Saturn Castlevania PCM playback? by JILost at 11:23 AM EST on December 20, 2005
Hi. I have tried countless software, playback methods, and configurations for playing back the Castlevania: SotN .pcm files, but all I get is horrible, horrible static and noise with music burried somewhere beneath it. Cassini (a Saturn emulator) can play back the sound test flawlessly, but the emulator is slow and thus the playback is jerky and repetitive. If anyone would like to take a stab at it, here is a randomly selected song:
http://www.purpleguppy.net/music/SD1D.PCM
Beware: it's "I am the Wind." It's music, though.
Note: This is not an "OMG PUT SEGA ADPCM SUPOART N IN_CUBE.DLL" request--since, to my knowledge, this format was never used in GCN games. This is more of an "I'm sick of these things giving me static, please help me figure out how to play them back/convert them to WAV properly!" request. I just figured you guys might be able to crack the case since you seem good at figuring out these other PCM formats.
Header shows DVI. Could possibly be the Intel/IMA DVI ADPCM codec? Q;
ps. If you have a Mac, it looks like SoundApp could read such files, including IMA ADPCM embedded SND resources (are they the same as used in Resident Evil on the GC?), see here :
I use a PC, but it's nice to know that there's SOME software SOMEWHERE that can read it.
Perhaps one of those pages will explain what exactly is confusing Cool Edit, Goldwave, SoundForge, etc. I can't imagine what would be giving me the actual music but still burried beneath static. I would think that if the data was unreadable (reverse byte order, etc.), I would simply get static or silence. I'll investigate those URL's, though.
What happens is that you can recognize patterns in the sound caused by the patterns actually in the music. If its encoded differently you can often still sort of tell that it is by playing it back as PCM.
The Rockin-B site has a Saturn Sound Player, plus other conversions (PCM) and sources, but the player is offline it appears(!).. (http://www.rockin-b.de/)
But according to a forum posting, it will not play Dracula X due to it being adpcm, so its still a bit of a dead end for now.
Author Link is here - http://foobar.s53.xrea.com/up/index.php?page=all
Download "up028.zip" it contains the Winamp plugin and the source for those interested!
ps. It works.
Q;
edited 6:52 AM EST December 21, 2005
orgasm x3 by JILost at 7:58 AM EST on December 21, 2005
The plugin works great! The Winamp plugin crashes Winamp whenever I try to open a .pcm, but the foobar one plays and rocks all of your mothers. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I have been Googling and whatnot for MONTHS. Now to get to converting!