View Full Version : 'Higher' quality audio for WA
Koen-ftw
7 Apr 2007, 10:51
Hey all,
I did not want to post this in the 'Do you play WA without a CD?' thread because that would be.. well.. hijacking.
I finished ripping and encoding the audio from the PSX CD quite a while ago, although I hadn't took the time to properly write a little tutorial yet. So here it is.
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1. Grab the audio files you want
You can download the audio files you want from my webspace. The url is http://www.frauded.info/Worms/HighQualityAudio/FLAC/. The files will be in FLAC, which stands for 'Free Lossless Audio Codec'. You can save the files wherever you want, as long as you can remember where (prevent downloading the files multiple times, bandwidth costs money). You should also keep their original names.
2. Decode the FLAC files back to WAV
Download the FLAC Decoder and Frontend from http://flac.sourceforge.net/ (Direct link for Windows users (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/flac/flac113b.exe?use_mirror=superb-west)). Install the package.
- Open the FLAC Frontend, the shortcut should be in your Start menu.
- Click 'Add Files' (top right of the window), and locate and select the FLAC files.
- Set the textbox 'Output directory' to something you can remember. A new folder on your desktop will work fine.
It should look something like this:
http://images.xnr.be/b5afaa47dc1a6d1c1b93f867f4f029b5.png
Click 'Decode'. The frontend will now launch a command prompt which will contain information about the decoding process. The encoding process can take a while depending on the processor you have. DO NOT CLOSE THIS COMMAND PROMPT UNTILL IT HAS FINISHED IT'S TASKS!
3. Make WA use the higher quality sound files
You can do this in two ways. One is directly editing an ISO file of WA, but this will require a tool that can change ISOs, like UltraISO. I have not yet found such a program that is free, so I won't write a tutorial for that. The way I prefer to use is using CyberShadow's WormKit and wkFileOverride.
- Get yourself a copy of WormKit, the website is http://worms.thecybershadow.net/wormkit/. Follow the instructions that come with the program, and enable wkFileOverride by placing it in your main WA directory.
- Open the directory \Worms Armageddon\DATA\Streams. If this directory does not exist, you have to create it.
- In this directory, place the decompiled WAV files from step 2.
- Run WA by opening the WormKit.exe which should be situated in your \Worms Armageddon directory. If you use shortcuts to launch your game, you should update these to point to the WormKit.exe.
- Do a happy dance!
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Little FAQ (of questions which have not yet been asked, heh)
Q: Why FLAC?
A: Personal tests have proved FLAC has the best compression of WAV files. I decided it's not more difficult to decompress a RAR file than to decode FLAC files, so it shouldn't be a problem. Little comparison: FLAC (level 8) makes the files 375mb total. RAR (best compression mode) makes the file 440mb in size.
Q: Why not just use DragonQ's files, but rip the audio yourself?
A: Three reasons: First being his files being of lower quality than mine, and possibly a transcode (this is bad because you will lose a lot of quality this way). Here are two screenshots for spectral analysis: mine (http://xnr.be/serve.php?mode=images&req=e262620ea716392ac4c2bcfa4afe4500.png)/DragonQ's (http://xnr.be/serve.php?mode=images&req=34206429805f549a9846a2bda502ab79.png). Second being some of his tracks are shorter than the ones I have. Some tracks of mine are a longer mix (as opposed to the standard PC CD ones). Here (http://images.xnr.be/321fd7e08d1e7eeacf927713e76fe339.png) is a screenshot that shows the difference. Third being we had a lot of troubles getting his .RAR on my server, it got corrupted multiple times.
Q: How did you get the files from the PSX CD to your PC?
A: I'm trying to rip the music from a PSX game to my computer, and I want to encode it to FLAC. The first step was to convert the *.XA files to PCM WAV, which I did using Foobar with the foo_adpcm dll. After this I had to upconvert the sample rate from 37800Hz to 44100Hz, otherwise FLAC wouldn't take it and it might have caused problems in the game (didn't test that). I did this upconvert with Adobe Audition. Last step was to encode to FLAC, this was done with the maximum compression rate possible. The converting process should be almost lossless, only the sample rate conversion might not be fully lossless.
