Xenosaga Episode III Music Project

So, just yesterday I was lamenting over the fact that only a small portion of Episode III's audio is available for general listening without actually starting the game. Since I like to listen to the Xenosaga OSTs while working on things, I decided I'd take matters into my own hands and pull them off the discs. Finding the audio files isn't a big problem - a program finds them, then I sort through all of the sound effects and pieces of voice acting (some of which were decoded at a sample rate that was too high, resulting in characters' voices turning hilarious) until I find the music files.

Unfortunately, all of said files are designated by a number and nothing more. This is where things get complicated. Some songs seem to have different versions, or they have two separate tracks for a single piece of background music (such as a main melody and a bassline). I don't have the time to go through and name everything by myself, not to mention the fact that it's been so long since I've played Episode III that I can only identify a select few of the songs. So I'd need willing volunteers to go through and listen to and identify tracks for me. My general plan for this is as follows:

I ripped all of the tracks from the game files to .wav format. I have 117 tracks to go through, totaling almost 1.5 GB (an average of about 13MB/track, if my math is right) - and that's just disc 1.

Here's how things would go:
I put all of the files into a dropbox folder (this way it can sync between people working on it, and nobody /needs/ to have the files on their computer). There would also be either an Excel spreadsheet or a text document in the folder so that the people identifying tracks can record names, make comments, and figure out which tracks still need to be identified. After all that is done, I'll put some time aside to fix any audio issues (most of the songs are fairly quiet), properly name the tracks, and re-encode them.

The people who volunteer to help with this would receive an access link to the dropbox folder. I know this is a tall order, but help with this would be greatly appreciated.

That sounds absolutely rad! I'd like to help if I can!

Awesome! I'll try to pull up the old dropbox account that I used to use for storing my recorded radio shows, before I stopped offering those for download. It should have more than enough space to store these.

And it seems that both discs have the file with the music in it, so there are 117 tracks to go through, total. Plus or minus a couple due to cutscenes.

While I'm at it, if anyone would like some bits of voice acting, I can try to find those for you. If you give me the general part of the game it's from (disc 1/disc 2, early/mid/late) and the character, I'll do my best to find it for you (live-action cutscenes are a bit difficult - they tend to be a single audio track. The line-by-line pieces of dialogue from the "click-through" cutscenes are the easiest to extract). As I was clicking through some of these, I hit the pieces for the very end of Ep. 3, and took some heavy blows to the feels. I really need to do another playthrough of this series.

EDIT: I have the Dropbox set up and ready to go. The only part where you might have difficulty working with the web interface is updating the tracklist, in which case I'll have you just put updates here and I'll update the list myself.

Just figured I'd say this, because it seems like you just want to get all the in-game music which wasn't on the OST, right? Someone already ripped all the in-game music, you can find it on a site called Blue Laguna (not sure if I'm allowed to link to it, but just google it). I'm pretty sure it has all the missing tracks which weren't on the OST.

If that's not what you meant, then I misunderstood and nvm me. ^^;

Last time I checked, the missing tracks weren't there. But then again, I was (and still am) horrendously sleep-deprived.

And there they are. I'll have to look into it, because I've got approximately 30 more tracks than are there. So I'm still going to work on getting a lossless archive of these tracks and then convert them to mp3. I'll go ahead and compare the Blue Lagoona tracks to what I've got sometime in the next few days, whenever I get the time to do so.

Thanks for getting me to check again Xernova. I appreciate it.

I don't get that too, what are you want to do? Rip all music from ep3? It was already done, I have even whole pack on my disc (still I checked only few tracks that were all new). For all other suff like voices, sound effect I ripp they once (jap ver), and I converted them, I'm not sure if they full (converter cut some parts at end but I may be wrong and I converted it in other one sice then)

Ok, now that I've gotten some sleep an can think properly again: yes, Kare, that's the general idea of what I was trying to do.

Though since there is already a high quality rip of all of the music online, I don't need to do this. Thanks for letting me know guys. That's a lot of time-consuming work that I (and others) do not need to do. I'll just snag the gamerip that is available, then name the tracks I ripped from the game using the already-existing rip.

So my new goal is just getting a name for each of the tracks that I ripped, so that if I ever want a longer version of a track I can make it myself. Therefore, this is more of a personal project that only I will work on, because it would only benefit me. If anyone still would like to help, they may, but I don't need much of any help at this point.


Since I have the English copy of the discs, I can rip the English voices, although they may take a little longer (the sample speed seems to vary between different scenes (for example, cinematic vs. battle)). I don't know if the ripping program will automatically fix that or not, and I am unable to test it until later this evening.

There is one track that, if I recall correctly, sounds rather fuzzy in that particular rip: the music that plays in the hotel lobby. There's a lot of static in it, which I don't think was present in-game.

