The Official Emulation Audio Thread
 

What the heck. I figured it was time to revive this thread from before the crash, and since no one has made a replacement thread yet and since so many people still don't know....

Video games which play their music via a console's synthesizer can be stored in an emulation audio format. Think of these files as MIDI files playing back from a custom sound card. Currently, most emulation formats for these synthesized, or sequenced, songs, do so quite accurately, to a point where it may not be feasible (in consideration to bandwidth) to download a high-quality MP3 or lossless rip of a game's soundtrack if you can download the emulated songs for far less space.

I'm just going to list the major formats, the "best" source for getting files, and the "best" players. (Note: If I screwed up by listing something which isn't "best", or if you have something better, feel free to tell me so.)

All-in-one Emulated Music Player for Windows: http://www.chipamp.org/
If you don't want to manage a plugin for each console, this is for you.


Recommended Formats and Sources:
NSFe (for NES games) [Also See Below: NSF]
Music:
Slick Productions
Player:
NotSoFatso (Winamp plugin)
foo_gep (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac)

GBS (for Game Boy (Color) games)
Music:
Zophar's GBS Archive
kingshriek's rip page
Drag's Site
Player:
NEZPlug (Winamp plugin)
Meridian Advance (stand-alone program)
Audio Overload (Mac)

SPC (for SNES games)
Music:
SNESMusic v2
Player:
SNESAmp (Winamp and XMPlay plugin)
foo_gep (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac)

VGM (for Genesis/Mega Drive/Master System/Game Gear games)
Music:
Project 2612
SMS Power VGM Archive
Player:
in_vgm (Winamp and XMPlay plugin)
foo_gep (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac)

USF (for Nintendo 64 games)
Music:
USF Central
Player:
64th Note (Winamp plugin)

GSF (for Game Boy Advance games)
Music:
GSF Central
Player:
Highly Advanced (Winamp plugin)

PSF/PSF2 (for PlayStation/PS2 games)
Music:
Oddigy's PSF Archive
CaitSith2's PSF Mirror
plonk420's Pad
Lawrence Lin's PSF Mirror
Zophar's PSF Archive
Player:
Highly Experimental (Winamp plugin)
foo_psf (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac) (only supports PSF, not PSF2)

SID (for Commodore 64 games)
Music:
The High Voltage SID Collection (massive archive of SIDs)
Lemon (allows search and individual downloads of SIDS in the HVSC)
Player:
foo_sid (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
SIDPLAY (Mac)

HES (for TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games)
Music:
Zophar's HES Archive
kingshriek's rip page
HES Music Archive
Player:
NEZPlug (Winamp plugin)
foo_gep (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac)

Not Recommended / Outdated Formats:
NSF (for NES games)
The NSF format is slowly being replaced by the NSFe format, since NSFe supports tags and times which NSF lacks. (see above) However, since there are still tons of NSF's which haven't been expanded into NSFe's, detailed links are listed.
Music:
Zophar's NSF Archive
kingshriek's rip page
Player:
NotSoFatso (Winamp plugin)
NEZPlug (Winamp plugin)
foo_gep (Foobar2000 0.9 plugin)
Audio Overload (Mac)

GYM (for Genesis games): The GYM format is infamously inaccurate in its reproduction of instrumentation. It is currently being replaced by the VGM format. (see above)



For the latest news on the emulated music community based on the PSF format (including USF and GSF), check out PSF Rippers at Yahoo! Groups. For anything else, just comment here.

Hmm, I talked briefly with Colonel Skills about this thread a while back, and how the thread before the crash was awesome, but I never did anything about it. :\

First off, there's a lack of Mac players in that list. Audio Overload will play all those formats except USF and PSF2 (and it doesn't play PSFs very well). We also have PSFPlay, which might be a little better, but hasn't been updated in ages.

I know you want to list the "best" sites, but Zophar is never updated, so here are a few places that actually DO get new soundtracks everyone once in a while, but don't have the same collection that Zophar does. Do with them what you will:

NSF
Music: kingshriek's rip page

NSFe (extended NSF format allowing more information)
Music: Slick Productions
Players: NotSo Fatso (WinAmp plugin), Audio Overload (Mac)

GBS
Music: kingshriek's rip page

VGM is also the format for Sega Master System/Game Gear soundtracks. So,

VGM
Music: SMS Power

The same players should work with SMS/GG VGMs too (although I might be mistaken about the Windows side).

