ripping soundfonts from SNES games

[Reshiram_Addict]

how can this be done??? how do I rip soundfonts from Super Nintendo games (roms)... is there such utility to do so???

 

[Rydian]

Some emulators like ZSNES have the ability to save the currently-playing .spc file, and that's actually a copy of all the data in the sound chip's RAM (so to speak) at the time... but some games/songs can change soundbanks in the middle of a song (though there's often a noticeable pause when the SNES is changing songs).

EDIT: Typos.

 

[Reshiram_Addict]

AN SPC FILE IS NOT A SOUNDFONT!!!! PLEASE DON'T RESPOND IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HELP ME IDIOT!!!!!!

 

[loco365]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=rip+soundfont+from+spc

 

[FAST6191]

AN SPC FILE IS NOT A SOUNDFONT!!!! PLEASE DON'T RESPOND IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HELP ME IDIOT!!!!!!

That is not how we roll around here- if you ask a highly technical question and someone makes an honest attempt at answering in a manner that might actually help then even if it does not help your immediate query try to redirect it. This is not the first time you have acted in a similar manner either so I would highly discourage you from acting like this again.

As for the matter at hand the SNES lacks a filesystem or even something resembling a recognised sound format like the GBA's "sappy" format. The idea of the soundfont is for tracker type formats to use custom instruments to make nice sounds that the system designer might not have been able to account for, there are many things that are technically recognised as a type of soundfont (Rydian's suggestion is a bit abstract as far as being able to use it in OpenMPT or something but it technically not inaccurate).

Being custom anything can happen at any point in time- Rydian presumably knew this and pointed you at a method you could use to rip things after a fashion which would probably do for a fair few things people tend to want "soundfonts" for.

After this you are probably going to have to do some proper hacking and reverse engineer the game's sound engine. It will probably fall close to the hardware and probably be something like things that have come before, can't say I know many people that are experts at this as opposed to the GBA Sappy stuff or DS SDAT but hey.

Short version- insulting people that are actually trying to help tends not to work.

 

[JulietStMoon]

AN SPC FILE IS NOT A SOUNDFONT!!!! PLEASE DON'T RESPOND IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HELP ME IDIOT!!!!!!

...

 

[the_randomizer]

AN SPC FILE IS NOT A SOUNDFONT!!!! PLEASE DON'T RESPOND IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HELP ME IDIOT!!!!!!

Wow, you certainly know how to make a good first impression. You have to extract the instruments, locate the spc data and loop them properly. If you're not willing to do that or put any effort into making one, don't ask for our help.

 

[Sixteen_Tons]

To expand on the last post for beginners, with more specifics:

The best possible equivalent you could do is download and use the VST "C700" (in your DAW of choice) to automatically rip the individual wavelengths of each instrument/sound in the SPC file into their own samples. Most games for SNES kept all the samples for the entire game on each SPC so you only really need one per game, though there are some exceptions. If you don't think an instrument/sound is in an SPC when listening through the raw imported samples in C700, theres a very good chance Koji or some sound designer just went crazy manipulating one of those samples.

Unfortunately there currently isn't (and possibly never will be) a way to rip or automatically recreate the soundfont of each instrument, but by using SNES SPC700 Player you can see the pitch, pitch-bends, envelope, etc. of all 8 tracks in the SPC and thus recreate the soundfont for each individual instrument manually by using C700 (which emulates the music chip insides the SNES). Will definitely give you an appreciation for how hard they worked to make SNES music sound so good.

Rarely, you can download soundfonts for specific games that people have already created themselves. There are a few of these over at Zophar's Domain, they also have a bunch of tools for audio ripping and manipulation, as well as SPC files.