MAME 0278 - strong build with a new audio system

Just a brief note on the latest version 0278 of MAME: As advertised in the Release Notes, it comes with a new sound infrastructure that provides for very nice tweaking possibilities. Performance-wise, the latest ARM64 build also shines on my Mac.

As soon as you enter the MAME menu with TAB, you see the new options called "Audio Mixer" and "Audio Effects"

Audio Mixer: Handy for all users with more complicated audio signal chains. You can also assign multiple signal chains, if I understand correctly.

Audio Effects: That's very nice, and MAME-typical very much to the very detail. Tuning your audio here provides quite endless tweaking possibilities.

If you are a headphone player like me, try this: Activate Reverb under "Default", switch to the "Very Large Room Bright" setting and put the Resampler on HQ. Suddenly your game sound feels like in a larger Arcade hall! Just a matter of 5 minutes trying, gives you an immersive experience.

Very well done, MAME team!

And yes: After updating your Retroarch MAME (current) core to the latest version, this option is also available in RetroArch.

Quite vast possibilities here, already the Reverb option is a blast for me.

Last comment on performance: In this latest version 0278, I again see significant improvements on more complicated games, in particular games that need a dynamic recompiler (both OpenGL and Metal backend). Kudos to the MAME team also in this regard, such a strong build!

As always, happy gaming!