Ripping MIDI or audio files from ROM's?

[Ghudda]

So, I'm almost completely inexperienced in this area, but say I wanted to obtain the audio files for a Neo Geo Pocket game. How could I go about doing so? If I had the ROM, would there be a way for me to extract the files directly? If anyone could either briefly describe the process, or point me in the right direction, that'd be awesome!

EDIT: Using the NGPC for example, I notice some carts have the "BGM" and "SE" tracks that you can test in the options menu, which basically allows you to listen to, giving me access to almost all of the various tracks in the game. I'm going to try and just record from the audio out, but am still interested in ripping audio from roms!

-G

[Pulsar_t]

http://www.smspower.org/forums/11168-NeoGeoPocketVGM

Seems you're out of luck finding a music player that supports NGP's music format. There's been this bit-accurate VGM scene for quite a while now, they record the "chip" music from ROMs and using special plugins you can play it back as accurately as possible to the source material using a player like Winamp or Foobar or even on Android or the consoles themselves!.

[Ghudda]

http://www.smspower.org/forums/11168-NeoGeoPocketVGM

Seems you're out of luck finding a music player that supports NGP's music format. There's been this bit-accurate VGM scene for quite a while now, they record the "chip" music from ROMs and using special plugins you can play it back as accurately as possible to the source material using a player like Winamp or Foobar or even on Android or the consoles themselves!.

Thanks for this, I'll give it a further look. I just did Fatal Fury: First Contact by just recording the audio out on the NGPC. I'm doing an overview of the game and really wanted to be able to share a track from the game, so the OCD in me needed a way to do so. I couldn't find it uploaded anywhere, so I thought I might as well contribute.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I should key glyph in this thread. She rips them onto an mp3 player directly fem the rom. How I don't know, I will see if I can get the answer for you.

[Anapan]

http://vgmrips.net/packs/system/snk/neo ... cket-color
Looks like people are using MESS VGM - BGM Rip option or using sound test/ingame audio logging to VGM files inside that emulator.

[Ghudda]

I should key glyph in this thread. She rips them onto an mp3 player directly fem the rom. How I don't know, I will see if I can get the answer for you.

That'd be awesome. Sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.

http://vgmrips.net/packs/system/snk/neo ... cket-color
Looks like people are using MESS VGM - BGM Rip option or using sound test/ingame audio logging to VGM files inside that emulator.

I'll also peruse this. Are BGM/sound test features only common on arcade-ish games? Is this an arcade specific thing?

Also: just finished uploading Fatal Fury: First Contact to YT (can't get enough of these NGPC fighter's music) and I think it came out pretty good in terms of audio quality.

[Key-Glyph]

Yo!

Alas, I do not do the ROM ripping myself. I use the firmware RockBox, which can be installed on several types of MP3 player, to play chiptune soundtracks directly from the ripped files (.vgm, .nsf, etc.) that are floating around the internet. RockBox supports only certain chiptune filetypes, however, and I don't have any experience with the Neo Geo Pocket files.

However, Project 2612 (which is the place to go for Genesis/Mega Drive soundtracks) does have a tutorial on how to rip from ROMs. Maybe if you look over this information, it will help you in some way? They also have an IRC linked there as a resource for folks looking for help. This might be a good lead on finding people who are deeper in-the-know.

Ghudda, are you familiar with http://www.vgmusic.com? If you are purely looking for MIDIs of video game tunes, that is the place to go. If you are looking to make MIDI files from the chiptune files themselves, I tried looking into this years ago and didn't follow through. I don't know if a program exists that will do this for you, but there are multiple media players that can break a chiptune out into its separate tracks, like Audio Overload if you have a Mac; perhaps you could then pick out those separated tracks by ear.

And actually, I just poked around and found a program called Amazing MIDI which sounds promising. I'll have to check that one out myself...

[BogusMeatFactory]

And like a flash of lightning she appears! I am glad you saw this key as I have been a bit busy with the daily goings on in life to message you. I knew this was right up your alley!

[Pulsar_t]

If you have an Android device, this player can be quite handy!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... gical.modo

Code: Select all

• Tracker modules: MOD, XM, IT, S3M, MED (only MDD0/MDD1), OKT
• Commodore C64 (Stereo-SID supported): SID, MUS
• Nintendo: GBS, NSF, NSFE, SPC, RSN
• Sega Mega Drive / Master System: GYM, VGM (no FM), VGZ
• Atari / Amstrad CPC / Spectrum (+TurboSound): SAP, AY, YM
• Msx / PC-Engine: KSS, HES

I don't think the NGPC is popular enough to have its own VGM ripping scene. That may change in the future. Here's a maintained server containing tons of VGM and direct CDDA rips from popular platforms (and some not-so-popular) http://www.hcs64.com/mboard/forum.php?s ... showpage=0 If any of you needs to find a plugin to play back the music let me know!

[Anapan]

The site I linked earlier has VGM format music rips, but they were made by recording the command codes (sorta like MIDI, but completely incompatible) realtime from the game. Reading a couple of the rips info (on each game rip's page) it looks like possibly the MESS emulator supports some sort of track switching or something.
Those VGM rips are perfect in that they log every command sent to the sound chip in a NGP for a song. The player then just emulates the sound chip.

In this case, it could be less complicated to simply record the audio output from the emulator to a WAV file, and re-encode it to MP3. You could also use an audio editing program for cropping to length, looping and fade-out if desired. There are some great free audio editors that you could do that in.

Also, VGMusic is great, the forums are really friendly and helpful. The music there is mostly manually scored remixes or well-done clones rather than actually perfect rips of the data.

A bit off topic, but it's been mentioned; Some emulators and external tools do allow logging Midi or sending notes to a midi device instead of the system's audio chip. It never replicates the original sound properly, but with some tweaking you can get it close. I've done this with Gameboy, Nintendo, SMS/GG and SNES. Once you have the audio in (sometimes a bit glitchy) MIDI, you can use soundfonts to play back the music using instrument sets from different games and systems. Fun to mix and match. Mario 1 played with SMW instruments, GB Batman played with F-Zero instruments, Dracula X with NES instruments and drums...