A third update to MAME 0.112 is now available on the Latest Release page. The biggest change in this release is a significant change to the way sound is generated. The previous implementation allowed the OS-specific code to control the sound, which ended up having subtle impacts on the consistency of the emulation. For example, a user running with one sample rate might get different results from a user running at a different sample rate. As of this release, the OS-specific code is no longer in control of sound generation at all. Instead, the core emulator decides how much sound to generate and hands it over 50 times/second to the OS layer. As a result, this change impacts not only the internals of the sound system, but also requires us to change the way we stream sound in the Windows-specific code (and the SDL code will need to be updated as well).

A side-effect of this change is that it is now very important for the frame rate to be as accurate as possible. This means that the behavior of the code which throttles MAME down to the proper frame rate is very important. Thus, several changes to the way MAME throttles its speed have been implemented. Hopefully this will produce more regular frame rates and fewer sound glitches. As usual, report any problems to MAME Testers.

In addition to the sound changes, Derrick Renaud has made some changes to the way analog inputs are handled. This is all to the good and improves the accuracy of the controls, but may introduce a bit of confusion. Be sure to read the whatsnew.txt file and the updated windows.txt file to see how things work in the new world.

Finally, we have some nice additions to the Konami System 573 driver from smf, discrete sound in Amazing Maze thanks again to Derrick, and some nice Eolith driver improvements. All in all, a nice release, but not for the faint of heart if big changes make you nervous!