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DS development > Metroid Prime Sound

#33212 - haruguchan - Fri Dec 31, 2004 9:26 pm

I have noticed that the sound files in metroid prime are compressed with 4-bit VOX raw ADPCM 11000hz.
The sound quality is very bad, i've converted the bgmdata.bin file into a wav, and there are some different songs on it. It seems just to be a standard ADPCM (G.721, I guess). Sfxdata.bin is ADPCM 11000hz too.
The files globalsfxdata.bin and menusfxdat.bin are raw PCM 6000~8000hz. (I haven't played metroid, but I think it's 6000hz).

ADPCM 11000hz, PCM 6000hz. How does it sound in a DS?

#33214 - revo - Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:00 pm

You're right - sound quality is bad, but need to hear it on DS - i opened BGMDATA.BIN file by Dexter (Shareware) program - changed extension to vox and selected 11025 in program while opening, but I think that 12000 sounds better.

<joke> At the moment we have music and models. We need animation from models and we can start PC conversion ;) </joke>

#33220 - Gatchers - Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:16 pm

It doesn't sound too bad on the DS, but I guess the definition of 'bad' is subjective.

ADPCM sounding 'bad' sounds like the coefficient/scaler table isn't right, and we need to find which ADPCM flavour it uses.

#33227 - haruguchan - Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:57 pm

revo wrote:
You're right - sound quality is bad, but need to hear it on DS - i opened BGMDATA.BIN file by Dexter (Shareware) program - changed extension to vox and selected 11025 in program while opening, but I think that 12000 sounds better.


yeah, 12000 sounds better. mmm, 12000 and 6000... suspicious :P

#33301 - Alex Atkin UK - Sat Jan 01, 2005 7:34 pm

It does still sound poor on the DS though, especially when you compare it to the clarity of the Mario soundtrack.
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#33313 - SmileyDude - Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:46 pm

Alex Atkin UK wrote:
It does still sound poor on the DS though, especially when you compare it to the clarity of the Mario soundtrack.


not surprising, IMO -- with it being a pack in demo, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo scaled down as much as possible to get it to fit on a smaller cart.

Then again, according the SM 64 header, the cart is the exact same size as the metroid cart. Now I don't have any idea why the sound quality would be so much different...
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#33407 - TJ - Mon Jan 03, 2005 1:59 am

Quote:
Then again, according the SM 64 header, the cart is the exact same size as the metroid cart. Now I don't have any idea why the sound quality would be so much different...


Yes, Metroid is on a 128MB card.

#33409 - Alex Atkin UK - Mon Jan 03, 2005 2:08 am

Because the Metroid music is presumable streaming whereas Mario is most likely generated in realtime, the way (IMHO) it should be done.

The GBA from what I have read HAD to go easy on sound due to only having 2 channels to play with and not exactly too generous with the CPU power. The DS I believe has more than 2 channels (or at least it has the ARM7 to deal with that sort of thing) so realtime music is more plausable and hopefully used more often.
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#33413 - dagamer34 - Mon Jan 03, 2005 3:02 am

Everyone just remember, it's still a demo, not the final game.
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