First and foremost,
what I'm about to say has nothing to do with the audio glitching when WarpSE is active and running ROBUST firmware. That has clearly been established, and Zane has written extensive thoughts about how he intends to proceed.
I will now provide more details about the "
stuttering audio" that is clearly heard at times when I played Spectrum Holobyte TETRIS opening must on the stock 8MHz Mac SE booted into System 7.1. As per the two earlier comments that spoke about possible
background processes, I ran the following tests:
TEST #1
1. I rebooted from my Kero's Mac Mods edition BlueSCSI v1 (mounted on the motherboard with
Kay's Type-A SCSIrider and using a proven good
16GB V30 Gigastone MicroSD card) into System 6.0.8.
2. I disabled MultiFinder, and I killed most but not all of the startup INITs. I then rebooted.
3. Since I wasn't recording this time, I set the speaker Volume to 7 so I could better hear the music.
4. I launched Tetris, and it played the opening music to the end
without a single stutter.
That test seems to prove that System 6.0.8 is okay, and to some extend my BlueSCSIv1 must also be OK too.
TEST #2
1. I used System Picker to boot my BSv1 into System 7.1, but this time I pressed Shift to
Disable Extensions.
2. Speaker volume remained set to 7 from the previous test.
3. I launched Tetris, and it played the opening music
with stutters, exactly like my prior audio recordings. (The stuttering only begins after the "ticker" text begins to flow left at the very bottom of the game screen.) This cannot be blamed on INITs or any known background processes not inherent to the OS.
TEST #3
1. I powered OFF and connected my fast
IBM DGHS 4.5GB SCSI spinning platter hard drive (mounted inside an HD20 enclosure, with recapped PSU), to the SE and booted into System 7.1, with Extensions OFF.
2. I launched Tetris, and it played the opening music
with stutters, exactly like TEST #2 and my prior audio recordings. This test seems to prove that my BSv1 is not at fault, and it even affects fast spinning platter hard drives too.
TEST CONCLUSIONS
You Mac SE owners running System 7.1 can now give
Spectrum Holobyte Tetris a test yourself to see if your findings match mine in terms of "audio stuttering," which
has nothing whatsoever to do with WarpSE. The stutters are NOT part of the WarpSE audio glitching problem. I merely noticed the stuttering in passing while doing the stock 8MHz test. Once others have chimed in saying it happens to them too while booted into System 7.1, even with Extensions off, then perhaps we can put the stuttering problem to rest and just say,
"if you want to hear Tetris music in all its glory, use System 6."
NOTE: All my stock SE 8MHz tests until today have been done by completely removing the WarpSE, leaving no room for anyone to speculate about which clock speed was being used. But today, I tried out Zane's earlier advice (page 21 of this thread) for the very first time, which allows you to
disable the WarpSE without removing it, which is a very nice feature to have when you have the back case screwed down. Here's what you must do:
1. Power OFF.
2. Press and hold the INTERRUPT SWITCH (switch closest to the back of the SE, NOT the triangle logo switch).
3. Power ON while still pressing INTERRUPT (not easy to do — press hard on INTERRUPT and don't let your finger slip).
4. There will be no bong and you will see vertical stripes on the CRT. Release the INTERRIPT SWITCH. You will then hear the Bong and stripes go away.
5. The SE will then do everything at the same slow 8MHz it normally does. I verified the clock speed in Speedometer 3. It gave me a CPU of about 1.09.
6. Even if you RESTART the Mac, it will remain in stock 8MHz Mode. Powering OFF and then ON again, without holding the INTERRUPT SWITCH will enable WarpSE again.
Lastly...
24-bit WAV files of the TETRIS MUSIC portion of my SONY D100 recordingscan be downloaded here:
drive.google.com
I did not edit them down to 5 seconds out of fear somebody else would later ask for the full recordings. Also, I did not adjust amplitude at all. These are the RAW audio recordings that only trim out any parts not related to TETRIS MUSIC. So you will need to Normalize the amplitude yourself in Audacity, TwistedWave, or your favorite audio editor. Otherwise the volume may be a bit too low during playback.
(Yes, I did boost the amplitude when making my video in FCPX to ensure the playback volume was largely the same for all recordings.)