ROM Hack Recording GBA and DS audio on 3DS ? (not Line-in)

[andiandi]

Hi,

I would like to know if there's a tool/homebrew/or any way to record GBA and DS games musics (with the real GBA/DS audio hardware, not emulation, but for example through GBA virtual console for the GBA, and through DS audio chip for the DS).

For example by recording a music that's playing in-game, or by using .GSF or .2SF files, and play them throughout the native audio chips - not trough emulation - and record tracks on SD Card (again not in Line-In)

Thank you

PS : Sorry if I posted in the wrong section

 

[RoxNoAnne]

There's a ripping tool called VGMTrans that rips video game music from DS games into MIDI and SF2 formats. In order to get the MP3 version, you may have to find a converter but replace the SF2 that the converter uses or use FL Studio and put the separate channels in there yourself. I don't think there's 3DS software out there that does this yet, but I'm not sure. Maybe there's a VGMTrans homebrew for the Nintendo DS/3DS

 

[FAST6191]

There are various flavours of SSEQ player (SSEQ = the midi like format used by the DS SDAT format that the vast vast majority of games used, the other formats present are PCM audio so no need for fancy in hardware conversion there unless you do want that awful DS DAC sound).
https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-sseq-player-i.496301/
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nds-music-player.306997/
https://github.com/RocketRobz/SSEQPlayer

Recording that to SD card might be harder unless the capture stuff available for it works there.

 

[andiandi]

There's a ripping tool called VGMTrans that rips video game music from DS games into MIDI and SF2 formats. In order to get the MP3 version, you may have to find a converter but replace the SF2 that the converter uses or use FL Studio and put the separate channels in there yourself. I don't think there's 3DS software out there that does this yet, but I'm not sure. Maybe there's a VGMTrans homebrew for the Nintendo DS/3DS

Thank you, but I want it to sound exactly like real hardware (like digitally perfect or as close as possible - closer than line-in) and it seems that it's not the case with that kind of method according to this post https://gbatemp.net/threads/nds-music-player.306997/page-10#post-4215546

"However if someone wants to play GBA music without turning on specific game, there is a way, not best one to be honest but IS
It's about program that can "unpack" (note the quote mark) music from GBA games to MIDI format, this MIDI file can be played "as it is" but of course will sound a bit diffrent, so next step would be to import it to Tracker program, edit the instruments for GBA looking and voila, however the noise part can be problematic, I myself didn't found the perfect way how to set-up noise to sound like GBA one"

There are various flavours of SSEQ player (SSEQ = the midi like format used by the DS SDAT format that the vast vast majority of games used, the other formats present are PCM audio so no need for fancy in hardware conversion there unless you do want that awful DS DAC sound).
https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-sseq-player-i.496301/
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nds-music-player.306997/
https://github.com/RocketRobz/SSEQPlayer

Recording that to SD card might be harder unless the capture stuff available for it works there.

Thank you I'll check that. I hope it's an user friendly method, It's ok if it's not saved on SD Card as long as it's not line-in.


If anyone have more method, or if there's more solutions in the future I'll take it.

 

[RoxNoAnne]

Thank you, but I want it to sound exactly like real hardware (like digitally perfect or as close as possible - closer than line-in) and it seems that it's not the case with that kind of method according to this post (can't put the link in the post because I'm too new on GBATemp)

"However if someone wants to play GBA music without turning on specific game, there is a way, not best one to be honest but IS
It's about program that can "unpack" (note the quote mark) music from GBA games to MIDI format, this MIDI file can be played "as it is" but of course will sound a bit diffrent, so next step would be to import it to Tracker program, edit the instruments for GBA looking and voila, however the noise part can be problematic, I myself didn't found the perfect way how to set-up noise to sound like GBA one"

yeah I thought you were talking about high quality rips instead of DS Speaker quality rips. I'd compress the audio files but then again I don't really know if it'd go for DS quality.

