You can use VGM trans on DS, for any game that uses SSEQ, to extract MIDI's, and convert the instruments to DLS (Which is nice for FL's fruity lsd plugin). The only issue, is that won't work on the Pokemon Mystery dungeon games (Darkness, Time, and Sky) because they use a different format. Also, for some reason, the GBA tool doesn't rip some of the Synths from the Golden Sun series
Edit: The modulation/pitch bend seems a little strong on these rips. I was working on a tool to mass convert/edit midis, idk if i can add something to fix them...
I'm just repeating what others have said, but this seems to work best with games that result in bigger GSFlib files (because they almost always have bigger and more heavily compressed samples). So Circle of the Moon is a much better example of what you can get than Harmony of Dissonance or Aria of Sorrow. Although I remember swapping the SF2 files on the latter two, and one of the resulting sets (AOS-->HOD, I think) resulted in a few rather impressively Silent Hill-esque noise tracks.
And of course, as noted, this doesn't always produce perfect results, as in the case of the Golden Sun games or some Mother 3 tracks.
Knurek is using this to double-check for missing tracks in previously-submitted GSF sets, right? I think he said something like that.
Of all the non-"Sappy" sets I'd like to see this done with, I think I'm most interested in what Sword of Mana would sound like. Although it'd be nice to figure out what all those anime license Konami games have going on, of course.
I was hoping I'd be able to use this or that program to convert the MIDI/SF2 pairs to MOD-type files that could be more easily played in browser via plugin, but I guess there are some commands that MIDI supports which can't be replicated in MOD format....
anyway, ramble ramble ramble, if anyone can pull off a similar gain in clarity for a DS game, I'd love to hear it. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I can't begin to guess what games would benefit from undergoing the process.
(Someone should also make a Youtube channel for gsfmusriper conversions...I would, but I have too many neuroses not to flake out)
This is really old news...unless I'm missing something? GBAMusRiper has been out for a long time, and has been updated to v2 early this year, and VGMTrans has also been around for quite some time. Or are you talking about something else?
It pretty much only works for games that use the "Sappy" engine. So any games that open in that. IIRC, none of the mario games worked (not too sure about super circuit or Mario Party Advance)
That's a shame considering that Mario and Luigi has a pretty good soundtrack. The Super Mario Advance 1 thing took me by surprise... guess they changed the sound engine afterwards?
Camelot GBA Games by soneek at 9:45 AM EDT on August 24, 2014
Any games developed by Camelot (Golden Sun, Mario Golf/Tennis) will be missing the synths used over the square lead and polysynth instruments. A good number of songs come out incomplete because of this.
I learned some ARM (and Thumb) assembly and reverse-engineered a bit of Donkey Kong Country 3's software mixer. I hacked the foobar2000 GSF Decoder (aka VBA-M) to spit out the mixed samples before the DMA and hardware "DirectSound" stage.
The result avoids the GBA DirectSound hardware and VBA-M's resampling. It sounds slightly better:
This is the purest form of the music. If I have more of my life to waste, I might try applying per-instrument interpolation using "Sinc" or whatever algorithm, so I can produce CD-quality, fake samples (yay).
It's probably possible to fix that one underwater song that cuts itself off due to the lack of available software channels. That would be the purest version (fixing Rare's stupid bug).
Potential arbitrary enhancements include stereo panning.
Yeah, probably... does it say how they actually ripped it? I tried using a guide and ended up with like 400+ folders of 1KB MIDI files, obviously that's not what is supposed to happen!
drfsupercenter - that's almost certainly what is actually supposed to happen, depending upon the parameters you gave. The MIDI files all represent songs (or sound effects), with the samples stored in the .sf2 files. If you use the -sb command line parameter (as is recommended), depending on the game, you may end up with dozens or even hundreds of folders. Post 55 (easily missed) in that thread mentions this:
I took a look at the Mother 1+2 set you put up for download and some of the MIDI files weren't playing the proper instruments. I tried extracting it myself, and discovered that it's probably best to use the -sb flag to separate the sample banks. Sometimes different samples are applied to the same patch number in different banks, and compiling them all to one soundfont means some samples get excluded and some songs won't play right. Thankfully it extracts to individual folders with each folder containing the soundfont and all MIDI files that use it.