And some additions for you to consider. I can't offer Windows counterparts to the programs, though. :(

SID (for Commodore 64 games)
Music: The High Voltage SID Collection (massive archive of SIDs), Lemon (allows search and individual downloads of SIDS in the HVSC)
Player: SIDPLAY (Mac)

HES (for TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine games)
Music: Zophar's HES Archive, kingshriek's rip page, HES Music Archive
Player: Audio Overload (Mac)

how about gamecube emulation sound? is it available?

There's no emulated format, but the sound comes in different streamed formats: ADP, DSP, etc. It's possible to play these files with in_cube. I've never used it (there's no Mac version), so I don't know whether it also extracts the audio files from a Gamecube ISO or if you have to use another program to do that.

There's been some talk of making a sequenced format, but nothing concrete is planned, and there hasn't really been any substantial progress on the matter. There's also been talk of creating a container format for the GameCube streamed formats for tagging and timing purposes, but I don't believe that's being worked on either.

And yeah, I know Zophar is never updated, which is why I didn't list it when I had better sources. I'll go over the links I don't already have/know and modify the first post as needed.

for NES stuff, i'd stick with NSF. sure, NSFe is useful, but NSFs are more plentiful for now.

also, nsfplug is probably one of the better-sounding nsf plugins right now, and it has a keyboard view for playback!

I'm just saying that if someone is just starting, they may as well go with NSFe from the beginning. I left the NSF links there though, since I noticed that lots of great albums don't have tag and time information added yet (like Dragon Quest 2 and 3). Also, unless I'm mistaken, they DO play back the same way, right?

Can anyone tell me if Audio Overload is actually free(beer)/Free(speech)/OSS, or if Bannister pulled more of his trademark GPL-raping bullshit with it (see Emulator Enhancer)? I'm away from my Mac right now. Thanks.

Still free as in beer, as far as I know.

Audio Overload used to be free several years ago. Did he ever update that POS, or is it still running on that hideously outdated SNES9x core?

Also, more SID options exist for Windows than just Foobar. There's SIDplay2, which unfortunately only comes in standalone player form. There's also a new Winamp plugin, though I haven't tried it out myself.

I wish someone would come up with an alternative to just logging writes to the sound processor for Genesis music. It is a really crappy way of dumping music from games, since you can't loop anything and you still get stuck with the game sound effects.

AdLib: (An old PC sound board, many different formats for it.)
Player: AdPlug

Some tunes:
http://adlib.superfighter.com/

edit: And here's a good amount of AdLib tunes

---

Amiga: (Various music formats.)
Player: Deliplayer for windows users and UADE for UNIX/Linux users.

Hell of a lot of tunes:
http://www.exotica.org.uk

Sticky?

Yeah, would be nice if some mod or admin would sticky this thread.

By the way, this is the SID player I use.
sidplay2/w, it is standalone player but I like it more than some winamp/foobar plugin.

The USF Central link has changed and needs to be updated with this link here.

http://c9.servage.net/~sc19031-ZCPG/usf/

This site has a few GBS files, including Game & Watch Gallery 1-3.

http://drag.wootest.net/gbs/

HCS has finally found a permanent home. Updated site link.

http://hcs64.com/usf/

:edgarrock:

Is there a site that currently hosts the Gamecube emulation files, or at

least links to them? I've seen a couple so far that link to torrent sites.

I wish I had known about that site a few months ago. I was looking everywhere for rips of Kid Icarus (GB), Kirby's Block Ball, and Pokemon G/S/C. Ended up having to record the music myself.
At least now I can get the tracks I missed/couldn't record without sound effects.

Long-needed update to the first post.

Since nobody called me on it, I'm guessing few other people are aware. The VGM format really is a proper replacement for the old GYM format. I was pleasantly surprised. It's not just logging outputs - well it IS, but the format chains them together in a proper loop. Optimization makes the files a hell of a lot smaller than GYMs, too. The plugin's sound emulation has room for improvement, but that's forgiveable since it's relatively new.

I agree...recently I decided to check out the whole VGM craze and d/led the Earthworm Jim 2 set. The music goes at the correct speed in VGM, while it's sped up in the GYM version. Seriously, Lorenzen's Soil is supposed to be a slow steady beat, not something rushed. :D Yeah, I've gotta go with VGM replacing GYM.

Project 2612 has quality standards too, which is greatly appreciated. I remember getting the GYM pack of Phantasy Star 2, and finding footstep noises at the start of every track - the ripper apparently had no idea the game even had a sound test.

hcs64.com/bonus

The ADP, ADX, AFC, DSP, and PCM folders contain GC rips. ADX contains other stuff as well (PS2, DC, XBox).

