Ripping Sounds
Contents
Common Sound Formats for Consoles
Unlike others areas of ripping (such as Textures and Sprites) where proprietary formats are game-specific, audio formats are generally what we call "console-specific" (For example, you will generally only find PlayStation ADPCM on PlayStation Games, and you would only find Xbox IMA-ADPCM on Original XBOX games). This is a list of consoles, and their console-specific audio formats:
| Console | Format |
|---|---|
| Dreamcast | Yamaha ADPCM |
| Gamecube | DSP/ADP/DTK ADPCM |
| Hyperscan | DRM Container Format (Contains either raw PCM or IMA ADPCM stream) |
| iOS | Core Audio Format (CAF), Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) |
| Nintendo 3DS | BCWAV, BSTRM, DSP, Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) |
| Nintendo DS/DSi | SWAV |
| Panasonic 3DO | Squareroot-delta-exact 8-bit DPCM |
| PC | PCM Variants, Really any format possible. |
| PC-FX | PC-FX ADPCM |
| PlayStation 1 | PlayStation ADPCM |
| PlayStation 2 | PlayStation ADPCM, ATRAC3, AC3, 16-bit OKI ADPCM |
| PlayStation 3 | PlayStation ADPCM, ATRAC3, MPEG |
| PlayStation Portable | Sony ATRAC3plus |
| XBOX (Original) | Xbox IMA ADPCM |
| XBOX 360 | XMA Variant 1 (Early Games), XMA Variant 2 (Late Games) |
While these formats are common, games are not limited to these formats. This is just a generalization of what you may occur when you look into games from these platforms.
Some PC games
If you're lucky, you'll be able to simply navigate to where your game is installed and be greeted by all the sounds in a usable format such as WAVE.
PS1 and PS2
Use PSound. Requires Windows or WINE. Open your PlayStation game and drag any files containing sound into the program. Tell it to scan the file if prompted. Then, select all the resulting files (Ctrl+A) and convert them (Ctrl+V). If the files have looping issues, go to the configuration (Ctrl+C) and set the loop count and fade-out time to 0. If the files are playing at the wrong speed, go to the configuration and force the sample rate to the correct value. If the files are too slow, increase this value, and if they're too fast, decrease it.
Nintendo 64
Use N64SoundListToolUpdated. Requires Windows and Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1. You may have to correct the speed of certain sounds using an external program such as ffmpeg.
Batch-converting sample rates using ffmpeg (Linux)
for i in *.wav; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -af asetrate=16000 "16000/${i%.*}.wav"; done
Flash games
Use JPEXS. Load your SWF file into it, right-click the "sounds" folder and "Export selection".
Other games
Use Game Extractor. Requires Java. This program has mixed results.
Raw audio
Some games store their sounds as raw audio. If you can't open a sound file, it's worth checking if it's raw. With Audacity, you can go to File -> Import -> Raw Data... to test this. If you hear something recognisable but not quite right, it's a game of trial-and-error to get the correct values.
