ROM Hack DS sound files reverse engineered

FAST6191 · Jun 21, 2006

Edit read on for some info below but a quick link list:
Specs:
http://loveemu.yh.land.to/page/NDS/SDAT.html
http://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/sdat.html

Preferred tool for ripping: ndsdnsext
http://nintendon.s6.xrea.com/
Second link down on the left or ??????

Original post:

As the topic says some people have worked at reverse engineering the sound files of the DS and have got reasonably far in doing so.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/loveemu/20060114

The original site gives me a SQL error but you can download the tool here: http://djbouche.net/dl/sdattool0.32.rar
The original site: http://djbouche.net/sdat!sdattool (google has it cached)

Oh and for those that care Tony Hawks A.S. uses STRM so a custom sound track should be almost trivial and could probably even be done with a batch file and a few tools.

QUOTE(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/loveemu/20060114) said:
Hello loveemu,

I'm just informing you that I started a new utility called sdattool.

It's main purpose is to generate an SMAP file, similar to the one I have attached in this e-mail which was found with the SDAT file in the game Zoids Genesis DS. It has proven a very useful file in the reverse engineering of SDAT and it was nice of the game developers to [perhaps accidentally] leave it in there.

So far the utility reads the SYMB table in order to obtain the filenames for each file. It reads the INFO table in order to retrieve the main information necessary for the SMAP file. Finally it reads the FAT table (and as an option, like sseqrip, extracts the files from the FILE block into an organised set of folders and named using their symbols) and generates the FAT list for the SMAP file.

Hopefully by this we can get an even greater understanding of the files in the SDAT system.

Here is some interesting things I have noted:

SSEQ
SEQ - Sequence - A converted MIDI sequence. Linked to a BANK for instruments.
SSAR
SEQARC - Sequence Archive - A collection of sequences (used mainly for sound effect banks, format is unknown, the entries look nothing like SSEQ at all...)
SBNK
BANK - Bank - A bank which is linked to up to 4 WAVEARCs which contain the samples. Define the instruments in which a sequence can use. (format still unknown)
SWAR
WAVEARC - Wave Archive - A collection of wave samples (which can be in either PCM or ADPCM compression)
STRM
STRM - Stream - An individual wave (PCM or ADPCM).
GROUP
I'm not quite sure.

My apologies, I was wrong about sseq2mid not converting Mario Kart DS correctly. There was something wrong with my MIDI sequencer. It works fine now. I am in the process of making a command line tool which allows you to specify a MIDI instrument/drum map and apply it to any standard MIDI file.

Feel free to post any of this information. Hope it helps!

Andrew

Now if you will excuse me this has just given me a lot of new stuff to play with now.

Dirtie · Jun 21, 2006

Excellent stuff. I enjoy finding out about any developments in reverse engineering, now I'm gonna have a play too

Why didn't we hear about this earlier?

Edit: Hmm, I only seem to be getting the SMAP file and nothing else - the text you quoted says it should output the specific files though, unless I'm mistaken.

Edit 2: Ahh nm I got it, forgot the -x parameter.

Killermech · Jun 21, 2006

Could someone give some guidance in how to make this work?
I've managed to get the ssdat file and converted it successfully. But what kind of programs do play those files?

After some research I found out something about 'sseq2mid', but I can't find it anywhere :/

Dirtie · Jun 23, 2006

By the way, what format did you use to get those Tony Hawk files sounding ok? The closest I got to anything was a faint background beat in amongst lots of static.

Zidapi · Jun 23, 2006

QUOTE(Killermech @ Jun 21 2006 said:
Could someone give some guidance in how to make this work?
I've managed to get the ssdat file and converted it successfully. But what kind of programs do play those files?

After some research I found out something about 'sseq2mid', but I can't find it anywhere :/

After a quick search i found sseq2mid. it's part of ssequtil found here http://loveemu.yh.land.to/

just drag your sseq (you can select multiple) onto the sseq2mid.exe to convert em

QUOTE(Dirtie @ Jun 23 2006 said:

By the way, what format did you use to get those Tony Hawk files sounding ok? The closest I got to anything was a faint background beat in amongst lots of static.

Click to expand...

Which Tony Hawk files are you talking about? i'd like to check em out.
I assume you are talking about *.strm files i've had no luck getting anything but static too.

FAST6191 · Jun 23, 2006

Too much static means you generally have sampled at too high a bitrate and given that they have 12 songs into a fairly small file (one song is normally 40 odd megs in uncompressed PCM wave at CD quality) it means they have likely used a very low bitrate. I will have to learn a bit more about audio before I can be of much more help though.

I have got the T.H.A.S. to play in media player by splicing a header from a standard PCM wave file over the intial few bytes (up to around about 7F offset).

Thanks for the links Zidapi by the way.

Edit:
Cool edit 200 plays California uber alles very slowly which means it may do a real time speed up (a good reason for slowdowns).

Dirtie · Jun 23, 2006

I wasn't talking about media player, I was more referring to getting it to sound like something recognizable in Cool Edit or Audacity

Killermech · Jun 23, 2006

QUOTE(Zidapi @ Jun 23 2006 said:
QUOTE(Killermech @ Jun 21 2006 said:

Could someone give some guidance in how to make this work?
I've managed to get the ssdat file and converted it successfully. But what kind of programs do play those files?

After some research I found out something about 'sseq2mid', but I can't find it anywhere :/

After a quick search i found sseq2mid. it's part of ssequtil found here http://loveemu.yh.land.to/

just drag your sseq (you can select multiple) onto the sseq2mid.exe to convert em

Click to expand...

