ARC files just seem to be basic archives, with files uncompressed inside them, but what I wonder about is the music stored inside audiostr.arc; It has no "magic" word at the beginning of each sound file, but it has a header part which varies in size per song, as shown here:
I tried opening the file in Audacity, opening it as RAW ADPCM with different sample rates and it always had a distinct "screeching" sound over the distorted audio, which you can hear a sample of here.
Does anyone know what I have to do to get the music out of that ARC file as normal sound files? If a method is found out, it could help me get songs from other console Sims games as they seem to have the same "data/audiostr.arc" file based on what I've read online.
Here's the file if anyone wants to try to crack the format of it and the audio within it: Download
It has to be possible to convert this music if it is even in the same format as previous games, as console Sims game pages on TCRF imply people could find unused songs, which would be hard with how unpleasant my attempts to "rip" the music have turned out...
edited 9:06 PM EDT August 12, 2018
However, obviously that isn't Sims 3; It seems while the PS2 games have MFAudio to help convert the audio, I have no clue what Sims 3 uses. It has to be a different format, but with how "normal" ADPCM is, I wonder why EA didn't just use that same form of compression on all consoles?
If anyone has any idea about Sims 3 (Wii)'s music format, I'd appreciate it.
edited 7:57 PM EDT August 14, 2018