[Attention] 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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Sticky?

How ya doing, buddy?

Long-needed update to the first post.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.)

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?