Danke! Works and im getting all the songs from nsmb atm

Zidapi · Jun 23, 2006

QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Jun 23 2006 said:
Too much static means you generally have sampled at too high a bitrate and given that they have 12 songs into a fairly small file (one song is normally 40 odd megs in uncompressed PCM wave at CD qualtity) it means they have likely used a very low bitrate. I will have to learn a bit more about audio before I can be of much more help though.

I have got the T.H.A.S. to play in media player by splicing a header from a standard PCM wave file over the intial few bytes (up to around about 7F offset).

Thanks for the links Zidapi by the way.

Will splicing the header in clean up the static? or just make it playable in media player?

QUOTE(Dirtie @ Jun 23 2006 said:

I wasn't talking about media player, I was more referring to getting it to sound like something recognizable in Cool Edit or Audacity

Click to expand...

I've managed to clean up some pcm files mucking around with the default filters in Adobe Audition. I've had the best results when loading the pcm at a sample rate of 32000 and 8-bit resolution. If you have better luck with your progs let me know.

Like FAST6191 i don't know alot about audio so i'm just experimenting at the moment.

dafatkid27 · Jun 23, 2006

QUOTE(Killermech @ Jun 23 2006 said:
Danke! Works and im getting all the songs from nsmb atmÂ

Any chance you could upload 'em somewhere when you're finished "ripping" them?

Zidapi · Jun 23, 2006

heheh no probs Killermech

With 400+ DS Dumped, my phone will be getting a slew of new ringtones and message tones this weekend

I'd be happy to upload Midi soundtrack compilations to somewhere like rapidshare for people after the weekend

Killermech · Jun 23, 2006

QUOTE(dafatkid27 @ Jun 23 2006 said:
QUOTE(Killermech @ Jun 23 2006 said:

Danke! Works and im getting all the songs from nsmb atmÂ

Any chance you could upload 'em somewhere when you're finished "ripping" them?

Click to expand...

Sure, here ya go
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...E13AC7516FF5115

Feel free to remove the link if these mid files are in any way violating to the board rules. Im not to sure about the .mid files since it 'generates' them :/

dafatkid27 · Jun 23, 2006

Thanks a bunch Killermech, and that would be awesome if you do Zidapi. Let me know when you have uploaded the compilations.

By the way, don't use Rapidshare, I hate the waiting. Use sendspace.com.

Triforce · Jun 23, 2006

Good work guys and thanks for uploading the .mids Killermech

BTW Angela Liu recored most of the songs from New Super Mario Bros and put an 80mb / 224kbps mp3 format zip on rapidshare about 2 days after the USA release. I think she just done a recording from the headphones out but it sounds alright.

If you lot want the mp3's you can get the rapidshare link on this forum http://www.altpop.com/stc/forums/viewtopic.php?id=681 thanks for all the nfo guys and enjoy

FAST6191 · Jun 23, 2006

Guide to turning your soundfiles to mid.
You will need NDSTS
http://www.gbadat.altervista.org/tools.htm
You will need sdattool:
http://djbouche.net/dl/sdattool0.32.rar
You will need ssequti, grab it about 3/4 of the way down the page here:
http://loveemu.yh.land.to/

And obviously a rom. Only SSEQ files can be made into mid but this covers about 60% of the roms (and this is the very defintition of a conservative estimate).

Grab the .sdat file with NDSTS (you could also use NDSTool for this but this way is potentially easier.
Having got your shiny sound files (normally they are called sound_data.sdat and are located in an obvious directory name like sound) you will have to rip the sseq files from it.

Have sdattool.exe and your sound file in a directory
Use sdattool.exe with the following DOS command

Code:

sdattool -x sound_data.sdat

(obviously change the sound_data.sdat part if your soundfile is not called that)
Up should come a sound_data directory, in the sound_data\Seq directory hopefully is a bunch of .sseq files in it.
Extract ssequtil-20051122.rar to a directory and in the bin subfolder is a program called sseq2mid.exe. Drag some .sseq files onto it and in the directory the .sseq files came from should be some .mid files which you can play/copy/convert/whatever.

I will see if I can get a guide set up to other sorts of files but this should help a few people.

bryehn · Jun 23, 2006

i was waiting for tools like this.

will be really helpful in making rips too.

i would have settled for a simple sdat player.

really awesome...but now i'm gona waste a day messing with it.

EDIT: now if only we had something to decode the strm files too...

EDIT2: Trying to rip the animal crossing suff for my wife, and sseq2mid just spits out "error 38"...

any ideas?

Killermech · Jun 23, 2006

Nice guide Fast and that's what I normally do Triforce, record them from the mic output to my comp that is

But mid extensions make them 'remix'friendly since you can mess around with the tunes and layers

Maybe we could have a diff topic to list all the games we made to mid? So we wouldn't have to make some others already made, would make it alot easier for all of us.
I made four more to share so enjoy

Animal Crossing Wild World

Metroid Prime Pinball

Mario & Luigi - Partners in time

TetrisDS

bryehn · Jun 23, 2006

I just can't make any work. it just spits out eror 38 every time.

i can playback .mid files just fine too :\

i so confused.

Darkforce · Jun 23, 2006

I have the same problem... dragging and dropping the .sseq files into sseq2mid.exe won't do anything. Doing it via command prompt produces an '#error 38'. Anyone?

=(

Triforce · Jun 23, 2006

I was going to rip some myself but im having a problem trying to leech ssequti. I can get on the site with googlecache but cant leech the tool. Even a download manager with 15 retries would'nt leech it. Could somone upload ssequti somewhere else ?

ROM Hack DS sound files reverse engineered

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