Questions from a complete noob about ripping ...

OK, for years I was doing ripping the absolute ghetto way where I would tape music manually for my cassette player in the car. Now that I've become technologically aware and able to record better, I want to rip things from games with my PC.

I have no idea where to even start. All that I know is that once I get the file format into .spc I can get into Winamp and convert. I already have a .wav to mp3 converting method that works well so I'm OK there.

Specifically, I would like to rip N64 games and Dreamcast (for which I have a DC to PC connector that is useless without something commuicating to both). I've seen the threads for PS2 ripping and I even saw the NES thread that mentioned getting from .spc to mp3 format, but the writer assumed that no one needed the help in getting the base format, which is what I need.

HELP!

Thanks in advance,

Rubes

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Dark Rubes

I have no idea where to even start. All that I know is that once I get the file format into .spc I can get into Winamp and convert.

You should be aware that an SPC is not exactly a piece of audio data, like a WAV or MP3 is (compressed or not compressed doesn't matter). SPCs are machine code, interpreted by software (synthesizer).
It's comparable to MIDI - MIDI being more abstract (SPC uses special machine code, which can only be executed by special software - MIDI does work with any MIDI sequencer/synthesizer).

Originally Posted by Dark Rubes

I already have a .wav to mp3 converting method that works well so I'm OK there.

Does it involve LAME?

Originally Posted by Dark Rubes

Specifically, I would like to rip N64 games and Dreamcast (for which I have a DC to PC connector that is useless without something commuicating to both). I've seen the threads for PS2 ripping and I even saw the NES thread that mentioned getting from .spc to mp3 format, but the writer assumed that no one needed the help in getting the base format, which is what I need.

There is a nice overview about PSF ripping (I think Zophar has the docs). You should check this first - maybe you don't like the technical stuff.

Ah, yes. Here is the link: http://www.zophar.net/psf/

At first sight it has nothing to do with N64/GC ripping, but you should find docs that use an analogue aproach for this kind of ripping.

cya
liquid

EDIT: Of course you can also use the (low quality) analogue recording approach.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Thanks for the info. However, I'm literally stuck ... as in I have no idea how to even hook up my N64 or PS/PS2 to my PC to start ripping. I don't have anything that has LAME other than Winamp but I use Samsung Music Studio to convert to from .wav to MP3.

I know there's a way to hook up using AV cables but I'm not quite sure how to do that. Also, which program should I use to record sound?

As you can see I'm a little more than lost and I know these are very basic questions but I've got to start somewhere.

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

I don't know much about extracting emulation files from a console (I understand it takes an intimate understanding of Assembly), but if you want to do an analog recording, you'll need a cable like this. You plug the RCA (red and white) jacks into your console and the 1/8" stereo end into your sound card's line input jack. Make sure you don't confuse the line input jack with the microphone jack, because the microphone jack is mono and the line input jack is stereo.

There are lots of options for recording software. A good free one is Audacity. For converting WAV files to MP3, you should be using LAME (attached to this post) and a frontend that works with it. You could set up EAC to work with LAME and that way whenever you rip a CD it will use LAME to encode your MP3s as well. Moguta has a nice guide in this forum about setting EAC up.

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I was going to post this here little schematic I made for a friend a while back but couldn't get on GF. tenseiken pretty much summed it up but here's a picture of a typical line-in setup, to make everything perfectly clear. This goes for any modern console, since they all use the same kind of cables for the video/audio output. (Unless I'm mistaken regarding the PS3/Wii/Xbox, as I don't know what kind of cables those use, I'm guessing the same though).

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yes, the Wii still uses RCA cables.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I like that diagram. The cable I linked to basically has the RCA-to-stereo adapter built in, but it's the same principal.

How ya doing, buddy?

I just wanted to add that this line-recording approach is really the last resort because it means at least two conversions (digital-to-analog on the console side and analog-to-digital on the recording side). And both the DAC on a console and the ADC part on the common soundcards are not the best in general.
You get both noise introduced by the DAC/ADC and noise/distortions from the different ground levels the systems are operating on.

You better learn assembly for direct ripping of music data. AFAIK the PS2 music format is well understood. This also applies to N64 and maybe Dreamcast (I'm not really sure about that).
Information about file specs can often be found on emulation sites or (if open-source) in the emulator source.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?