A question about PS2 games that use sequenced audio by Nyarlathotep at 5:30 AM EST on November 11, 2020
I was curious to know if it was possible to replace the soundfonts of a PS2 game that uses sequenced audio with updated ones in the same way you can use updated soundfonts for rips of older systems like the NES.
I wanted to find out because the game Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne features rather compressed audio, here's a comparison for those who are unfamiliar with the game. Recently there was a new CD release titled "Rare Soundtrack" which featured some previously unreleased tracks, but unlike the first two soundtracks (which were uncompressed) the audio on this release appears to sound the same as the in-game audio. As a result I'm led to believe that the original files may have been lost which is extremely disappointing if that is the case, but it got me wondering if the psf2 files could be updated or not since it be nice to have a version of the unreleased audio that doesn't suffer from compression.
I depends really on whatever formats the game uses for its sequenced audio and how far someone has reverse engineered them and the game's sound driver, along with how everything was stored. Also, keep in mind that some psf2s are actually streamed, which is exactly what Nocturne sounds like. I'm unable to decompress the psf2lib file, so I'm not too sure.
PSF2 files are a little more complicated, as they're a block compressed filesystem containing multiple files that are accessed by the player. Take a look at psf2fs.c from either Neill's code, or from my libpsflib thing.