Madagascar (PC) .RWS extracted

[Mygoshi]

When I play the game on PC it's FAR BETTER than this quality. It's like 44100Hz. Why?
I think they use some kind of filter but the difference is huge though.

[id-daemon]

It's not 44100. It is MONO 22050. Just because there's not enough data bytes to have more. But maybe they are using some kind of filter to make it sound better. Anyway, this is the original sound and it is the same on PS, XBOX and PC.

[Mygoshi]

When I rip mono music with vgmstream, it's always lower quality than game version for some reason.

[id-daemon]

When I rip MONO music with vgmstream, it's always lower quality than game version.

But that's impossible. If you rip any track (mono or stereo) in digital form it will be EXACTLY the same as it was in the game. Just because the game makes its audio right from this data, and nothing else.

The difference is only because 22050 is crap, but old games had to use it. And they tried to make it sound better in the game by different methods.

[Mygoshi]

It does that for every game. The quality in the game is good, and when I just PLAY, not CONVERT, just PLAY the data, it's just lower quality. I use Foobar2000, is there some settings that make the player decreases the quality?

[id-daemon]

Does your sound card or driver has some "game enhanced sound" options? "game mode", or something like this?

[id-daemon]

Nowadays every player and game has its own idea how audio should sound. PC automatically detects that you're playing a game, and tunes all of its sound enhancers to the roof. Whatever.

[id-daemon]

listen to this for example. After adding some reverb, exciter, and treble boost:

http://www51.zippyshare.com/v/j6CLNFte/file.html

[Mygoshi]

Can you upload the normal theme?

[id-daemon]

I took it from PS2 rip

[Mygoshi]

But can you upload it please? Just to see if this is the same quality for me.

[id-daemon]

Maybe I don't understand. What do you want me to upload?

[Mygoshi]

Just want to see if I have the same quality as your converted file.

[id-daemon]

ok i took the file from here: http://downloads.khinsider.com/game-sou ... -theme.mp3

[Mygoshi]

Thank you.

[id-daemon]

here, i made a decoder for you. So you can see its the same audio as on PS2

the difference with xbox was in nibble order and history use

[Mygoshi]

Wtf? It works without noise. How did you do it? Awesome. Thank you very much.

[id-daemon]

You know, I can code.

[Mygoshi]

Can you make a program like this to extract the .stripped archive with exact names of each file in the archive? They're written, I see, on a Hex Editor? Thanks

[id-daemon]

Well, now I see what did you mean about difference.

1. Xbox uses xma, its frequency-based codec, so sound has artifacts.
2. PC uses IMA-type ADPCM, that is 1-sample prediction, so sound is a little buzzy or crackling.
3. PS2 used XA-type ADPCM, 2-sample prediction, so sound is smoother.

But this difference is really small.