CNA-VGAP-033: The three user-reported audio release blockers (high pitch, missing files, distortion) have never been compared against the original game

CNA snapshot 009d40f5 · Known Issues › Verification gaps · source links pinned to 009d40f5

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Evidence basis: source-verified at the pinned commit; tests exist (not executed for this page). Claims on this page were checked by reading the CNA source at commit 009d40f5; unless a sentence says otherwise, nothing here was built or executed. Nothing on this page was executed unless the Evidence section says so.

plans/plan_audio.md keeps its three user-reported release blockers unchecked; one hypothesis class was ruled out offline, but no capture of the affected game under XNA and CNA exists.

Identifier: CNA-VGAP-033
Category: Verification gap
Subsystem: Testing & evidence
Status: Open
Verified against: CNA 009d40f5 (009d40f5dd085c4e674d3479675fac84b12b3e0a)
Evidence basis: Source-verified: read at TARGET, not executed
Tests touching this area: Yes: see Current tests
Affected contract: Audio playback rate, pitch and loading fidelity for real XNA games

Expected behaviour

plan_audio.md allows the three boxes to be checked only “after the exact game/assets have matched XNA/CNA captures, a proven root cause, regression tests, and before/after evidence”.

Actual behaviour at TARGET

All three ("High-pitched sound effects reported", "Some audio files appear missing or fail to load", "Gameplay audio sounds distorted or sped up") are unchecked, and every AUD-01 row that would capture the affected game under XNA and CNA is unchecked. The 2026-07-17 progress note records an offline harness that ruled out SDL3_mixer's resampler for correctly declared rates and named the remaining suspects as a wrong declared rate reaching SoundEffect or the XNB reader, or a pitch, RPC or Doppler contributor applied twice. Since that note the plan has closed AUD-06 (XNB SoundEffect decoding, 25 of 25) and most of AUD-05 (raw SoundEffect format contracts, 28 of 30), and AUD-09-009 corrected how the global and emitter Doppler scales are combined (2026-09-05, with SAMPLE-059 as the end-to-end fixtures). None of that closes a box, because no affected game or assets have been captured, so no root cause is tied to the reports.

Source locations

plans/plan_audio.md — User-reported release blockers and the 2026-07-17 progress note
modules/audio/tests/Microsoft/Xna/Framework/Audio/OfflineAudioRendererTests.cpp — resampler-frequency tests that ruled out one hypothesis

Evidence

Checked by reading at 009d40f5; not executed.

Independent re-verification: Checked by reading at 009d40f5; not executed. The progress note itself is dated 2026-07-17 and was not updated after the later closures.

Focused reproduction

No focused reproduction is known. Nothing has been invented here; the evidence above is what exists.

Current tests

OfflineAudioRendererTests.cpp measures frequency preservation through the mixer.

Regression test

A differential capture of the reporting game under XNA and CNA, then a regression test for the found cause.

Blast radius

Unknown; the reports concern specific games and could involve SoundEffect, XACT or media paths.

Workaround

No workaround is known.

The same subject is explained at several altitudes. These are the neighbouring pages at each one.

User guide: Audio: overview
Internals: Audio engine internals: the playback path
Deep dives: Sound effects and streaming: dynamic instances
Known issues: Verification gap index