get good audio emulation, at the expense of performance. When Dolphin 4.0 released with New-AX-HLE as a core feature, it stuck out like a sore thumb that some of the most popular games on the consoles still had very lackluster HLE audio emulation. New-AX-HLE gave the greatest increase in audio accuracy and performance in the nearly twelve year history of the emulator, but all of the Zelda microcode games were completely unaffected. The "Zelda µcode”, named after its exclusive use in Nintendo-created titles, represents only a tiny portion of the total games Dolphin can play but those games are some of the most popular and interesting games on the GameCube and Wii. While over 99% of GameCube and Wii titles use the AX µcode, there are a small number of games that use a different µcode. The ability for users to use HLE audio for most games instead of LLE audio resulted in one of the greatest performance increases in Dolphin's history! Later in the year, the AX-HLE rewrite was expanded to Wii games in a second cleanup. While previously there was argument among developers that HLE audio bugs could be ignored because of the option for LLE, as tens of thousands of users finally experienced accurate audio for the first time it became apparent just how important HLE audio truly was. Thousands of bugs disappeared over night and stability increased greatly. This situation finally changed right after Dolphin 3.5 when delroth merged New-AX-HLE-GC, a rewrite of the most common microcode (µcode) for GameCube games, AX-GC. The problem with that option is performance: LLE audio is incredibly demanding, especially when the DSP is being strained by many sound effects. LLE audio worked so well, the developers were able to avoid the mess of HLE and more or less just tell users to dump a GameCube/Wii DSP-ROM and use that instead. So instead they pursued Low Level Emulation (LLE) to great success. Rewriting HLE audio was always a priority, but the daunting task to reverse engineer, implement, and test kept most developers away. The problems of HLE were systemic, deeply rooted problems within its design, and would require a complete rewrite in order to solve. Hundreds of games suffered from crashes associated to audio, and thousands had significant problems, with missing effects, incorrect volume, and random bursts of noise. But one area that stuck out like a sore thumb during this era was the quality of High Level Emulation (HLE) audio. The 3.5 release represented a shift in the emulator's focus, and as such, saw great improvements in terms of compatibility and accuracy over the previous release. In early 2013, Dolphin had began its first steps in a new focus on accurate emulation.
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