Tutorial  Updated

An "easy" way to extract music and other stuff from 3DS games

How To Extract Music (and other stuff) from 3DS Games

This is an "easy" way for getting your favorite game music (and sometimes even sound effects) out of an already installed game on your 3DS.
Due to the various occurrences of de- and encrypted CIA, 3DS and so on files we're going to use Braindump to dump the already installed game from your 3DS into a CXI file which we can then extract without any problem via ctrtool (aka. a "GUI" version included in PackHack).
Of course this is probably not the "fastest way" but it certainly is an easy to understand one which works almost all times. I only had troubles trying to extract CIA and 3DS files due to missing encryption keys, this method will completely avoid that.

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What You'll Need:
  • A modified 3DS capable of running homebrew in any way (Ninjhax, Ironhax, Menuhax, ...)
  • Big enough (Micro)SD card, dumps take 400MB to 1GB in size
  • Homebrew Launcher
  • Braindump (Github)
  • PackHack (I'm not sure if it's allowed to link this here, just search "PackHack 3DS" on Google if link gets removed)
    • Optionally you can just use "ctrtool" but I'm not going to describe this further here (for now).
  • Foobar2000 with the vgmstream plugin (to play/convert files afterwards)
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Step 1 - Start Homebrew Launcher:
  • Be sure that your 3DS is able to run homebrew (duh, obvious...)
  • Put the Braindump files into the right folder on your SD card. The current right path for this should be something like /3ds/braindump/braindump.3dsx
  • Start your 3DS and open the Homebrew Launcher with your favorite exploit entry point (Ninjhax, Ironhax, Menuhax, and so on ...). See the above linked "Homebrew Launcher" link to see how to set those up.
    • Additional (only if you're an EmuNAND user, if this doesn't tell you anything ignore this): Make sure that you run the homebrew launcher exploit where your games are installed, as example if your games are located in EmuNAND make sure you start Homebrew Launcher via an additional exploit IN EmuNAND and not via Menuhax from a cold boot as example, else you won't be able to select the games installed on EmuNAND, it'll only display those present in SysNAND.

Step 2 - Run Braindump:
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  • If you've placed the Braindump files correctly you'll now see a new entry in Homebrew Launcher.
  • Select and start "Braindump" and choose the game you want to dump with right and left.
  • Once you've selected the right game press "A" and it'll immediately start dumping the game.
  • BE PATIENT. I can't stress this enough, JUST BE PATIENT NOW. The dumping process STILL CONTINUES in the background even tho it seems to be doing nothing anymore. It can take up to one or two hours depending on the game size and your (Micro)SD Card speed. Especially the first step (Dumping ExeFS) takes around 5 minutes even tho it's only like 6 MB big. The only time you can start worrying is when it's not moving or doing anything anymore for more than 30 minutes, just try again then.
  • When the dump is done the app will tell you, simply press "Start" and you're done on your 3DS. You can now either turn it off or do whatever else you'd like to do with it.

Step 3 - Copy CXI on your PC:
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  • Extract the downloaded "PackHack" ZIP to a safe place wherever you like.
  • Put the (Micro)SD Card into your PC now.
  • Open the card and you'll see one large file in the root of your card now. If you've enabled file extensions in your explorer you should see a ".cxi" file and a bunch of numbers in front of it.
  • Copy this files (optimal) into the PackHack-Directory (there should be a file called "HackingToolkit.exe", just put it there to make things easier).

Step 4 - Start the Tool and enter "CXI":
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  • Run "HackingToolkit.exe" and once asked enter "CXI" into the console. Press Enter.
  • On the next step insert the filename of the CXI file you just copied into the directory WITHOUT the .cxi at the end (you can use the Tab-Key on your keyboard to auto-fill this but don't forget to delete the .cxi at the end).
  • Press Enter once again and see how the files just fly right by!
  • Wait a few seconds/minutes until it'll ask you if you want to decompress code.bin, you can either answer Y or N, doesn't matter.
  • Once done close the tool.

