Best way to Extract PS2 ADPCM Music? by NoVaX8000 at 1:54 PM EST on February 7, 2011
Hi,
I'm wanting to know what would be the best way to obtain PS2 ADPCM music, more specifically located in a file such as PAK or 000 for example.
Programs like MFAudio or Cube Media Player fails in this scenario since I have to find the Interleave myself. Even so, some of the music I can never get to sound correctly (a lot of crackling, channels never in the correct channel if that made sense).
Is there some type of Hex-Editing involved or something? I tried hex editing out the music in MUSICTS.PAK from TimeSplitters 3 as I would like to have the music in the ADPCM format, but vgmstream had interleaving issues.
What could I possibly be doing wrong? How do other people do it?
A) Depends on what format we're dealing with B) The size of the archive C) DON'T USE MFAUDIO OR CUBE MEDIA PLAYER (OUTDATED TOOLS) D) When "hexing," do you see a "magic" word in the stuff? Literally a word in plain text. E) I can do stuff due to constantly ripping and learning from the best after 3 years :P F) For stuff like this I would go for VGMToolbox unless another custom extractor or quickbms script exists. G) If it sounds wrong, you might be extracting the data incorrectly (size or cutting out data) but who knows.
But yea, post a sample if you want. Or rather a few MBs from the beginning of the archive (like 16MB or w/e since small stuff in kb doesn't quite work most of the time)
I agree with bxaimc on all of his points. Since it is headerless most of the time, you need to understand what it looks like in a hex editor. Fortunately, it's the easiest to identify of all streams. Hop on the tracker and grab some PS2 streams with "Sony ADPCM" in the title. Open them in a hex editor and look at the data. You'll see what I mean.
Also, join the IRC channel and ask questions. People don't mind helping those who are really trying to understand how to do it right.
If you simply do not want to take the time to learn (or have more important things to do), I would recommend FastElbJa's ADPCM Player. It's the best automatic PS2 ADPCM ripper, but you still need to figure out interleave, etc... when you listen or add generic headers. Also, given the headerlessness (making automated ripping very hard) of Sony ADPCM, it can screw up too.
I'm unsure on what is actually needed. The 1GB PAK file? One of the tracks extracted by the tools suggested? I don't see how cutting out data in the file with hex editing would help..
Tried both VGMToolbox and FastElbJa's ADPCM Player. I was still running into issues.
I couldn't even get the ADPCM Player to actually play anything & it kept on displaying "unhandled exception has occurred in your application" messages (sometimes unavoidable). It did extract fine though, but I still have crackling and pops in the music (even when the program does detect the interleave)..
Although I did notice some sort of pattern in a hex editior at the beginning of some other adpcm files before the numbers really kick in (even tried copying them into another file). Which hasn't exactly helped, yet.
Sorry for not replying earlier, as I was quite busy.
Anyway, here's a sample of the first 16MB of the PAK file from TimeSplitters 3. http://www.multiupload.com/49O4NEVP8N
Also, while I'm at it, I thought I might as well upload some problematic tracks from TimeSplitters 2 (as-is on the original disk), which vgmstream doesn't play properly (interleaving problem it seems). Only 4 tracks, the rest seem to play fine. http://www.multiupload.com/R9A4O2SB3Q
There were changes that went on with the MIB support that we had that now it causes some problems with files that previously worked. Anyway, here's a fix to the TS2 files.