I'm not sure exactly what happens, but with some games - the Boktai titles, for example - instead of getting a half-dozen or less folders, it seems like you get one for nearly every song in the game. Whether this is a shortcoming of GBAMusRiper or something I'm not thinking through properly, I'm guessing the exact same thing is happening with Pokemon. So it's harder to manage than not using -sb, and often takes up significantly more space, but you need to do it to get the best results (usually).
--
SmartOne - oh, nice work. I don't have the means to compare the rips you did to the GSF set at the moment, but I appreciate the effort. Do you think the process could be easily repeated with other games, or is the method only really suitable for DKC3/Rare games?
It was difficult for me. I had to figure out how the DMA worked, what fills the DMA buffer, and what fills the DMA buffer's buffer. Then DKC3's software mixer iterates over the buffer, accumulating the samples for each channel. I extracted the purest form of the samples I could find (the 8-bit samples are read from ROM). I assume the samples' rate is 13378 Hz, like the mixed output.
I'm guessing other games are completely different.
I tried just a Sapphire ROM by itself with the batch tools and it bombed. Interesting what you did with Sonic.
by Kurausukun at 7:58 PM EDT on September 10, 2014
soneek, I hate to burst your bubble, but that ingenious idea you had is now obsolete--GBAMusRiper 2.1 now has support for GBA Pokemon games, and it sounds better than your Frankenstein method :/
God I hate sites like sendspace, where they have a reduced speed and only let you download at a decent speed if you are a pro member. But what is really annoying is the fact that the "free" speed is just over the top. My normal download speed is about 6.25 MB (megabytes) per second. I'm currently downloading at just 76 kB per second.
Anyone know a way to batch-convert these things to WAV format? I know you can do it in foobar2000 with the MIDI plugin, and keep manually selecting the sb2 file, but that's really annoying, especially when there are like 500+ songs.
by MurraySkull at 11:31 AM EDT on September 14, 2014
drfsupercenter, not at all. If you have the .sf2 named the same as the folder, e.g. if you have all your MIDIs in a folder called "iamawesome", and the sf2 is called "iamawesome.sf2", then it should automatically use that soundfont (even if you don't even have BASSMIDI selected). For example, I have mine set to Yamaha XG 50 or whatever it's called, yet it still plays GBAMusRiper'd MIDIs in their own soundfonts.
It figures that I would miss one. Unfortunately I was messing around with the "Sinc" interpolation code from 2SF Decoder, I overwrote my hacked GSF Decoder, and then my Visual Studio Express license expired. All I have right now is the broken build of my hack. If I ever decide to set up the project(S) in Eclipse (big "S" because this foobar2000 plugin has a million dependencies with only source code available) (including a bunch of Windows crap; a freely linkable Active Template Library is only part of the hard-to-find-out Windows Driver Kit).
You'll have to wait. I'm sorry. It's not like this was a big improvement, anyway. The nice part about the Internet is if you wait long enough, someone else will do it and probably do it better. Yeah right, we're the only five people in the world who care about this.
So basically, when I have like 400 folders of MIDIs, with each folder having a SF2 named the same as the folder, I should be able to just load them all in f2k and it will play them *with the soundfont*?
Interesting.
I don't suppose anyone knows a way to batch-convert them in multichannel mode? I did a couple individual tracks using SynthFont - it exports each MIDI track to a separate WAV so you can load it up in a DAW and play around with it. I am NOT doing every track one at a time though.
by dissident93 at 11:21 PM EDT on September 14, 2014
any reason why you couldn't load the midi itself into a DAW?
by MurraySkull at 12:53 AM EDT on September 15, 2014
SmartOne, those ARE nice. And have you tried deleting all the registry entries for Visual Studio Express?