Wish I could help,but I'm afraid not since I'm not much with free time myself =/
BUT if I can help in any other ways different than the ones posted at the opening post just tell me ^^

Went to verify at Blue Laguna and yeah. Actually, there are two tracks: 15 and 18, both labelled with "Mobius Hotel". Both have some static when the notes play; it's pretty noticeable.

I forgot to write this bit before, but if you could rip the Mobius Hotel music (I'll happily convert it if need be!) that would be great. Ever since I heard the tracks on the music rip floating around I wondered if the source track(s) was really that fuzzy. It certainly didn't sound that way in the game...

...and looks like this thread is dead now

shale-rowe wrote:Went to verify at Blue Laguna and yeah. Actually, there are two tracks: 15 and 18, both labelled with "Mobius Hotel". Both have some static when the notes play; it's pretty noticeable.

This is not all. Some other tracks sounds really distorted: T-elos (variation), for example.

I made an another gamerip for myself. Here the download links, if someone still interested in high quality rip:

Dropbox | %20[FLAC].zip]FLAC
Dropbox | %20[MP3%20320].zip]MP3 320

Sample rate of all tracks converted to 44100Hz, some tracks are extended or alternative to the official ones, some was merged with each other.

Three "Discs", 84 tracks in total.

Track listing:

Spoiler:

Oh, wow! Thanks for posting these! I'll have something to listen to tomorrow!

Small fix:

tracks 01. A New World (variation) and 06. A New World (piano ver.) on the second disc are swapped between each other.
Now it sounds better to me.

Added tracklist to the post above.

*reuploading files ... Done.

Also, if anyone able to extract *.psf2 and *.adx files from Episode II - please contact me. I'll do the same for that game too.

Hi there,

ADX is standardized file format. There are simple c++ implementations of the format structure floating around the net.  It sucks though because it is lossy but that is the stuff they had to put up with back then.

Use this file converter:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n6jdx99h1zc8rwz/PES_Sound_File_Converter_1.8.rar

Let me know if you can't download.

This is the first time I have seen this thread. So many nice gems seem to be buried in this forum. One thing I don't get is everyone keeps talking about these utilities that they are using to rip this stuff but no one is giving out names...

BakaOmega, are you using some released utility to rip this stuff?

crazyraider, you started this thread by stating that  "Finding the audio files isn't a big problem - a program finds them"

. .....what program?

kare_reiko,  you stated that "For all other suff like voices, sound effect I ripp they once (jap ver), and I converted them"

....yes ok...but how?

It would be nice if there was a collection of documented tools. Without that, people are stuck getting either lucky and stumbling on something or in my case...having to struggle with reinventing the wheel.

Also the MP3 320 dropbox link is broken. Can you look into that? I think Dropbox has a max transfer limit per day so Ill try again tomorrow.

answerawake wrote:ADX is standardized file format. There are simple c++ implementations of the format structure floating around the net. It sucks though because it is lossy but that is the stuff they had to put up with back then.

Technically it's lossy, yes. But look at these screenshots:

Spoiler:

answerawake wrote:This is the first time I have seen this thread. So many nice gems seem to be buried in this forum. One thing I don't get is everyone keeps talking about these utilities that they are using to rip this stuff but no one is giving out names...

BakaOmega, are you using some released utility to rip this stuff?

I'm using foobar2000 and foo_input_vgmstream component to loop and convert files to WAV, and then editing them with Adobe Audition. I just downloaded *.adx files that was already extracted from the game archives.

Lot of stream ripping tools here: http://www.hcs64.com/vgm_ripping.html
But I'm too stupid to use it properly.

As far as I know, there was some technical problems with extracting .adx and .psf2 files from Episode II.
You can find more information about it here:   showthread=24021 | showthread=26929

answerawake wrote:Also the MP3 320 dropbox link is broken. Can you look into that? I think Dropbox has a max transfer limit per day so Ill try again tomorrow.

It works fine for me. Alternative links [FLAC] | [MP3 320]

Hi BakaOmega,

WOW I cannot believe there is so much differenc in quality. If you are using the same FLAC setting there can only be two possibilities.

1. Your drive is ripping the audio CD improperly. This is very doubtful as disc drives have error correction and most modern drives can properly limit the cd ripping speed automatically preventing jitter.

Can you do a Nero CD speed test to see how your drive stacks up when reading the audio CD?

http://www.optidrivecontrol.com/

I hear TEAC or Pioneer drives are the best in audio ripping.

2. This is the most likely reason, the audio CD released by DigiCube or whomever did it was really poorly mastered. If this is the case I cannot believe they would release such a poor quality product. As far as I know this is the only official soundtrack and there probably will not be a re-release seeing as Xenosaga is done (for now?) so whatever they release is set in stone. Just terrible.



