Help:Contents/Finding Content/Finding audio
This is a sub-page of Help:Contents/Finding Content.
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This can be quite difficult, depending on the game. But, the results may very well be worth it.
Contents
Through Sound Players
Some sound players can search through a file and look through any game for the hardware it supports.
- M1
A sound player for MAME ROMs. Front-ends can be used with this program. Be warned that it is based on an old core of MAME, making several games incompatible with it.
- PSound
Can play sound files from PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and certain PC games.
- vgmstream
Can play a multitude of streaming audio formats. Available as a standalone program as well as a plugin for several popular music players.
- VGMTrans
Can play and export audio as either MIDI or soundfont files. It works with a multitude of different game platforms, but I find it to be friendliest with DS games.
Through File Extraction
Several file extractors usually support some sort of audio ripping, usually supporting file formats such as .wavs, .oggs, .mp3s, or whatever format the game uses.
Examples of file extractors
Multiple Platforms
Windows
- Resource Hacker
- Jaeder Naub
- ProWizard 4 PC
Designed to search through Amiga games for a number of music formats. This even attempts to go through packed formats.
Mac OS Classic and X
- ResEdit
Apple's old resource editor. Largely intended for 68k Macs, but will run fine on PowerPC Macs (both Classic and Mac OS X with the Classic Environment).
- Resorcerer
Newer and more comprehensive than ResEdit, but still somewhat old. The Mac OS Classic version is recommended over the Mac OS X version, as the latter is somewhat less complete than the former.
Through Sound Tests
Games can come with sound tests, whether it be through debug mode or through some sort of cheat, which makes it very easy to rip them with emulators. All one needs to do is record these songs, as no sound effects interfere with the music.
Through Hacking
Somewhat related to the previous section, one can usually force songs to play through some kind of memory or ROM hacking. Some games might utilize an indexing system where a particular sound is referenced to through a specific index value, like Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series. In games with this sort of system, if you can find where this occurs, you can manipulate the index, and change what sound plays, and any unused sound that might be indexed.