I've heard those E3 2005 many times. They are indeed clearer in quality than what the GBA can produce. But yet again, I can't believe they're not stereo. David Wise really should release a soundtrack for this game, in absolutely crystal clear quality and stereo. Something of the same quality of at least SNES, if not Nintendo 64 quality. Or in other words, about 44100 Hz and not 12000 Hz or whatever it is :P
Even if you could load the MIDI into a DAW, you'd need the soundfonts for each one, which is just a pain.
Easier to have them in WAV format. They might take up more space, but that's not really an issue for me.
Either way, a way to batch process these would be nice.
by dogman91x at 10:07 AM EDT on September 19, 2014
Loving the work you're doing SmartOne! The unfiltered set for DKC3 sounds a lot more listenable. Can't wait to see what else you come up with. You have my support. *thumbs up*
edit: don't forget you can, um, pirate the program if all else fails.
It escapes me how they get such clarity out of the samples.
I thought that the moment they were encoded they lost all that bit depth. I know filtering takes some of that lo-fi edge off, but how are these .2sf rips so clean? Could it be they have been filtered after ripping? Wouldn't that be cheating, though?
by nothingtosay at 4:23 PM EDT on September 22, 2014
@Master_E: Assuming you meant .sf2 rips, the reason they sound so much better is that it's bypassing the GBA software mixing. Being a portable system with limited computing power and battery life, compromises had to be made and the sound suffered. The instrument samples are at wildly different, often non-standard, sampling rates and they all have to be converted to one by that less-than-ideal mixing (not a totally trivial task computationally), in addition to pitch shifting, volume manipulation, etc. which all leads to the awful sound quality. GSF rips emulate the GBA's mixing and so they sound bad too, but MIDI + soundfont allows for much higher quality.
Your use of the term bit depth seems to me to like it's probably misguided. What aspect of the sound quality are you attributing to bit depth?
It's pretty easy to make looped versions of the songs, you just need Cakewalk, Sonar or something like them and then you can open the MIDI file and view it's musical notations... then you can just copy/paste it all as many times as you want, save it and bam! you now have a MIDI copy that loops the song that many times before stopping!
A shame those pieces of software cost an arm and a leg.
Edit: Yeah that SendSpace website is slooooooow, it would be best if someone uploaded Donkey Kong Country 3 to Mediafire or Megaupload or some such. I mean I normally download stuff at around 500KB/s but this SendSpace site is letting me download at an abysmal 80KB/s.
I normally download stuff at about 6.5 MB/s, so you know how it feels. 80 kB/s as well. I mean, it's 2014. Why can't they have the "free limited speeds" low, but not .... THAT low. Like 200 kB/s maybe?
Anyway, just do what I did. Start the download from Sendspace and just... wait :P
@nothingtosay: Yeah. I was referring to the .sf2s.
I guess I'm guilty of giving the GSF rips not enough credit. I assumed that the instruments were all at the same sampling rate but at a low bit depth to conserve space. Though, if I'm getting that term wrong again, I guess I'm also just bad at words.
At one point, I thought that "DirectSound" meant that all music using the DirectSound channels were streamed music files, explaining to me how you can't separate the instruments in Highly Experimental and how they get echos and reverb without the use of a DSP. Shows you how much I know about GBA hardware!
So the samples were of that high quality all this time? Amazing! You'd think they would find a better way to play those samples at their best quality. Then again, if that software mixer is really as poor as you say it is...
by nothingtosay at 3:11 PM EDT on September 26, 2014
gba2midi can rip the instrument samples from a GBA ROM. I recommend checking it out, if just for curiosity's sake. The samples certainly don't sound amazing in most cases, but definitely much better than the GBA can output. They're usually, if not always, 8-bit which makes them somewhat noisy. The maximum signal-to-noise ratio is the only thing bit depth is relevant to in terms of sound quality. 8-bit noise is clearly audible, even when generating a sound at 8 bits, not just when converting something higher down to it. The sampling rate is what can vary hugely, with often very low rates for percussion (even cymbals, unfortunately).