Thank you for the hcs64 link. I am very impressed at all the effort folks have put into reverse engineering the formats of so many games. I don't see much Xenosaga related stuff in your link though, do you know of any places to get more Xenosaga related stuff?

Have you tried the tool that I posted? Before I posted it I tested it with Xenosaga II ADX files and it converted to WAV perfectly.

Thank you for the alternative link. It works perfectly!

Are you interested in converting Xenosaga video cutscenes? I was discussing ripping the contents of the video a while back on some of the other disc ripping threads but after I have seen the horrid 512x448 resolution, I don't see the benefit.

See here:  http://xeno-underground.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=395&p=7129

So the quality is actually quite noticeable. Are the music files just bunched together with the voices? I'd like to rip Episode 1 and 2 as well but I have not fully documented out the disc structure completely due to lack of time so I was wondering if anyone knows here?

answerawake wrote:WOW I cannot believe there is so much differenc in quality. If you are using the same FLAC setting there can only be two possibilities.
1.
2.

This is not exactly what I mean. I just wanted to note why lossless version of gamerip should exist, disregarding the lossy nature of ADX.

I have two rips of the original soundtrack from different sources. And EAC is the only one acceptable tool for ripping audio CDs on Windows.
Rip with 100% log mean that it was scored as "perfect rip" by logchecker on what.cd. Though, mastering of the official album is not "poor". It's just different.

By the way, not all ingame music has such high quality. At least 45 of total 84 tracks originally was with 24kHz sample rate. Most of these tracks are piano / minimal instrumentals / ambience, or quiet background music from cutscenes. So, loss of quality noticeable not for all of them. You can check it by yourself with any spectral analysis program.

answerawake wrote:Are the music files just bunched together with the voices?

All music converted "as is", but few tracks with similar sounding was combined into one:

27. Start of CAT Infiltration #2 + 26. Start of CAT Infiltration = 26. Elsa - Start of CAT Infiltration

34. T-elos's Challenge #2 + 33. T-elos's Challenge = 04. T-elos's Challenge

54. survive #3 ~ Durandal Rescue + 53. survive #2 ~ Invasion of the Durandal = 27. Survive #2 ~ Invasion of the Durandal

Have you tried the tool that I posted? Before I posted it I tested it with Xenosaga II ADX files and it converted to WAV perfectly.

The main problem is to make playable sequenced part of Episode II soundtrack in PSF2 format. Seems like now there is no one who can do it.
Quotes from links in the previous post:

Spoiler:

Hi BakaOmega,

Based on your pictures, there seems like quite a difference in audio quality between the rips, hence my amazement. I do not know of any way to numerically compare the two files but seeing as many of the songs are structured differently from the soundtrack vs the gamerip, I do not think it would be possible to numerically compare them. (only the ones we can guarantee are the same length and song)

"I have two rips of the original soundtrack from different sources."



Can you confirm if one of your sources is the real CD that is sold in stores? I was under the assumption you made that rip direct from the CD? If so did you rip it to WAV and then convert or directly to FLAC?

EAC is an interesting tool, hmm an app that does not correct errors but instead just alerts you...interesting... never heard of it before but thanks for the info!

"Though, mastering of the official album is not "poor". It's just different."



This depends, was the rip you showed off identical? I was under the impression you were comparing the exact identical song?



So since you first posted, I have begun to rip the audio myself to see how it really sounds. Did you do postprocessing on the audio?

Take for example E45.adx which is Hepatica (KOS-MOS). When I use ADXtoWAV(included with PES Sound converter) , I get a significantly lower volume audio file than what is included in your rip. Also, there seems to be some severe compression artifacts in the resulting WAV file(during the silent portions).

It seems like maybe the foobar plugin is better. I am not sure if ADXtoWAV is doing a proper job of conversion of these files.

Two scenarios:

1. foorbar2000 plugin is performing postprocessing to hide compression artifacts\incorrectly converting  and ADX2WAV is spitting out accurate file including compression artifacts.

2. ADX2WAV is incorrectly converting and foobar2000 plugin is actually correctly converting file.

Hard to tell without understanding ADX format better and comparing with sourcecode. Very nice that the foorbar2000 plugin has source on github but unfortunately ADX2WAV plugin comes from unknown source so it would be hard to compare.

I reread the thread and I see Blue Laguna has done a lot of work already and so that is really good. I must have missed that site before. It is very nice! I wish they would document tools that they used...


"The main problem is to make playable sequenced part of Episode II soundtrack in PSF2 format. Seems like now there is no one who can do it."




Two things, first of all where are you getting these PSF2 files? I extracted Xenosaga 3 discs and cannot find them. Most audio seems to be ADX format.