This concludes my little FAQ! Do another happy dance, newbs!
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Major thanks go out to DragonQ for giving me the idea of doing this, and also the way he has tried to help out with uploading his files to the server. Shame it had to go wrong all the time.
Also thanks to Lex, who helped with some research regarding the sample rate conversion. Thank you, kind sir!
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Right. That's my post. Let's hope I didn't make too many spelling errors! ;)
Koen for the win! :D
I guess I have to check the lenghts of my files that I got a few months ago from the first guy that posted them.
(That wasn't you, were you?)
Very nice Koen but I'm afraid I'm just okay with my Sound Blaster sound quality.
I also released the MP3's of PSX audio here and to gamemp3#
The PSX are already encoded to XA so mp3 at high quality isn't too bad an idea. Flac will give you accurate reproduction to the original PSX i suppose, but I can't see the near miniscule (i mean this from a listener point of view) increase in quality being worth it tbh;)
But nice tutorials:)
Who'd have thought it? A 999MB Worms Armageddon ISO!
I agree. Like i said before, would be good if we could have in game MP3 and if that is illegal, perhaps a good free audio codec instead.
But the music that comes with the game is adequate and I turn off the music these days anyway whilst playing/.
in game MP3 and if that is illegal, perhaps a good free audio codec instead.
Ogg Vorbis.
But the music that comes with the game is adequate and I turn off the music these days anyway whilst playing/.
Me too.
But if we get separate in-game volume controls for music, speech and sound effects one day, I'll definitely be using the ambience music more often again, when my Winamp playlist runs out.
Koen-ftw
8 Apr 2007, 08:17
Ogg would be great, ofcourse. The reason I put these up as FLAC is because people that _want_ the highest (to us) possible quality audio _can_ have it. If you're not into a 999mb ISO and higher loading times, that's ofcourse up to you. This is a fully optional thing.
when my Winamp playlist runs out.
mine won't run out;) 2000 mainstream tunes and 2000 game tunes:):p
and Koen, whilst they might want the best quality, they should know that the PSX one is already encoded. The only way to get the best audio quality is to get it released on CD from the master
Ogg would be great, ofcourse. The reason I put these up as FLAC is because people that _want_ the highest (to us) possible quality audio _can_ have it. If you're not into a 999mb ISO and higher loading times, that's ofcourse up to you. This is a fully optional thing.
I was referring to Ogg as the preferrable format for a future patch making sounds transferable over the net.
they should know that the PSX one is already encoded. The only way to get the best audio quality is to get it released on CD from the master
Yeah, but with FLAC you get that quality. Lossless and with the smallest filesize.
Koen-ftw
8 Apr 2007, 15:11
The only way to get the best audio quality is to get it released on CD from the master
I do ofcourse know that. That's why I named the topic 'higher' quality, and I also mentioned that it's the 'higest' quality 'us normal newbs' have access to. I'd love to get my hands on copies made straight from the masters, heh.
The ones I posted here are comparable to 192kbps CBR MP3 (capped at 19Khz), the ones DragonQ sent me were comparable to 128kbps APS (VBR) MP3 (around 16Khz), and the ones that come on your PC CD are something lik 56kbps CBR MP3 or something. Something very low, anyways (capped at, yes, a major 9Khz!).
awesome, high def "noooooooooooos!"
CyberShadow
8 Apr 2007, 23:34
awesome, high def "noooooooooooos!"
AFAIK Koen only ripped the in-game music - however, I'm curious as well, if the other sounds are of a higher quality than the PC version.
AFAIK Koen only ripped the in-game music - however, I'm curious as well, if the other sounds are of a higher quality than the PC version.
Oh! :eek:
Although, I wondered why Lyndon was speaking about the speechbank sounds, I didn't think about this.
So, Koen, could you compare all the speechbanks, sound effects and fanfares for us and convert to FLAC if they are of higher quality?
Koen-ftw
9 Apr 2007, 01:21
So, Koen, could you compare all the speechbanks, sound effects and fanfares for us and convert to FLAC if they are of higher quality?
