ROM Hack Question Is there a way to extract the soundtrack from Nintendo Switch games?

[ToTheStars]

I really like the music of the battle mode maps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and would like to extract them at the highest quality possible. Is there a way to do this yet? I saw youtube videos with the soundtrack but the quality of them isn't all that great.

On Wii U / 3DS it's possible by extracting and converting the sound files.

This is also good for upcoming games. The soundtrack of ARMS is already very promising.

 

[fedehda]

I don't really think so, for the moment, since there isn't any way to dump the cartridge/digital copy nowadays until there's homebrew over there. But I'm just guessing...

 

[evandixon]

It's possible IMO that cartridges could be dumped in the near future, but I'd expect nothing less than the 3DS's security, meaning the ROMs will be encrypted, requiring the console to decrypt them.

 

[FAST6191]

As others have said pending either the ability to dump plaintext ROM images, or some other side channel method (before 3ds ROM decryption we saw memory dumping happen, the most useful aspect of that being the sound dumping that could happen) you are limited to more conventional means of extraction -- either stick an audio cable from the headphones into the line in of your PC and capture, or do the same with HDMI.

Line in should be reasonable quality* and HDMI should be all but flawless but you will of course face the problems of any engine noises if you are capturing in game rather than from a sound test. If you do have extra noises overlaid then, and no way of turning down the sound effects, there are ways of sorting it out. HDMI capture is not something everybody has, line in should be on damn never every machine that is still vaguely usable in the modern world.

On older systems there are other ways of improving analogue capture methods by playing with some solder or some fun tools (say by bypassing any DACs that might be involved so you can feed the info to a good one, or by disabling certain aspects in multi chip/input designs), I doubt anybody has really gone there for the switch yet and while you could probably figure something out if you do have HDMI to turn to then you will likely not get too far.

*between youtube's reencoding and all the kids thinking more volume is more better I would not be surprised to find that the audio quality suffered with.

 

[Sketchy1]

I really like the music of the battle mode maps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and would like to extract them at the highest quality possible. Is there a way to do this yet? I saw youtube videos with the soundtrack but the quality of them isn't all that great.

On Wii U / 3DS it's possible by extracting and converting the sound files.

This is also good for upcoming games. The soundtrack of ARMS is already very promising.

This would require some sort of reverse engineering towards the cart, and decrypting the ROM (assuming its encrypted, which it most probably is) Before we can dump even the simplest soundtracks

 

[FAST6191]

This would require some sort of reverse engineering towards the cart, and decrypting the ROM (assuming its encrypted, which it most probably is) Before we can dump even the simplest soundtracks

The ideal way is indeed to have rips of the exact data from the cart, and possibly an emulation of the music setup if that changes how things play out. There are many ways to get a copy of an audio track from a game without that though. In this case HDMI, being a digital signal, should in theory be the exact sound the devs wanted when the boss came knocking and said "we need to have this out of here by [this day], get it done". More historically a line out cable* would have made something more than workable too; the devs would have hopefully used the old audio engineer's adage of make it sound good on crap speakers as that is what most of your listeners will have (and they knew enough to take advantage of the crappiness of TVs of the time -- http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/ ).
Like was mentioned in the previous post there are also ways to manipulate the hardware outside of fiddling with the code running on it. For instance the megadrive/genesis has two audio devices that go to make the sound and if you find that one chip or the other deals solely in what you want you can disable the other (desolder the power leg or something) and rip away without knowing the first thing about ROM hacking. The 3ds had the headphone volume mod, something which likely happened again here and could prove useful for certain things. If the switch ever gains bluetooth audio support then that could also be something. Any number of devices have had the cheap digital to analogue converter (usually called a DAC) replaced with a better one, any number of devices have had additional electrical noise suppression figured out to help with this sort of thing.

*a popular way of doing things, too often though I see people that don't really know what they are doing make bad rips and share them. To that end the OP might get a good setup and try that, and presumably if the sounds were good enough to listen to in the game they will be good enough to listen to outside it.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Umm maybe try recording it? Like Use a 3.5MM male to male cable and plug it into your switch and PC then use recording software while music plays. Other than that, I see no other way to do it. I mean games now and days don't even have sound test like they used to, and i bet the millions of uploaded rips from the games have something to do with it. If you wanna know what kind of software to use, audacity is common for this type of thing.

