PinSound Plus issues

[Dinsdale]

Just installed PinSound plus today, was was incredibly easy. Very impressed.

However, getting some odd behaviour. I read Mr. T's guide (well, up to relevant point) and I'm having no luck.

I downloaded the pack from PinSound. I replaced some files with WAV files. I zip it, put it on on the root of my drive. I plug it in, turn game on, I get a nice calming music before lady says "Please wait. Performing audio conversion". Great. I understand this can take up to 30 mins, if not longer. My mix was 500mb-ish.

This happens twice, switching the calming music to another track... but then eventually says "There are no sound files on the USB flash drive".

When I take the USB out and look at it in Windows, I see the structure has changed, so it is doing something.


I even tried with the original, without any edits, dragged and dropped directly to the root but same thing.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[s000m]

Question:

Did you put the Mix together, plug it into the pinsound board, then unplug it and amended the mix?

If so, delete the .cache file and try again.

 

[Dinsdale]

Yup, tried all that. Formatted to FAT32, put .pspack format on root, our zip format on root, put them in audio folder, tried every combination.

Something is happening. It is a DE machine and I also have the DE power booster.

 

[cmrl9]

Where did you get the usb from?
Pinsound?

 

[Dinsdale]

Where did you get the usb from?
Pinsound?

Yes, went with their recommendation.

 

[cmrl9]

I found formatting usb first fat 32 and placing the zip file on the usb worked for me

The card has two usb sockets, one I had issues with when trying it the first time on my LOTR.

Have you tried the other usb slot?

 

[cmrl9]

I found formatting usb first fat 32 and placing the zip file on the usb worked for me

The card has two usb sockets, one I had issues with when trying it the first time on my LOTR.

Have you tried the other usb slot?

Also try different packs from pinsound themselves, start with the original sound as it's them usually who have done it .

I found some of the packs don't work, or they didn't with LOTR even though I download them from pinsound

 

[Dinsdale]

I found formatting usb first fat 32 and placing the zip file on the usb worked for me

The card has two usb sockets, one I had issues with when trying it the first time on my LOTR.

Have you tried the other usb slot?

I didn't know there was a second slot. I see it now. I'll try that.

 

[Dinsdale]

Nope. Same ****.

 

[Dinsdale]

I figured it out... when you go to https://www.pinsound.org/machine/wwf-royal-rumble/ and click on "Download", it gives you a .pspack file. This doesn't work.

If you go to the community, then search for it, you get WWF_Royal_Rumble_1994.zip - and that does work.

Terribly unclear and a bit pointless, but the original sound works. Going to test remixing myself and see how I get on.

 

[Pick Holder]

I just went to the site and downloaded the metal pack easily - it was in ZIP format.

From memory - the ALTSOUND files on visual pinball are the same files.

If I was you get a working pinsound - then take out the pen drive and edit it in your computer by replacing the same name files exactly. What I do is rename something for example:
music.wav to _music.wav
Then add the new file called music,wav

 

[Dinsdale]

Yes, the metal pack is in zip which made me click on that the original was also in a zip but not on the front page. There's two separate ways to download two separate files. The obvious one doesn't; the less obvious one does.

Sorted now anyway, although in any pack I can't find two pieces of music to replace.

 

[s000m]

I figured it out... when you go to https://www.pinsound.org/machine/wwf-royal-rumble/ and click on "Download", it gives you a .pspack file. This doesn't work.

If you go to the community, then search for it, you get WWF_Royal_Rumble_1994.zip - and that does work.

Terribly unclear and a bit pointless, but the original sound works. Going to test remixing myself and see how I get on.

Pspack is the new format, you need to be on the latest Pinsound plus firmware to read it.
.zip was the older format used and is still used on community downloads.

 

[Dinsdale]

Pspack is the new format, you need to be on the latest Pinsound plus firmware to read it.
.zip was the older format used and is still used on community downloads.

Thanks. That makes sense; but the first thing I did was update to the latest firmware. Wonder if that means it's still a bit buggy.

 

[MadNat]

I've been installing a Pinsound (plus) in my TZ recently. I had quite a few issues getting the sound files to load - got the calming music and no files found message. Tried formatting FAT32 as suggested here, and other formats.

Fortunately my IJ had a working pinsound in it, so followed @Pick Holder advice and checked that pen drive out on my windows laptop. In the IJ the pen drive was formatted with FAT16 - which has a max partition size of 2GB from memory (which is far from 100% reliable).

