Hi all,

I just received my 2nd pin ever, a brand new 2005 Stern Sopranos. It was only recently unboxed and played. I am trying to figure out if the audio quality of the machine is what I should expect or if there is an issue. My concerns:

- There is a low white noise when the machine is idle.
- The audio sounds rolled of on the high end and muffled/very low end heavy/boomy. Everything just feels dull.
- The voices are also crunchy/distorted sounding.
- The S's and F's of the actors words are super muffled. More like 'SSHH' or 'FFHH' with the annunciation of those letters
- The setting to decrease the background music seems to do nothing. I've left it at default 1 then moved all the way to 15 and I cannot hear a difference in level.
- All speakers are producing sound but everything seems mono
- The speaker test (described below) doesn't follow what's described aka I can't figure out how to test different speakers the way it's described

The ROMs are stock CPU: 3.02, Display 3.00. Nothing in the 5.00 readme file leads me to believe any audio changes were made after 3.00.

I don't have another machine to compare it to besides my JP LE / SPIKE system. It's very clear sounding vs the Sopranos. It's difficult to gauge the difference if any from the youtube gameplay videos out there but I feel like the ones I've watched sound more "vibrant" than my machine.

Would someone familiar with Whitestar audio be able to evaluate/tell me if this is the expected audio quality out of the box aka if this is just how 2005 Stern machines sounded back then? Or does this not seem quite right & perhaps something is wrong? Please let me know if there are any steps or troubleshooting I can do or if there's anything on the board I should post pictures of.

Here's a short video from the Speaker test diagnostics. The manual states something about being able to test each speaker/different sine wavs but I don't see these options. All I can find is the options shown in this video. In fact I'm not even sure if this is outputting stereo or mono. Hopefully you can hear what I'm describing. Really appreciate it guys.

From the manual (In bold are the statements I don't understand/see in the SPKR diag menu):

"To initiate, from the DIAGNOSTICS MENU, select the "SPKR" Icon with either the Red "LEFT" or Green
"RIGHT" Buttons and press the Black "ENTER" Button. The BSMT 2000 Sound System produces
true digital stereo sound from Backbox & Cabinet Speakers or "Mono" on the Cabinet Speaker (when
used by itself). After selecting this Icon, select the "-" or "+" Mini-Icons and press the Black "ENTER" Button to
activate the first test. Repeat to visually see & hear all tests. Select the "RUN" Mini-Icon to activate the test
chosen without moving to the next test.
Note: During Sound Tests, the display shows the speaker identification and the corresponding sound(s). The
sound functions allow verification that both channels are functioning properly & that the speaker connections are
correct.

Connections to each of speakers are polarized and each must be connected appropriately for the best quality
sound. If one speaker has the positive and negative connections reversed with respect to the other one, bass
frequencies will not be produced properly and the overall sound quality will be poor. To test for proper speaker
phasing, use the sound test to cycle through the Backbox & Cabinet, and Backbox Sine (repeated) functions. If
the Cabinet Sine produces more volume and bass than the Left Sine, the speakers are connected properly. If it
produces the same or less, one speaker is connected improperly. To isolate and correct reversed speaker
connections, one of two methods may be used..."

I haven't seen any replies but I may have figured out that my machine is in fact sounding the way it was produced originally/supposed to. Upon downloading the original audio .zip from pinsound.org (http://pinsound-community.org/forum/index.php?/files/file/208-the_sopranos_original/), I've found that the original audio samples themselves just aren't very good at all. Listening to them individually on my PC, they have the same "issues" I described above / sound exactly the same PC vs. the machine. Sound technology in general was pretty decent back in 2005, so it seems odd that Stern settled for such poor audio for this game.

I will say I'm still looking for any confirmation if listening against that download is a valid test. If so, and if there were improvements to the sound post CPU v3.02 or any of the sound / voice ROMs, I'd be interested what options are available to improve. I don't see how buying a pinsound board would change anything besides make the already low quality sound samples stereo and those boards are crazy expensive. I'm not going to go replacing sounds that's for sure. I've done enough work to improve JP2 . For now I'll just enjoy this amazing f#@%$ing treasure of a machine as is! Please do educate me though if I'm missing something.

Thanks so much for the insight hawknole ! The white noise isn't as bad as I thought (I was mistaking most of that for the noise produced by the fluorescent lamp in the backbox). Given I've learned (adding to your point) that its simply poor sound files and the whitestar system causing what I'm hearing, I probably won't mess with it. I just find it bumming that Stern settled for sound files that didn't even come close to meeting the quality of the HBO series itself's sound quality at the time. Paying for a PinSound board to make poor audio stereo just doesn't seem worth the $.

With all that said, I still don't understand the manual's talk about individual speaker testing nor why the background music 1-15 setting seems to do nothing.

Thanks for all the help guys and sorry for the delay. I got that bulb fixed. Also, I don't think the noise floor is really that bad after all. I think all I'm still wrestling with is the quality of the sound files. They are just garbage. Also, I still don't notice any difference with that 1-15 setting nor can I figure out how to even get into the speaker polarity view/settings. I'm curious if anyone in the past upgraded/modded the Sound EPROM with better quality recordings? Haven't found anything yet. I do have the latest stock EPROMs Game and Disp. I purchased these from Marcos and installed them successfully.

EPROM U210 Game A5.00
ROM0 EPROM Disp. A5.00

The Sound and Voice EPROMs the machine came with don't seem to be the latest though. I'm having a hard time cross-referencing the release notes vs. how they are labeled on my machine. It looks like there were later Sound and Voice EPROMs created, but none of the release notes lead me to believe they swapped out or improved any sound/voice files aka (or I'm being blind).

Here's a link to their latest release notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gEn4DnoO_KVP9Qar_j--4O7BJHoXURKY/view?usp=sharing

I just don't see notes about improvement in quality or changing of actual sound files, so I wonder if it's worth even messing with these
This is what I have but I do see later Sound and Voice EPROMs were put out after some of these dates.

SOUND U7
$9B5A 04/19/05

VOICE U37
ROM 4 $ADCD 2/24/05

VOICE U36
ROM 3 $47A3 2/24/05

VOICE U21
ROM 2 $C14C 2/24/05

VOICE U17
ROM 1 $F01E 3/28/05

IMG_20200608_082806 (1) (resized).jpg

BUMP. Can anyone help?

Just to close this out for anyone who stumbles across this thread. I figured it out. The sound is as expected, just how it was at the time for whitestar systems. Also the various EPROMs I noted above are as up to date as needed. Anything after them simply added other language support. Therefore, in the end I only needed the latest 5.00 Game/CPU and Display ROMs to support the ColorDMD I bought.

Also, since then I have mediated some of the sound quality issues by routing the game's audio out to my external sound system via a mixer. I can now EQ the game basically. All of that is described in this thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/how-i-set-up-the-perfect-audio-experience-for-my-small-gameroom