Enable MSU streaming music for Alttp

I could, yeah, but since you have the "Default to .spc if .pcm not found", is it really necessary?

I'm actually about to upload my (probably) Final archive for the MSU audio - I've been fixing volume and tweaking a few things, so this should be the last.

EDIT: Alright, I deleted my old uploads, and am now uploading what should be the final MSU archive. I will post a link when it is ready. This final archive contains the 'vanilla' warp sound effect converted into .pcm format - if you would rather the .spc version play, just delete 'alttp_msu-8.pcm'. This won't change the way this sounds - it just won't use the MSU-1 to play the SFX, which means there is a zero percent chance of the screen flickering black when the sound plays. I personally prefer to delete the 'alttp_msu-8.pcm', but you can replace it with your own SFX if you like. I briefly used the TARDIS' landing SFX for it.

Here we go!

Thanks, as I wrote in my previous post, the vanilla warp spc will only Play in sd2snes, since bsnes will not set the error bit for reasons I cannot retrace.

Therefore, the bsnes users (who might be the majority since only a few own a sd2snes) will have mute otherwise.

Okay. Well, I found one audio file that was way too loud, so my so-called 'Final' archive is not, as it were, 'final'. I'm going through all the audio right now to double-check everything. Grr.

I also noticed that the sfx are too silent in comparison to the volume of the pcm played. But this seems to be all right in the final Version (except the one track you mentioned maybe)

You must be working off of one of my older ones - my (2) archive accidentally had the volume boosted by 225%! I've already corrected that, but there are a few files I have to re-do. Or rather, 'had', because I just finished my last one. I'll be re-upping my archive in a bit. I'll have the link in about 10 minutes.

great, I updated the link on the main post.

Yeah. Had the same with my Donkey Kong Country 2 Pack. ^^ Sadly Luigiblood never finished it...

I would like to give some better documentations, currently I only have one for the use with bsnes like this:

Code:


So, how you do it?
- open the alttp_msu.zip
-apply alttp_msu.ips to your rom
- rename this rom to "alttp_msu.smc"
-make a new folder (msu or whatever)
- copy the bsnes v.75 (all files) into this folder (part of the zip file)
- copy the  patched alttp_msu.smc into this folder
- copy alttp_msu.msu and alttp_msu.xml into this folder (part of the zip file)
- convert 34 wav files of your choice into pcm and copy them into this folder
Important note: sd2snes and bsnes 0.69 and higher will only play pcm files. You need to convert them with http://helmet.kafuka.org/wav2msu.rar
Ensure the name is
alttp_msu-0.pcm
alttp_msu-1.pcm
.....
.....
alttp_msu-9.pcm
alttp_msu-10.pcm
....
....
alttp_msu-34.pcm

Then open the rom in bsnes 0.75 and enjoy!

Note, the waves are counted in decimal while the game spc are counted in hex. Means, the song 0a (getting master sword) is actually theme 10.


Can you give a step by step documentation about how to use it with sd2snes? I do not have this System and dunno if you Need to store the pcm somewhere different, XML or msu is needed and such.

I also pm:ed qwertymodo about the higan specifications (library, where to store it there and such). Hopefully he's still around.

Okay, using this with SD2SNES is super easy.

I made a custom folder in the main directory called 'MSU Zelda'. In this folder, you'll need to have your expanded, patched Zelda ROM, and you should rename it to 'alttp_smu.sfc'. In this same directory, you'll need the 'alttp_msu.msu' file and the 'alltp_msu.xml'.

Then simply unzip the 'A Link to the Past MSU Audio Complete.rar' file in that same directory. It's that easy; everything goes in the same folder. Then put your SD2SNES into your SNES, navigate to the folder you stored the ROM file in, start it, and enjoy.

TheRetromancer: How did you make the PCMs coming from the Original SPCs? I suggest Alpha2 WinAMP Addon and there you have nice toys to improve the audio.

And maybe a list which files you used would rock ^^ Test playing the PCMs is not that easy...

Cool, the same way as bsnes works. I updated the tutorial inside the zip and hope qwertymodowill give a higan tutprial as well-

If you're going to copy my .bml code into the OP, you might want to remove the track number="" name="" lines otherwise they might cause confusion, especially since they're incomplete. My post included a note indicating that and what to do about it, but for the OP I think it would be better without them entirely.

I must admit I hardly used higan (don't even know what the OP is... can you maybe give a step by step tutorial, where to put the pcm, msu and bml (into the library or can they stay in the game Folder...?
If they must be stored into the library, where is its Location?) and maybe post an updated bml without the track numbers?

Conn wrote:I must admit I hardly used higan (don't even know what the OP is... can you maybe give a step by step tutorial, where to put the pcm, msu and bml (into the library or can they stay in the game Folder...?
If they must be stored into the library, where is its Location?) and maybe post an updated bml without the track numbers?

The OP means the Original Post. So he was refering to that Asm code you posted in the original post and remove the the track number="" name="" lines.

emuandco wrote:TheRetromancer: How did you make the PCMs coming from the Original SPCs? I suggest Alpha2 WinAMP Addon and there you have nice toys to improve the audio.