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/loveemu/20060114

Anyone can explain to me what's this all about ? ;_;

...so... does this help? *_*;

I'm not sure how long it's been live, but the chipamp site is up now.

http://www.chipamp.org/

Obviously a nice all in one solution for people who are tired of managing so many plugins all the time.

That's pretty awesome. And even with the best SNES and NES plug-ins chosen (SNESAmp and NotSo Fatso! respectively).

neothe0ne, hope you don't mind but I copied your main post onto my forum here:

http://www.vgmemporium.com/smf/index.php?topic=346.0

I edited it a bit to make it cleaner, and added an FNAQ section.

I don't mind, although I probably should bold the category names or something like you did.

Also: GameCube audio formats are not exactly emulated audio.. formats like ADX, DSP, and such are basically lossy streamed data compressed like ADPCM waves. Xbox has its own ADPCM Wave format which requires a custom codec for playback as well. I would point out the difference on your site. (We're going to ignore the fact that many people store PS2 ADPCM streams in the PSF2 format.)

For arcadegame music i can recommend M1:

http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/
http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/m1077u3b-win32.zip(newest realease)

And it should be used with BridgeM1 to make it really userfriendly:

http://www.e2j.net/
http://www.e2j.net/files/BridgeM1_060a2.zip (newest realease)

I just tried going to Slick Productions for some NSFe files, and it seems they are no longer located at http://slick.panicus.org/nsfe.php as linked in the first post. A quick google search reveals http://slickproductions.org/nsfe.php is where the site is now.

Hey guys, just a quick question. Am I the only one getting my computer CPU at 100% when listening to GSF ?

Depends on the speed of the CPU. For GSF (like USF and many pre-PSF rip formats) the whole system needs to be emulated since it doesn't have any dedicated sound hardware which could be solely emulated to save processing power (or something like that which prevents optimisations...).

I wouldn't shoehorn NSF as a non-recommended format. In fact, I don't use NSFEs just because the very few plugins that support this format have much lower sound quality than, say, NSFPlug.

thanks for these links..this really is helpful

thanks!!

the best music is the one from super nes, everytime i have to format my computer the first thing I do is install snes_amp and go to zophar's domain to download donkey kong country 1, 2, 3, chrono trigger, illussion of time, etc... :D

I agree. I wouldn't recommend the NSFe format as it is right now. NSFPlug is a vastly superior plugin for NES, aside from the small selection of NSFe's, I just find that NotSoFatso sounds pretty bad. Perhaps it can sound better if you tweak the settings or something, but why bother when NSFPlug sounds perfect right away? It even detects loops and silences and auto-skips to the next track, so I don't have issues with the lack of track times either.

More importantly though, here's 2SF--DS music format. I guess it only works for music made for the Nitro sound system, but I'm not actually 100% sure on that one... Anyway, it's pretty cool. They seem to have a policy where they upload music 6 months after the game was released, which coincides nicely with the newly-found waiting time period for SotW...

2SF files archive
in_cube plugin that plays them.

Talking about SNES music, i remember a program to convert SNES music to Impulse Trakker IT Files.

Does anybody know the name of the program? Its an old MS-DOS program.

The utility you're looking for is OpenSPC
I used to use it to convert SPCs into MP3 using Modplug's Bass enhancement and reverb. It makes the FFMQ soundtrack sound awesome.

I made up a webpage with instructions on playing back MIDI using OPL2/3 samples and such here:
Tutorial on old soundcard emulation (FM Synth).
Comments, corrections or suggestions are welcome as it's a WIP.

any chance you could also share information regarding emulating near-perfect Roland MIDI for DOS games, expecially via DOSBOX?

Roland made a lot of products. I've heard the MT-32 build of dosbox has near exact emulation of that sound module (based on the MUNT Sourceforge project). I can dig up a link for that on Vogons if that's what you're looking for. Otherwise Roland's Virtual Sound Canvas midi driver (I'm running 3.23 which came with my laptop) allows you to change to SC-55, SC-88 and SC-88 pro compatible sound sets through it's settings window. The VSTi version 1.0 doesn't seem to have the same functionality (only GM2 and GS options).
If you can explain what you're looking for a bit more I might be able to find what you're looking for.

Hmmm...

Actually when I browse VOGON forum the other days, I found at least 2 versions of MT32 built DOSBOX. The first one was an old built based on version .62 and it sounded quite good. The other one which was compiled-made by this korean guy, sounded not too good. But at least it integrated menus for easy configuration.

Btw, right now I'm using Vista Ultimate and I've also tried to install Munt driver to no avail. And thx for mentioning this Roland's Virtual Sound Canvas. I'll look upon it. :D

should be updated with the VGstream winamp plugin. a mass solution.