I could do that, yes. I'll have to look into a way to do it, though - these were not stored in .XA files and I haven't yet found them on the ISO.
I could do that, yes. I'll have to look into a way to do it, though - these were not stored in .XA files and I haven't yet found them on the ISO.
When you find them, could you see if there are additional speechbanks not available in the PC version?
I know there are some additional speechbanks of dialects from Germany on the German Playstation version.
Koen-ftw
9 Apr 2007, 01:43
I've found the soundbanks, I think. They come in .SND format, which is used by not only the PSX so finding a good decoder and actually ripping them could form a problem. I haven't yet figured out where the sound FX are located.
They are there, I remember. I no longer have disc though:(
They might even be in normal wav format inside an archive. I know I extracted once over....
This is a good thread, Koen. :)
isnt SND a wave file?
i don't know, but the voices wuld have to be stored in an extractable form. If i had the disc i would be able to find them in 5 seconds.
They would have to be in wave type, streamed data
Koen-ftw
9 Apr 2007, 23:16
I can't seem to figure out myself. Here's a soundbank, so others can try. When you managed to do it, please post your method and I can do the others, and upload them afterwards.
http://frauded.info/Worms/HighQualityAudio/PSXSoundBanks/AFRICAAN.SND
The other files in the soundbank folder are .IDX files:
http://frauded.info/Worms/HighQualityAudio/PSXSoundBanks/AFRICAAN.IDX
As for the sound FX: I have not yet located those. There is one file which is named something like MenuLoop, but real sound effects I have not yet found.
edited: looking into snd again
The idx file is also tiny at 1 Kb and is still no good
It must be somewhere else. I will try and get disc
The sound effects will probably not be in wave format. Liek Final fantasy games, and alot on the PS, they are made using the playstations hardware from small code on the disc. But, it is still possible that they are in streamed data format in this case
Koen-ftw
9 Apr 2007, 23:37
Here's the complete listing of all files on the disc I have:
http://frauded.info/Worms/HighQualityAudio/Junk/filelisting.txt
If anybody notices any files that might be useful, feel free to post.
05-08-1999 08:03 113.328.128 MUSIC1.XA
05-08-1999 08:07 170.278.912 MUSIC2.XA
are both used for music or did you geta ll from 1. I cannot remember.
Also, it may be that the voice samples are in files that are not showing on the disc. This sometimes is done. Should we take this to PM?
I havent played psx version in long time either... there are so many ways they can use the data or encode it or place it, and in quite a few cases over the years it has been impossible for the average joe like me to do anything about it working witht he tools provided. This MAY be sucha case:( I still remember extracting themthough...but maybe i was wrong
Koen-ftw
9 Apr 2007, 23:46
The MUSIC1.XA and MUSIC2.XA both held a part of the ambience (which is already extracted), and nothing more. I am pretty sure there's no speech or sound effects in those files.
actually I am thinking about these snd also. 200 Kbytes. At say 56 Kbit/s or lower this MAY be enough (28 seconds of speech).
thing is, an snd file can be anything team 17 wanted it to be. So I will look into it, but it is entirely possible that even if the speech is here, it cannot be extracted witht he tools me have:(
p.s. yeah the snd files seem right. If you open them as raw wav's you can hear speech amidst alot of distortion. (as 8 bit low frequency mono in adobe audition (or i may be hearing things. i hate this. will get back to you)
May be that the snd file is a format we cannot decode or if we can, don't know enough about what it is. Anyway, bonz only wanted to know whether theer were extra ones? and the list you provide does that ok i suppose
And looks like I made a mistake, it must have been something else I was thinking of when I extracted voices. but, I think the samples are in the snd files. How to get em out, dunno
A shot in the dark:
15-08-1999 17:16 271.632 EFFECT.SND
There is no speechbank called "effect" on the PC version and also the name highly suggests that it my be the sound effects. Also, it's bigger than the average speechbank.
Edit:
According to this thread (http://www.future-music.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10478) Awave Studio (http://www.fmjsoft.com/download/awave.html) can convert SND files.
Now go, go, go!
Koen-ftw
10 Apr 2007, 00:39
Edit:
According to this thread (http://www.future-music.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10478) Awave Studio (http://www.fmjsoft.com/download/awave.html) can convert SND files.