See the following:

Xenosaga3 Disc1+Disc2 structure:


No psf2 files anywhere:


Secondly have you tried any of the tools at the bottom of the PSF wikipedia article? Seems like PSF2 has been attempted to be decoded?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Sound_Format

Seems like PSF2 format can very as it is a filesystem, so I am not sure if Xenosaga PSF2 is supported. I am wondering where it is located on the disc so I can try myself.

answerawake wrote:Can you confirm if one of your sources is the real CD that is sold in stores?

Yes, of course. I really don't want to explain all these audio CD stuff here, so just trust me ❤
Like said before, rip from the official album is not bad.

answerawake wrote:EAC is an interesting tool, hmm an app that does not correct errors but instead just alerts you...interesting... never heard of it before but thanks for the info!

Error correction option is strictly undesirable and should be disabled. EAC must be set up according to this guide, if you want to make a good rip.

answerawake wrote:This depends, was the rip you showed off identical? I was under the impression you were comparing the exact identical song?

I compared not the track length but difference in frequencies cut of the same song.

answerawake wrote:So since you first posted, I have begun to rip the audio myself to see how it really sounds. Did you do postprocessing on the audio?

Ok, if you want to get detailed information about the process, here it is:

Downloaded ADX files from this archiveConverted ADX files with foo_input_vgmstream to WAV. Some tracks intentionally looped twice, some not
Few tracks combined with each other, as was mentioned before
All tracks converted from 24000Hz and 48000Hz to 44100Hz
Signal level normalized to -0.1db for all tracks
Added 500ms and 1000ms of silence to the beginning and the end of tracks
Compressed to FLAC
Transcoded to MP3 CBR 320 with LAME3.99r

answerawake wrote:Take for example E45.adx which is Hepatica (KOS-MOS). When I use ADXtoWAV(included with PES Sound converter) , I get a significantly lower volume audio file than what is included in your rip. Also, there seems to be some severe compression artifacts in the resulting WAV file(during the silent portions).

I don't see any files with that kind of name in my directory, but if you are talking about 24kHz version, it can be explained:
that tool was developed ages ago, and it works pretty bad with sample rates other than 44 or 48kHz.
And most likely, that old rip from Blue Laguna was done by using this tool.

answerawake wrote:Two things, first of all where are you getting these PSF2 files? I extracted Xenosaga 3 discs and cannot find them. Most audio seems to be ADX format.

But question was about the Episode II

Spoiler:

Anyway, if you able to make these PSFs playable, it would be very nice. I cannot provide any help here since I know nothing about game ripping itself, unfortunately.

Hi BakaOmega,

ha ha that link leads to a site with a directory listing of different games. When I go to the main URL, it leads to nothing. Looks like a hidden site. Where do you guys find these sites lol  

So I downloaded the xenosaga zip and all it contains are ADX files.

Thank you for the details of how you converted the files. Yes I suspect the ADXTOWAV application is not too good. However the Hepatica(KOS-MOS) song I tested with (E45.adx) is a 48Khz file so that is not the issue.

(Oh yea, I discovered just now that VLC plays ADX files)  


Regarding the PSF2 files. I have Xenosaga 1, 2, and 3 game DVD ripped and unpacked on my HDD. None of the games have PSF2 files.

Have you ripped and unpacked the game discs?

Here is Xenosaga 2:






Can you provide a sample PSF2? They are not located in the game disc unless maybe they are hidden within another file?

answerawake wrote:ha ha that link leads to a site with a directory listing of different games. When I go to the main URL, it leads to nothing. Looks like a hidden site. Where do you guys find these sites lol

Google~
This is a file archive tied to HCS forums, which is not hidden at all.
This is the place where vgmstream was born.
Here the list of all file archives for various game platforms.

answerawake wrote:Regarding the PSF2 files. I have Xenosaga 1, 2, and 3 game DVD ripped and unpacked on my HDD. None of the games have PSF2 files.

This is not ingame native music format. It was developed specially for music players to play sequenced soundtracks from PS and PS2 games on PC. PSF files must be compiled first from the various sequenced music formats, which depends on specific game. It requires some programming skills.

It works great for most games, but not for Xenosaga II:

bxaimc wrote:PSF2 is possible for Xeno II but it's not gonna work in terms like being able to listen to it correctly. The driver sucks and because of that all you get are tracks that will eat up your CPU power and play back a song with missing instruments and garbage (believe me, I made a PSF2 set of it).

For example of PSF2 you can download Digital Devil Saga gamerip, and listen it in foobar2000 with Highly Experimental component.

Anyway, could you please upload all your extracted ADXs from Episode II somewhere?

Hi,

Work has been very busy. I will get you the zip file as soon as I can.

Hi,

PM sent.