 

[Sketchy1]

The ideal way is indeed to have rips of the exact data from the cart, and possibly an emulation of the music setup if that changes how things play out. There are many ways to get a copy of an audio track from a game without that though. In this case HDMI, being a digital signal, should in theory be the exact sound the devs wanted when the boss came knocking and said "we need to have this out of here by [this day], get it done". More historically a line out cable* would have made something more than workable too; the devs would have hopefully used the old audio engineer's adage of make it sound good on crap speakers as that is what most of your listeners will have (and they knew enough to take advantage of the crappiness of TVs of the time -- http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/ ).
Like was mentioned in the previous post there are also ways to manipulate the hardware outside of fiddling with the code running on it. For instance the megadrive/genesis has two audio devices that go to make the sound and if you find that one chip or the other deals solely in what you want you can disable the other (desolder the power leg or something) and rip away without knowing the first thing about ROM hacking. The 3ds had the headphone volume mod, something which likely happened again here and could prove useful for certain things. If the switch ever gains bluetooth audio support then that could also be something. Any number of devices have had the cheap digital to analogue converter (usually called a DAC) replaced with a better one, any number of devices have had additional electrical noise suppression figured out to help with this sort of thing.

*a popular way of doing things, too often though I see people that don't really know what they are doing make bad rips and share them. To that end the OP might get a good setup and try that, and presumably if the sounds were good enough to listen to in the game they will be good enough to listen to outside it.

true, but the best quality is takemn directly from the game

 

[FAST6191]

With HDMI being digital capture it may well be better than ripping and then using emulation to recreate the sound system of the game/game console a la many rips you use, especially for an otherwise unknown system. The same, give or take noise issues, can be said for line in as well. The emulation approach is sometimes preferred in as people like to remix things, sort loops more easily and remove elements and that is considerably easier with sequenced audio.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I really like the music of the battle mode maps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and would like to extract them at the highest quality possible. Is there a way to do this yet? I saw youtube videos with the soundtrack but the quality of them isn't all that great.

On Wii U / 3DS it's possible by extracting and converting the sound files.

This is also good for upcoming games. The soundtrack of ARMS is already very promising.

Does MK8D still let you upload replays to YouTube with the "Highlight Reel" function?
On the Wii U version you could turn off the sound effects and only have the music playing, essentially giving you a full rip of the (what I assume would be decent or high quality) music.

 

[EpicLPer]

Does MK8D still let you upload replays to YouTube with the "Highlight Reel" function?
On the Wii U version you could turn off the sound effects and only have the music playing, essentially giving you a full rip of the (what I assume would be decent or high quality) music.

Nope, sadly not anymore.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

With HDMI being digital capture it may well be better than ripping and then using emulation to recreate the sound system of the game/game console a la many rips you use, especially for an otherwise unknown system. The same, give or take noise issues, can be said for line in as well. The emulation approach is sometimes preferred in as people like to remix things, sort loops more easily and remove elements and that is considerably easier with sequenced audio.

1. Connect Switch to HDMI Grabber
2. Play a round on the track you want the music from
3. Watch the replay
4. Turn off sound effects
5. turn to full length instead of 30 seconds
6. ???
7. PROFIT

EDIT: Or simply Google the music files from MK8 for the Wii U, I doubt they're less high-quality than the ones on the Switch.

 

[xXxSwagnemitexXx]

I really like the music of the battle mode maps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and would like to extract them at the highest quality possible. Is there a way to do this yet? I saw youtube videos with the soundtrack but the quality of them isn't all that great.

On Wii U / 3DS it's possible by extracting and converting the sound files.

This is also good for upcoming games. The soundtrack of ARMS is already very promising.

You will just have to youtube-to-mp3 the video files, I doubt the quality won't be too bad as the original, or use the HDMI grabber like @EpicLPer said

 

[nine0nine]

is this possible now? I've been wanting to rip the music from Taiko no tatsujin, got the headphone jack method set up but its a bit of a chore and I still having unlocked all the tracks within the game.

 

[Mouser X]

REALLY!? I did this as a hobby for *years*. You don't know about -snip-? I've had MK8DX's sound files on my PC pretty much since the game came out. VGMstream is the program/plugin to play the files. You can ask questions in their -snip-, and find/download ripped sets at -snip-. How do people not know this? It's *why* I hacked my Wii (and therefore why I joined GBAtemp), so I could rip my own discs, to submit sound file rips from the games. Check it out. They have *TERA*bytes of rips available for over 30 different console/PC/mobile systems.

[EDIT] Ah, I just noticed the dates of the posts. Necropost! Yes, this set has been available since Oct. 2017. Switch audio rips "officially" started happening July 2017.