And maybe a list which files you used would rock ^^ Test playing the PCMs is not that easy...

Well, it helps to have several years in audio production, for starters. I started off with either .mp3s or .wavs (I acquired the files from several different sources), but I would caution against using .mp3s of less than 320 kbps. You can go a bit lower, but never drop below 200 kbps - your ears will be able to tell.

Anyway, you make sure that any non-.wav files are converted to .wav, and particularly, they need to be 44.1kHz, 16-bit and 1411kbps. This is critical - they MUST be in this format, as the MSU-1 will not accept anything less than true CD quality audio. I prefer to use GoldWave as my converter of choice - it accepts a tremendous variety of different audio formats, and is capable of reading .pcm natively (which is nice, let me tell you).

If you want to loop the files, you'll need to open the .wav in Audacity or another audio program that can view the timecode as samples. You'll need to find two locations - a start location for the loop and an end location - both rendered as a sample number. On the 'end' location, you'll need to delete all audio after that, as the MSU-1 treats the end of the audio file as the loop end.

Finally, using wav2msu.exe's -l function, you'll need to open it up in the Command Prompt and write something like this:

wav2msu alttp_msu-18.wav -l 510872

This means that wav2msu will render the file alttp_msu-18.wav with a loop starting at sample location 510872.

Ah, I remember SePH experienced some Problems in his PU Project like some themes were played too slowly or such things. Maybe you can help him in case SePH Encounters more Problems.

Thanks Puzz, I'd Need to know how the files must be named; e.g., alttp_msu.bml? And where to put it, e.g., into the library Folder (somewhat weird location"user/appdata.." or something like this. Higan also stores the srm there.

Conn wrote:Ah, I remember SePH experienced some Problems in his PU Project like some themes were played too slowly or such things. Maybe you can help him in case SePH Encounters more Problems.

Oh, I know exactly what causes that. The MSU-1 requires 44.1kHz resolution with a bit depth of 16-bits. If, for some reason, the converted file's resolution is 22.05kHz, the file will play at double the speed. If the bit depth is 32-bits, the file will play at half-speed.

I had my fun with looping, too. But for now I just tried it with directly converted, optimized SPCs in DKC2. Worked fine indeed. I used Audacity for the sample point finding. Btw, some nice samples you have added there ^^

You've got an MSU-1 patch for DKC2? Share! I want to get going on that!

Only the music. I teamed up with LuigiBlood in the past, but he did not manage to get it working.

Who CARES? Post it, please!

Conn, the library folder used to reside in %APPDATA%\Emulation, but now it is located in %USERPROFILE%\Emulation. Inside the library folder is a subfolder for each console, then inside each console folder is where the game folders go, so %USERPROFILE%\Emulation\Super Famicom\Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past, The (NA) (1.0).sfc\gamefilesgohere

Within the game folder, the default file names are:
Manifest: manifest.bml
ROM: program.rom
Save: save.ram
MSU-1 data file: msu1.msu
MSU-1 audio file: track-#.pcm

I'm not 100% sure on whether it's track-1.pcm or track-01.pcm for tracks 1-9...

Also, some of those file names can be changed if they are specified in the manifest. I believe that includes the ROM, MSU-1 data file, and MSU-1 audio tracks, but I'm not 100% on the ROM.

So, this is a bit of a tangent, but can anybody help me with tweaking the volume levels on the audio tracks?  I'm wanting to use the aLBW soundtrack files, and they are significantly louder than the original soundtrack, so it drowns out the rest of the audio.  I know I could just manually play around with the amplification settings in Audacity, but isn't there some form of audio analysis where I could feed it the original spc recording and the new track and it will just tell me the relative difference in amplification?  I have a feeling that it's similar to normalization, but I don't want to normalize the individual track since I want to leave the dynamic range unaltered and just adjust the amplification on the entire track relative to the original spc... is that even a thing?  I'm a software guy, not an audio guy.  Maybe Retromancer might be able to help me, seeing as you basically did this already for your audio pack?

qwertymodo wrote:So, this is a bit of a tangent, but can anybody help me with tweaking the volume levels on the audio tracks?  I'm wanting to use the aLBW soundtrack files, and they are significantly louder than the original soundtrack, so it drowns out the rest of the audio.  I know I could just manually play around with the amplification settings in Audacity, but isn't there some form of audio analysis where I could feed it the original spc recording and the new track and it will just tell me the relative difference in amplification?  I have a feeling that it's similar to normalization, but I don't want to normalize the individual track since I want to leave the dynamic range unaltered and just adjust the amplification on the entire track relative to the original spc... is that even a thing?  I'm a software guy, not an audio guy.  Maybe Retromancer might be able to help me, seeing as you basically did this already for your audio pack?

It's called "Volume Match", and in GoldWave, it's a menu option - easily done.  Give me a link with your LbW soundtrack, and I'll run it through and give one back after some testing.