Now go, go, go!
I'll give that a shot. The problem is that there are so many different ways of using the .SND format. Some stuff from #worms:
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> errrm
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND AKAI MPC-series Sample
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Amiga Sound (Amiga)
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Heroes of Might & Magic 3 Archive
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Interplay/MusicStudio Sound
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Macintosh Sound Resource
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND NeXT Sound
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Raw Unsigned PCM Data
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Software Toolworks Sound
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Sound Clip
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Sounder/Soundtools Sound
[01:33] <CF|Cheese> SND Wired For Sound
[01:15] <madewokherd> AFRICAAN.SND: Hitachi SH big-endian COFF executable, not stripped
[01:06] <CF|Cheese> .SND Sound Clip file / Raw unsigned PCM data / AKAI MPC-series sample / NeXT sound / Macintosh sound resource file
And I've probably missed some. :-/
I have had a look at snd file with awave. no go. It isn't ina n everyday format. snd is simply an extension, the file is something more than usual and you will prob never get the effects as i mentioned, for that you need the psx hardware or the hardware emulated.
FF7 for example, small file with effects but the code is in it and tells the hardware how to produce the desired sound. Prob the same with worms Armageddon. You can't do this for speech though, so the speech must be in a streamed format
I opened it in all 8 bit formats with adobe audition and you can vaguely hear speech. But the only way we can ever really know is to get lucky or to ask team 17 what they used and how we could decode them. The snd file is more than likely a sony encoded file/format, along the likes of XA
Maybe someone round here with some programming knowledge could tell us? Surely someone around here knows how team 17 used voices/formats on the psx?
I have also sent the file to neill corlett, if anyone knows what he is on about, it is him
Thanks Koen-ftw for this! I've been away for a while and so was only watching the other (do you play without the CD) thread, so hadn't noticed these.
But thanks alot, the sound improvement is instantly noticable!
why didnt you use the new v1.1.4 version for encoding?
Koen-ftw
11 Apr 2007, 03:47
why didnt you use the new v1.1.4 version for encoding?
What the hell was that supposed to mean? :confused:
What the hell was that supposed to mean? :confused:
Fire at will!
http://nsrt.edgeemu.com/images/franpa-alert/
He means the newest version of FLAC
"Comment : Encoded by FLAC v1.1.3a with FLAC Frontend v1.7.1"
yes, prior to the initial post of this thread there was a v1.1.4 of FLAC released.
Koen-ftw
11 Apr 2007, 14:17
yes, prior to the initial post of this thread there was a v1.1.4 of FLAC released.
Well, I guess I didn't upgrade properly then. Not that it matters, though. There are no bugfixes that apply in this situation, and the speedup when decoding should still be noticable when you guys use the latest version. The difference in size of the files (1.1.3a and 1.1.4) is probably not really noticable.
is the frontend availible as a seperate download? because the installer link for the new version on there site fails... i downloaded the tools zip and just overwrote the plugin found in winamp.
Koen-ftw
11 Apr 2007, 15:16
is the frontend availible as a seperate download? because the installer link for the new version on there site fails... i downloaded the tools zip and just overwrote the plugin found in winamp.
There are two mirrors, did you check both of them?
Koen is right franpa, updates are often negligible, especially in lossless codecs like flac
I often laugh at all the lame MP3 enthusiasts who really do think they can hear differences at high bitrates between earlier and newer updates. It is just laughable.
I have tried a few different audio tools, but none could recognize those SND files.
I think, as someone said before, that those files are like MIDI files, reproducible only by the Playstation's audio hardware.
My guess is, that the corresponding IDX file is some sort of index of the particular sounds within the speechbanks and the soundeffect SND files.
So, we would need something to emulate the Playstation's audio hardware and probably also some way to read the index files.
I often laugh at all the lame MP3 enthusiasts who really do think they can hear differences at high bitrates between earlier and newer updates. It is just laughable.
More so if you lack an anechoic room and a soundsystem that costs more than a Ferrari. :rolleyes:
Besides, any lossy sound compression is inherently flawed if the psychoacoustic model and the binaural recording isn't based on a dummy head shaped after your head.
