Dolphin Emulator’s Release 2506 is a big step forward for GameCube and Wii emulation. The audio and visuals have been improved, and you can finally play games with Wii Speak without needing the Wii Speak accessory.
Before now, you couldn’t play games that used the Wii Speak feature unless you had the Wii Speak accessory. This was tough because it has been discontinued for years, and you have to rely on used product listings. The new software implementation will work with regular devices with a microphone when using the Dolphin emulator. The update also adds support for PlayStation 3 Rock Band guitars, letting them work with compatible Wii games by making them appear as Wii controllers.
The new Granule Synthesis Audio System cuts down on audio delay during slowdowns. This eliminates the old problem where users had to choose between high-latency audio stretching or annoying popping sounds when performance dipped. This new system fills in audio gaps by repeating the last sound sample, hiding small stutters without adding extra delay. Full audio stretching isn’t included yet, but it’s planned for future updates.
Along with the audio upgrades, Release 2506 brings better frame pacing, making gameplay smoother in more games. On very powerful systems, some games can even run faster than 60 FPS, though this only works with a few titles and mostly excludes Nintendo-made games. Nintendo Wii games weren’t really made to hit this number, so having it at all is a huge advancement in Dolphin emulation.
Beyond audio and frame rate fixes, Release 2506 solves several important issues. It fixed problems from Release 2503, including wrong version numbers in the macOS build, broken Game Boy Advance connectivity in certain GameCube games, and crashes on older macOS versions. After that, the team briefly used an “a” suffix for development builds, but this was later removed to avoid confusion.
The minimum supported operating systems have also been updated. Windows 10 users now need version 1903 or newer, and macOS users must have at least macOS 11 Big Sur. These changes are necessary to support newer programming tools and allow future improvements.
The emulator now correctly handles game-requested anisotropic filtering, which makes textures look more accurate by matching how the original console processed this demanding effect. Before, Dolphin applied anisotropic filtering globally, either turning it on or off for everything, ignoring what the game actually wanted. Now, with the default texture setting, Dolphin follows the game’s own instructions for anisotropic filtering.
If you have been waiting for your favorite game to get supported, now is your time. A major achievement of this release is full compatibility with the entire Wii game library. The last incompatible game, The Daring Game for Girls, was fixed by finding and patching a hidden race condition bug in its audio engine.
Sure, not many people will play The Daring Game for Girls, but the point is to make sure every game is compatible, regardless of its popularity. This is a big achievement and means that the Dolphin Emulator is basically a Wii at this point.
Source: Dolphin