Audio header's acronym name origins by Katsur at 5:38 AM EDT on October 2, 2024
In my personal interpretations and memories, those supposedly acronymic names stand for...
•CRI ADX stands for "CSK Research Institute Adaptive Differential Experiment". •Rockstar Games' RSTM AWC stand for "Rockstar Stream" and "Advanced Waveform Container" respectively. •Nintendo's BRSTM, BCSTM and BFSTM stand for "Binary Revolution Stream", "Binary CTR Stream" and "Binary Cafe Stream". •RIFF stands for "Resource Interchange File Format" •Electronic Arts' SCHI stands for "Stream Container Header Interchange". •FSB5 stands for "FMOD Sound Bank version 5". •Valve's XWV stands for "Xbox Waveform by Valve" or "Xbox WaVeform. •KOVS stands for "Koei Tecmo Ogg Vorbis Stream".
You can clarify, because some of my interpretations are incorrect, because some of the acronyms sounded vague for me; I was thinking.
But... what do Retro Studios AGSC/CSMP/RFRM, EA SPS, CRI HCA, Sony VAG, etc stand for? Where did I got those terms, you ask? VGMStream, obviously.
The main reason why this topic exists is because I want to make sense of many of those mysterious-sounding acronyms to the wider, passionable audience.
Not sure where the X in ADX came from, but yeah it's likely the same AD as in ADPCM. AHX is High compression, AIX is Interleave (probably). There's a 3DO format called SDX which is Squareroot Delta Exact (AIFC headers have the human-readable codec name), so maybe related?
I feel like a saw an explanation of VAG once but can't find it. All I can think of is Vector or Variable -- N64 has a VADPCM with a variable filter bank that went on to be the GC DSP ADPCM we know and love.
edited 8:04 PM EDT October 2, 2024
Oh maybe Voice, since SPU channels are called voices? Still don't know about G. Group?
I always thought "HCA" stood for "High Compression Audio". But maybe that's just something I came up with. I definitely can't cite any sources for the idea. I guess I kind of figured that if ADX is Advanced compression, then the next step up from that is High Compression.
katana by katana at 2:36 PM EST on November 21, 2024