I don't have any 2GB pen drives, so created a 2GB partition on an 8GB pen drive, and formatted it FAT16. I used fdisk in windows to create the partition. For the test I just created a single partition - and left the remaining 6GB as unallocated.

With this new FAT16 in the USB port of the Pinsound Plus (there are 2 USB ports on pinsound plus - I tested in the lower one) - it recognised the new firmware file and the sound packs I'd copied (sound packs - one was zip, the other a pspack file). Pinsound Plus installed the firmware, and organised my sound files successfully (after quite a bit of time)... so seems to work fine on a FAT16 formatted drive.

Now that I have put the latest firmware installed, and I have a drive the Pinsound can read. Next I will test to see if FAT32 drives (and other formats) are accessible with the latest firmware (at the moment the latest version seemed to be from 24th Feb 2023 - pinsound-update-23021.psrom2)

I'll test what disk formats the latest firmware can read, and if it is still limited to small drive sizes, test to see if it can see multiple partitions on one pen drive. I'll also test to see if it can access sound files on both USB ports... because why not?

The documentation is a bit basic - but I guess if you get everything from Pinsound it probably just works.

 

[Dinsdale]

Good analysis. My issue turned out to be that the pspack format isn't supported, but zip is. The PinSound site gives you .pspack, but if you log in and go to the community; you get the correct .zip format. Weird.

New issue is a particular sound not playing, even on the original sound pack. One for the backlog to look into.

 

[MadNat]

I did manage to try a 8GB pendrive with 4 x 2GB partions in FAT16.
My pinsound plus couldnt see any files (although there was a sound pack file on each partition).
For me that's a fail.

I have managed to get a 16GB pendrive formatted as FAT32 to work. I realised that the drives that didnt work had a small EFI partition on the pendrive. If you remove that partition - or rather create a pendrive with a single FAT32 partition - it works fine.

 

[Kenny Taylor]

Does anyone know how to extract music from
the roms of say Dr Dude?

 

[MadNat]

I haven’t done it myself

Does anyone know how to extract music from
the roms of say Dr Dude?

this seems to be an interesting method

The Virtual Pinball Forums

Exactly what it says on the tin.

www.vpforums.org

Hope it’s useful

 

[replicas]

I've had the Dracula alternative sound in my machine for a while but just recently its lost the call outs all the speech has gone I'm only just getting the music.
Not to well up on this so any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Kenny Taylor]

I haven’t done it myself

this seems to be an interesting method

The Virtual Pinball Forums

Exactly what it says on the tin.

www.vpforums.org

Hope it’s useful

I take it, someone has already done the leg work
and extracted the data from these roms for VP pins.. so M1 tool seems to still be working..

 

[MadNat]

I take it, someone has already done the leg work
and extracted the data from these roms for VP pins.. so M1 tool seems to still be working..

I believe so @Kenny Taylor - let me know how you get on… looks like you’ll need a bit of patience!

 

[MadNat]

I've had the Dracula alternative sound in my machine for a while but just recently its lost the call outs all the speech has gone I'm only just getting the music.
Not to well up on this so any help would be much appreciated.

I would create a new pendrive with the Dracula sound set on it and have pinsound rebuild the files.

 

[replicas]

I would create a new pendrive with the Dracula sound set on it and have pinsound rebuild the files.

Could you please put that in layman's terms ? Just a step by step process please, thanks.
I take it you are saying 're download the file and 're install ?

 

[MadNat]

Could you please put that in layman's terms ? Just a step by step process please, thanks.
I take it you are saying 're download the file and 're install ?

Get a spare USB drive… pop it in your laptop/computer. Assume you’re running windows?

Following this tutorial to prepare your USB drive… make sure you select FAT32 instead of NTFS when formatting the drive.

One you have your clean USB copy the Dracula sound pack from Pinsound onto your new USB Drive. Pinsound file is here:

Dracula - PinSound

Discover and explore the available upgrades designed for Dracula

www.pinsound.org

There are a few versions - suggest Dracula Original to start with.

Pop the new USB into your machine, turn on and wait for it to tell you it’s finished organising the files.

Hope that helps

 

[replicas]

Thanks for that @MadNat much appreciated.
@JMP lets give this a try.

 

[MadNat]

Thanks for that @MadNat much appreciated.
@JMP lets give this a try.

Let me know how you get on

 

[replicas]

Let me know how you get on

Will do. Thanks.