Rock n' Roll Racing Original with Voice Question / Contra 3

Hi,

I was checking the PCM sets by inserting the raw data files into Audacity. It seems that Bad to the Bone (rnrr_msu1-3.pcm) is sped up to the point where it sounds like The Chipmunks.

Is the playback of the .pcm files in Audacity indicative of what it will actually sound like through SNES9x?

I'm referring to the Original with Voice by snes-forever.blogspot:

https://app.box.com/s/37f192k53xqc2zo2ay83jec8ar4ah247

The other tracks sound right, so I am a bit perplexed.

Another example that comes to mind is Contra 3 in PepilloPeV's Arranged Final Set
https://www.zeldix.net/t1501-contra-iii-the-alien-wars

The video posted sounds fine at 0:12 onward, but when I check c3taw,Sa1Us-msu1-0.pcm by importing raw data into Audacity, it sounds slow and with a lot of background noise. You can see it in the waveforms:


Again, is it an error in the .pcm file, or is something wrong in the way Audacity interprets the raw data file? Maybe the import raw data settings are incorrect?


Thanks.

gameseeker86

Import it as 16-bit and not 8. That should sort it.

Hi Relikk,

Thanks, the playback sounds accurate with 16-bit. Just curious, how do I know the game will play the PCM file at the correct bit depth? Said another way, why did the Audacity raw data import suggest the wrong bit depth? I've seen it choose 32-bit in some cases, so I presumed it was inherent to the nature of the PCM file.

Lossless audio, in the case of PCM files when used with MSU1, is 16-bit / 44.1 kHz. That's the standard CD quality spec and what anything MSU1 capable/compatible is looking for. Whether they're being played back by an SD2SNES/FXPak or by an emulator that supports it, any other format simply won't play back, and converters that we use to convert the original wave files to PCM don't let you have a source that's anything other than a 16-bit / 44.1kHz wave file. There's no worry involved, with any of the music used for MSU1 games, that they won't play back correctly.

Audacity's auto-detection of raw files isn't reliable on some occasions, it seems.