So, unless your egghead is shaped like the average dummy head used at Fraunhofer labs (and your ears unimpaired and as good as an owl's, you'll never get the best performance out of the MP3 format.
so true bonz. and people fail to realise what you just mentioned. Clamouring for every little update like it will make a huge difference. I would love to get them all sat down and test them, we would soon see if they really knew what they were on about.
As long as it sounds right to me on a decent system, why should I care wehther there is a 1% difference that my brain won't even notice via a later update?
Like you say, without a very expensive system, it is all pointless.
as for what you said on SND it is possible. I don't know why they would do it this way for speech but for effects this is certainly the way it is done. Even music is done in sequence type, as you say bonz, (named PSF now) which makes the music sound true to the original at very small filesize.
I expect this will faze out more with blu-ray because they have more space to play with. In the future certainly, if filesize, game size, remains relatively low, music will be streamed instead. Final fantasy 4 (for psx) uses streamed music, but the later use sequence PSF and PSF2
This is one reason why WA PSX uses streamed music, obviously they had a large amoun tof free space to play with on the CD. Obviously it is cheaper and easier to use streamed music with XA than go into sequencing
I don't know why they would do it this way for speech
I wonder how they can get a whole speechbank down to the size of a MIDI file and still let it sound like human (well, wormy) speech.
is the frontend availible as a seperate download? because the installer link for the new version on there site fails... i downloaded the tools zip and just overwrote the plugin found in winamp.
Flac Frontend: http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm
Just use that with the tools package (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=13478&package_id=12675)
Its the one that they use in the Installer version anyway
I wonder how they can get a whole speechbank down to the size of a MIDI file and still let it sound like human (well, wormy) speech.
well, 200 KB is enough:) I thought that at first but consider:
200KByte= 1600Kbit
And, if they use a reasonablecompression @ 56kbit mono (which would be enough to hear voice well)
Then 1600/56 = 28 seconds of speech. Surely, that would be enough? There are plenty of ways they could have got 150-200 KByte to represent all the speechbank by compression.
infact, you could prob get away with 32 kBit/s compression for speech, giving you more than enough time. Maybe deadcode could shed light on what they actually did? But I still think the SND files are the speech though certainly i cannot be sure. It is mathematically possible to represent speech at very low compression and bitrate. I can demonstrate this with MP3 for certain. The speech sounds pretty good and I have got 30 seconds at 115 KBytes:)
The other files are prob index files to the individual sample within the SND
I am gonna say SND or WA PSX uses a compression algorithm in this instance.
:p what do u think?
Koen-ftw
11 Apr 2007, 20:40
Actually, a lot of audiobooks are encoded at bitrates around 56kbps which is more than enough for speech.
indeed:) So, it is still possible the snd files are the whole bank. but, we will prob never know how to or be able to decode them
wait, the alternate link is for the old version 1.1.3 =\
edited... and thanks h2oz7v.
tried new hi-fi sound
i like it
thanx
it would be gr8 to found as many as possible sounds (effects etc =))
Koen's link in the first post seems to be broken, so I have a mirror here (http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/worms/Worms%20Armageddon%20High%20Quality%20Audio.7z).
Koen's link in the first post seems to be broken, so I have a mirror here (http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/worms/Worms%20Armageddon%20High%20Quality%20Audio.7z).
Thanks very much ;]
Extremist2
7 Feb 2011, 23:33
There's a free software I use for encoding/decoding audio/video called SUPER. It's a GUI that brings together MANY different command-line based codec packages.
It's tricky to get it off of their website (you can't link directly to it - you've got to scroll through about four whole pages to find it), so if nobody has tried this option and someone still has those .snd files, maybe they could be sent my way for another futile attempt? ;)
But before we head down that path, has anyone tried this (http://www.winamp.com/plugin/au-snd-plug-in/2206)?
Koen's link in the first post seems to be broken, so I have a mirror here (http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/worms/Worms%20Armageddon%20High%20Quality%20Audio.7z).
I can't find 5 streams in Your package, are they missing in PSX release?
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