But with MIDI + soundfont it does manage to sound better than you'd think it would. I'm not entirely clear myself on how so much of the noise seems to go away from the samples. Filtering certainly happens in the process of pitch-shifting, but I'd think that can only remove artifacts caused by altering the pitch, not noises inherent in the samples.
Judging by the um 15845 minutes [(60x24x11)+5] of no activity, I have come to the following possible conclusions:
1. He's completely forgotten about this thread. 2. He hasn't forgotten, but he's just been very busy (also known as "having a life") 3. Maybe he's just had a bad internet?
I'm going for either 2 or 3.
by TwinkTickler at 5:40 PM EST on November 19, 2014
1. Oh well, at least we got the original 1:1 unemulated rip.
2. You work away your life and where does it get you, you get cash, cash that can't buy back what the job takes.
3. For only uploading a FLAC, I doubt it.
I'm guessing 4.
4. He knows but he doesn't care anymore, too much work, not enough reward.
Woah momma! a true rip of DKC3 and it sounds...subpar, David, what the fuck, why does it sound so awful, the music is great but the file itself- sheesh, 24 bit doesn't even make up for it, still, thanks for this, however you did it, It sounds miles better than the god awful .gsf rip that's ear literally shattering, I fucking hate .gsf so bad. I'm so giddy right now though.
I'm tagging this bad boy! Think you can do this for the other two DKC games? Oh man, Mill Fever is missing but users already pointed that out.
Wow, now there's a whole, like, six people in the world who care about this! That's practically enough for a petition!
It is really nice to know someone other than me cares. The problem (aside from Microsoft being a pain in the ass) is that I don't know how I would distinguish separate instruments for a proper, per-instrument resampling.
If I were smart, this would be done. If I were thorough (smart), there would be Mill Fever. If David Wise cared, there would be a studio-quality soundtrack.
by TwinkTickler at 5:30 PM EST on January 13, 2015
I don't know either, I wonder if other users can though.
Also, I do want DKC2 too. is DKC3 the only one you can do?
I mean, did you skip the .midi and just had it extract the purest files?
I'm like, a seventh person who cares about this! Named myself after one of the songs, after all.
After reading that bit about David Wise, I thought I'd mention that it might be worth a shot to simply ask him about releasing a high quality version of the soundtrack. He usually answers emails. I don't know whether he'd have one just lying around, or if there would be any legal gray areas involved, but some of his fellow Rare composers such as Grant Kirkhope have put up quite a bit of their work in various places, sometimes for sale. There's stuff that didn't appear on an official soundtrack release or in a finished game, so a high quality DKC3 GBA seems possible.
On a side note, I'd urge fans of the soundtrack (I don't find very many of you!) to check out the three remixes of DKC3 GBA tracks (Arich Boss, Water World, and Mill Fever) Wise did for E3 2005 trailers that never happened, if you haven't already. They're neat little curiosities.
GBAMusRip DOES extract the synth and wave sounds from Golden Sun, and I assume other Camelot games too, haven't tested yet. The problem is that the soundfont doesn't match the instruments used in the Midis (usually 80-Square and 90-Polysynth).
Using SynthFont+Viena I was able to fix this, and after a lot of trial and error and comparing my results to various other rips, I have now the most accurate GS+TLA soundtrack in the highest quality possible.
GbaMusRiper cannot properly rip in-game synths? Because I noticed this with Mother 3, synth replaced with 8 bit sounds in some individual tracks. I was just wondering about this as well.
DarioEMeloD, thank you for the upload. Of course FLAC would be the highest quality available, not mp3 :)
I am listening now. The drums sound more metallic than I remember from playing the game and having the volume up high, other rips had that, too. But the usual constant hiss/background noise is gone or very silent now. Somehow it still sounds like 128kbps mp3 to me. Have not heard a rip that sounds better, though. Can we have a FLAC of that? I hope this is ok to ask.
Have a nice day! Enjoying now because it seems to be the best rip available!
