Tony Hawk's Project 8 Soundtrack features disabled after update #20775

Game or games this happens in

ULUS-10197 - Tony Hawk's Project 8

What area of the game / PPSSPP

Tony Hawk's Project 8's Soundtrack feature has suddenly become completely disabled after working fine in a previous version.

• The audio output for the rest of the game works just as intended but no music or official soundtrack features will work at all from the very moment the game boots up.
• When trying to "Skip Track" or "Preview Track" in the sound options, nothing happens.
• The only remaining half-unaffected feature is that the pause menu will display what track is supposed to be playing, but nothing can be done to either make it play or change the track.
• Using the "Skip Track" menu function has no effect on the randomly displayed song in the pause menu. It will also never change what song is displayed no matter how long you wait.

I also want to explain some troubleshooting I have done:

• Removing all save files and replacing/re-verifying the .iso with a new one doesn't affect the bug
• Trying Tony Hawk's Project 8 rom builds v1.00 and v2.03 did not affect the bug
• Rendering with Direct 3D9, Direct 3D11, and OpenGL did not affect the bug (My system does not support Vulkan)
• I have gotten the issues fixed by reverting to the previous version I had on backup which was v1.15.4
  (I rarely use emulation due to multiple factors so sorry it's such an old build)

I am aware that ever since v1.15.4, changes were made to how Atrac and Atrac3+ were utilized by PPSSPP and I believe it is directly related to how those changes were implemented and how they interact with whatever strange methods Activision uses to encrypt their licensed music. A failure to use soundtrack features very well could be an anti-piracy measure being falsely triggered by the newer audio code.
(which works great by the way. SO MUCH audio crackling across multiple games has been fixed when testing default automatic settings with the newest build. Great Job!)

What should happen

• There should be music playing on the main menu and in-game.
• A pop-up menu should display that informs you what song is playing and what artist made it when the songs change.
• In the Settings menu under Sound Options, "Skip Track" and "Preview Track" should update the current track to something else alongside a pop-up menu displaying the new track information.

Logs

No response

Platform

Windows

Mobile device model or graphics card (GPU)

AMD Radeon R6 Graphics (491 MB)

PPSSPP version affected

1.19.3

Last working version

1.15.4 - May of 2023 was the last time this rom had no issues emulating soundtrack.

Graphics backend (3D API)

Direct3D 11

Checklist

• Test in the latest git build in case it's already fixed.
• Search for other reports of the same issue.
• Try resetting settings or older versions and include if the issue is related.
• Try without any cheats and without loading any save states.
• Include logs or screenshots of issue.