 

[FAST6191]

The 2sf playback options the likes of VGMtoolbox generates are pretty good. Far better than old school midi approaches or even the newer offerings with better bank support. They work by extracting the raw data, almost emulating the DS sound core and piping it in that way. I am sure some of the folks at places like https://hcs64.com/mboard/forum.php could tell a difference in a decay or something (you occasionally get a discussion for the vio2sf plugin where someone queries something about the emulation -- at one point it used an older versions of the desmume audio core) but for those of us not cursed with a golden ear then it is going to be nicer than we remember if we played with speakers rather than nice headphones.
I think you will struggle to do better than a line in without tapping something before the entry into the DAC, capturing the data there with a scope (some modern ones have some decent abilities here) or data logger and replicating the DAC's efforts at better quality via the PC. At that point you also will likely run into fun like the SSEQ format uses a less than stellar timer so there might be fractional differences between playback, or the devs themselves being all "clipping, yeah we know it*, we don't care". Also if the game later got ported/remade on android of IOS you might have straight up better quality there that the devs made from better master copies than anything that shipped with a DS ROM.

*that might actually be worth exploring to help with line in stuff, or this in general. There are seldom used volume commands (most things are max or very rare occasion then half) that might allow you to pull off something a bit nicer.

 

[andiandi]

The 2sf playback options the likes of VGMtoolbox generates are pretty good. Far better than old school midi approaches or even the newer offerings with better bank support. They work by extracting the raw data, almost emulating the DS sound core and piping it in that way. I am sure some of the folks at places like https://hcs64.com/mboard/forum.php could tell a difference in a decay or something (you occasionally get a discussion for the vio2sf plugin where someone queries something about the emulation -- at one point it used an older versions of the desmume audio core) but for those of us not cursed with a golden ear then it is going to be nicer than we remember if we played with speakers rather than nice headphones.
I think you will struggle to do better than a line in without tapping something before the entry into the DAC, capturing the data there with a scope (some modern ones have some decent abilities here) or data logger and replicating the DAC's efforts at better quality via the PC. At that point you also will likely run into fun like the SSEQ format uses a less than stellar timer so there might be fractional differences between playback, or the devs themselves being all "clipping, yeah we know it*, we don't care". Also if the game later got ported/remade on android of IOS you might have straight up better quality there that the devs made from better master copies than anything that shipped with a DS ROM.

*that might actually be worth exploring to help with line in stuff, or this in general. There are seldom used volume commands (most things are max or very rare occasion then half) that might allow you to pull off something a bit nicer.

I think I got most of what you mean, but I wonder :

- If that method (SSEQ player) plays the tracks directly through the audio chip (I asked because you talked about vio2sf, which is emulation) ?

- If you can record the playing tracks (e.g. in PCM/WAV) either in SDCard or elsewhere ? Because it only plays the files on the video of that topic https://gbatemp.net/threads/nds-music-player.306997/

- Also, for Line-in (in case there's no better way for GBA) do you happen to know the quality of the DACs for GBA / DS / 3DS (and their models). I guess that the 3DS got the best DAC since it's the most recent, but who knows.

Thank you.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah I was going off topic from playback on the hardware and instead back to the software rips approach and plumping for it -- it is really quite good these days. Early stuff did approximate a sound bank/sound font and would vary depending upon your OS or midi playback settings (think different instrument selection on an electronic keyboard both for playback and the general ripping itself) but modern stuff will grab the corresponding bank files and use those sounds to play back things as it might on the DS. You will really have to sit there comparing the two formats or possibly use the older playback methods that used an inferior audio core for the emulation.

DAC wise generally all junk you would scarcely want to use with earbuds to listen to something if given the choice. I don't know that I have seen comparisons compared to what we saw on the GB/GBC
https://aquellex.ws/goodies/tutorial/game-boy-comparison/
http://www.herbertweixelbaum.com/comparison.htm

I am similarly not aware of any audio mods beyond the basic resistor replacement on later devices to allow you to blow out your eardrums, the odd amp people shove inline, maybe the odd person trying to shove a cap on something to do a hipass/lopass if they also used a nice PWM backlight that gave interference, and the odd person scavenging a new speaker.

 

[andiandi]

DAC wise generally all junk you would scarcely want to use with earbuds to listen to something if given the choice. I don't know that I have seen comparisons compared to what we saw on the GB/GBC
https://aquellex.ws/goodies/tutorial/game-boy-comparison/
http://www.herbertweixelbaum.com/comparison.htm

I wonder for the GBA if the Game Boy Player (for the Gamecube) could be a good alternative (for "Line-in"), i didn't found any informations about DAC or sound quality, if anyone knows about that...