The instruments are as high quality as they can be, but there are still some incorrect instruments. You aren't going to get anything clearer unless you record all of the music in an actual Roland SC-88 Pro.
by DarioEMeloD at 3:04 PM EST on February 10, 2015
Well I didn't say it's perfect, but if you listen to them you'll notice immediately it's as close as we can get.
MetalKnick, what instruments are you referring to?
by MetalKnick at 10:05 PM EST on February 10, 2015
The flute replacing warm pad and charang is not optimal. Also in some songs the 8bit synth doesn't really fit. Someone should record the synth sounds from an emulator. That would be the best thing we could do. Until then, we should look for sound alikes.
Mother 3 has a good warm pad patch for instance. I hate to mix and match, but what can you do lol. I'd show you an example of one of my attempts at fixing songs, but my computer died.
(sorry if my post is confusing, it's 3 AM and I'm really tired)
EDIT: Sorry if I'm sounding rude or condescending or anything! I really appreciate your efforts!
I don't like being one of those nagging guys that ask for requests, but nonetheless... Any possibility to get the midis and font for Final Fantasy VI? I can attest it's definitely worth it, many tracks are improved from the original, along with the expected occasional duds. I had one of these before, but unfortunately my hard drive crashed on me and was forced to reboot, and the guy that was nice enough to do it had his mediafire link blocked before I could redownload. If it helps, the rip I used required four soundbanks with the midis and separate fonts, and everything was nonlooped and tracks with boss phases were separated. If this would be possible, I'd be grateful. I intend to rename and tag all the stuff myself, my original intent was to upload a complete soundtrack with a download package to Youtube when complete. I only got a few tracks uploaded before the crash. Anyway, done jabbering, thanks in advance for any responses.
Midi loop points by Koto at 1:36 PM EDT on April 14, 2015
Could I add loop points to midis generated by gbamusriper? F-Zero: MV doesn't have anyone, for example.
Which software is the best and most friendly for that purpose?
Add loop points to samples you mean? Or loop actual midi files? If it's the first one then EXC would be perfect for the job, use default settings only...the latter purpose would be better in a DAW.
@dj4uk6cjm: I mean looping midi. If you know a DAW easy to use, please tell me.
@TUK: How can I set the loop point with Anvil Studio? I have downloaded the lastest version, and my previous try to loop a midi was a disaster: The file doesn't play correctly and the loop point wasn't recognized either.
Mixcraft is what I use and knowing gbamusriper it'll have at least one loop of the midi file so you should be able to extend it easily, I can't go into full detail as it may require more of an explanation but if you need help you can message me on the ffshrine forums I would be glad to help. :)
@Koto, for the part where you want the loop start to be, click on (or directly before) the measure (or note) that you want to loop from. Then click "new" next to Cue. Type "loopStart". It's important that it's spelt exactly like that. "loop" is not capitalized, and "Start" is, and there must be no space.
Then, do the same thing, but type "loopEnd". If the loop is a full loop that starts from the beginning, the loopStart is not needed, as it will assume the start, if it's not set. For example, if you want it to loop after about 4 measures, and then loop for 32 measures, click at the beginning of the 5th measure, press "new" and click "loopStart", then go to measure 37 (i.e. 32 measures later), and repeat, but "loopEnd" instead of "loopStart".
And, for those who are British, a "measure", is more commonly called a "bar"... which makes sense.
At first, I didn't really notice it with Emerald, well I did and didn't care much, but now I ripped FR/LG and some instruments just don't match right, I mean, the quality is superior, but at what cost? The snares in "Opening Movie" are replaced with some weird mono beat, along with that groove PokeCenter healing synth being gone in the MIDI.
Would anyone have any sounds similar to those, samples, etc? I'll put up two songs as reference if you want me to.
I just really want it to be as close as it can to the original thing.
Download the MSU plugin for foobar2000 for easy playback.
The Rockface Rumble track sounds particularly good. The restoration in general is a mixture of the original tracks with EQ/DSP/stereo enhancement, plus I think he sequenced some original samples in there as well. Much improved, while staying true to the originals.