Step 5 - Play/Convert the files with Foobar2000:
Cave Story (originally shown above) came with WAV files as music. Here shown is "The Legend of Zelda - A Link Between Worlds".
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DfPWKOS.png
  • Once the extraction is done and the tool is closed you'll notice that inside the "HackingToolkit.exe" folder you'll find a new folder called "romfs". This is the extracted, decrypted and ready to use stuff from your game.
  • Simply open the folder and search for the music files. Since every game is a bit different built up there's no exact place where the music files are. For Nintendo games they are usually in a folder called "sound" tho.
  • If not already done install Foobar2000 and the vgmstream plugin mentioned in the "What You'll Need" list above.
    • A little help for installing those 2 things: Simply download and install Foobar2000 like you'd normally do with any other application on Windows. After that download the plugin and double-click on it, Foobar2000 will automatically open and ask you to install the plugin, additionally it'll ask you for Admin permissions to update and link the new file formats on Windows to Foobar2000.
  • Once you've installed and set up Foobar2000 correctly you'll now be able to play the music files by either double-clicking on them or rightclick -> "Open with..." and Foobar2000 from there on.
  • If you want to convert these files into MP3/OGG/WAV or any other format you like you simply have to play the file and right-click it in Foobar2000, there'll be a "Convert" option which is pretty self explanatory when you use it.

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That's basically it!
Have fun playing around with this and I hope I've covered everything in here. If you're missing something just tell me and I'll try my best to add it here.
 
Last edited by EpicLPer,

EpicLPer

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*** Guide Changelogs ***

14.01.2016 - 12:10:
INITIAL GUIDE VERSION
14.01.2016 - 12:57: Added Screenshots
14.01.2016 - 13:07: Added SD Card in "What You'll Need" section
07.02.2016 - 16:15: Added Braindump Github link
 
Last edited by EpicLPer,

Zeriel

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Can you use this to translate a game? Is there a way to make the game back into a CIA file so someone else can install it?
 

JunTheBobOmbAce

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Can you use this to extract music from DLC too? I can't really seem to extract the music that plays while you're playing minigames in Rusty's Real Deal Baseball. Just system sounds.
 

Natural

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I got an error after I left it on to dump overnight. "Failure during dumping. Output data is incomplete!"

I finally dumped correctly but got only two bcstm files in the sound folder after using PackHack.
 
Last edited by Natural,

gcunit

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How To Extract Music (and other stuff) from 3DS Games

This looks like a nice tutorial, thanks for posting it. However, I've been having braindump problems. I couldn't launch it at first, so I deleted the xml file. Now it runs, but it keeps throwing up an error when it comes to dumping the RomFS.

I appreciate you may not have dabbled in this for a while now, but any help on this, or directing to a more recent method for extracting music, would be great.
 

Krakening

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I might have done this correctly, but when I dump the music for Mario and Donkey Kong, it just dumps thousands of sound effects and instruments that makes up the game music. They're usually not even a second long.
 

SynthwaveFox

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I know this is a pretty old guide, but for some reason, when I go to launch Braindump in homebrew, it doesn't give me a choice to select a title. It just starts dumping the homebrew launcher's files. I can't choose a game to dump.
 

PabloMK7

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I know this is a pretty old guide, but for some reason, when I go to launch Braindump in homebrew, it doesn't give me a choice to select a title. It just starts dumping the homebrew launcher's files. I can't choose a game to dump.
As you have said, this is a very old guide. Braindump doesn't work with the new homebrew launcher.
 

SynthwaveFox

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As you have said, this is a very old guide. Braindump doesn't work with the new homebrew launcher.
So what am I supposed to do? I'm trying to make my game cartridge into a .cxi file. It has to be a CXI because .3ds and .cia don't decrypt with PackHack. They just turn into .bin files. The only format I am successfully able to get files out of is a .cxi, which turns into folders when put through PackHack.

Unless you know a way to get sounds and stuff from .bin files, because that's all PackHack generates after decrypting a .cia or .3ds.

Edit: Or at least be able to get sounds from .cia or .3ds. Just some way to get files from games.
 
Last edited by SynthwaveFox,

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First thing that comes to mind would be (link). Will list everything you need to get what ya want done.
Yeah I've gone through that guide. The problem is that I can't turn CARTRIDGE games as CXI, only .3ds or .cia. Doesn't give me the option like it does with other titles.

If I use that tool to extract .3ds or .cia, it won't let me view the files. They all just turn into .bin files unlike with .cxi where they turn into folders.

What am I supposed to do to get this to work like with installed titles? I don't have the cartridge installed to the SD at all, so I'm unsure.

P.S.: I'm very sure there's a detail I'm missing that could be right in front of me. Not trying to be rude at all.
 
Last edited by SynthwaveFox,

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