Help Thread: Music & Audio

[C me]

That can be a number of things.
One, it can be that your song itself uses really low volume levels.
Two, it can be that your instruments and cries are actually a lower output sound (Which is something your .wavs or whatever determine)
There can be more, but those are the only two that would make sense from the info you gave me.

Is there a way to make them louder without changing the wav/midi file?

Also why are the cries lower quality compared to the midi file when played on my pc? It's the same file.

Another point as well is at the end of a cry the sound gets corrupted (sweetie wrapper sound) what's causing this?

In Chaos Rush's tutorial on inserting cries it says Change "20 3C 00 00" to "00 3C 00 00" but it doesn't give a reason why.

Thanks

 

[GoGoJJTech]

Is there a way to make them louder without changing the wav/midi file?

Also why are the cries lower quality compared to the midi file when played on my pc? It's the same file.

Another point as well is at the end of a cry the sound gets corrupted (sweetie wrapper sound) what's causing this?

In Chaos Rush's tutorial on inserting cries it says Change "20 3C 00 00" to "00 3C 00 00" but it doesn't give a reason why.

Thanks

Since cries are DirectSound instruments, the first byte in the instrument is the type.

00 - Normal
10 - Reversed
20 - Compressed
30 - Compressed & Reversed

That's why you change 20 to 00. Sappy-imported instruments aren't compressed.

 

[Splash]

The cry tables in FR are at:

CryTable           = 0xA6F8D0(+C for #2)
SecondaryCryTable  = 0xA71280(+C for #2)

You have to repoint them first, then edit them as normal.
Cry tables are just tables of DirectSound instruments that are pointing to compressed instruments (these instruments being the cries).

So the second cry table is for the Hoenn Pokemon and the expanded one?

 

[GoGoJJTech]

So the second cry table is for the Hoenn Pokemon and the expanded one?

The second cry table is a replica of the first one, except for the fact that all of the instruments are backwards and compressed, whereas the first cry table just has them compressed. I've been told and then told not that they're used in conjunction with forward-playing cries like in growl and fainting or something, but I can't be sure. It's kinda weird, but you might as well repoint it.

 

[MajinBlueDragon]

Does anyone perhaps know the PROPER way to change which songs are assigned to different battles, fanfares, etc? I'm using Emerald, by the way.

Like, yeah, I realize you could just repoint whatever song is currently used, but I don't want to do that. I want to just change the actual value of of what song is played for such things the same way you would change a map's song. Is there a table somewhere in the ROM? is it controlled by script?

I was able to figure out that the value for the current song being played gets loaded to 0x03000F48 in memory for Emerald, and attempted to run an ASM trace on that to see where it loaded say, the Wild Battle music from (which would be song 0x01DA, stored as DA01 in memory), but since my assembly knowledge is minimal, I had no idea what to make of that routine (or if I had even struck gold) but this could at least be a good starting point...

 

[MonopolyRubix]

Hey, everyone!

I have a song that I'm trying to insert into my hack. When assembled, it sounds fine in Sappy 2006 mod 17.1, but when it plays in-game, the drums are silent. I can't figure out why it's doing this. I am hacking FireRed.

I got the midi from this website. It's "agiato and karst battle 2".
https://www.khinsider.com/midi/gba/golden-sun-the-lost-age

I opened it in Anvil and changed instruments, resulting in this midi:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ctod4jrio8mgdt/AgiatoKarstBattle.mid?dl=0

Then, I converted it to a .s file and assembled it with Sappy, using voicegroup 0x48B474. The drums sound fine in Sappy, but are silent in-game. I have tried this many times.
If you could help me out, I'd be grateful!

 

[xGal]

Hey, everyone!

I have a song that I'm trying to insert into my hack. When assembled, it sounds fine in Sappy 2006 mod 17.1, but when it plays in-game, the drums are silent. I can't figure out why it's doing this. I am hacking FireRed.

I got the midi from this website. It's "agiato and karst battle 2".
https://www.khinsider.com/midi/gba/golden-sun-the-lost-age

I opened it in Anvil and changed instruments, resulting in this midi:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ctod4jrio8mgdt/AgiatoKarstBattle.mid?dl=0

Then, I converted it to a .s file and assembled it with Sappy, using voicegroup 0x48B474. The drums sound fine in Sappy, but are silent in-game. I have tried this many times.
If you could help me out, I'd be grateful!

So, when you put "Channel 10" aka Drums in Anvil Studio and assemble it, the .S file will use the first unused channel in the song, not channel 10 itself. I have checked your MIDI and looked into the first unused channel, which is channel 2, I saw that the instrument was null. The GBA can`t recognize the "null" instrument, but Sappy can. Obviously, we want the game to recognize that as drums too.

Fixing it is quite simple, just go to channel 2 in your song, change the instrument to Acoustic Grand and reassemble it.

Another thing I saw problematic with your song is that you use the instrument "Lead 2" twice. GBA can`t play the same square twice (or more) so I just recommend you switching one of the two to another instrument.

 

[MonopolyRubix]

So, when you put "Channel 10" aka Drums in Anvil Studio and assemble it, the .S file will use the first unused channel in the song, not channel 10 itself. I have checked your MIDI and looked into the first unused channel, which is channel 2, I saw that the instrument was null. The GBA can`t recognize the "null" instrument, but Sappy can. Obviously, we want the game to recognize that as drums too.

Fixing it is quite simple, just go to channel 2 in your song, change the instrument to Acoustic Grand and reassemble it.

Another thing I saw problematic with your song is that you use the instrument "Lead 2" twice. GBA can`t play the same square twice (or more) so I just recommend you switching one of the two to another instrument.

That solved my problem. Thanks a lot! I'm glad to be done wrestling with this. :P
I also changed the double Lead 2s. Thanks for the heads up on that as well.

 

[Telemetius]

So, when you put "Channel 10" aka Drums in Anvil Studio and assemble it, the .S file will use the first unused channel in the song, not channel 10 itself. I have checked your MIDI and looked into the first unused channel, which is channel 2, I saw that the instrument was null. The GBA can`t recognize the "null" instrument, but Sappy can. Obviously, we want the game to recognize that as drums too.

Fixing it is quite simple, just go to channel 2 in your song, change the instrument to Acoustic Grand and reassemble it.

Another thing I saw problematic with your song is that you use the instrument "Lead 2" twice. GBA can`t play the same square twice (or more) so I just recommend you switching one of the two to another instrument.

Hi you seem to know a lot about it, thanks to you I'm starting to better understand how the Drums works.
My problem is similar, I made a midi with just 3 instruments, which Sappy plays perfectly, even though the in game Drums (marked with Channel 10 in Anvil) are totally silent.
So to what instrument should I change the Drums as an alternative? How many channels should I set it to? What am I doing wrong -_- ?

 

[xGal]

Hi you seem to know a lot about it, thanks to you I'm starting to better understand how the Drums works.
My problem is similar, I made a midi with just 3 instruments, which Sappy plays perfectly, even though the in game Drums (marked with Channel 10 in Anvil) are totally silent.
So to what instrument should I change the Drums as an alternative? How many channels should I set it to? What am I doing wrong -_- ?

In Anvil Studio, set the drums` channel to an unused channel and in the unused channel, set the instrument to Acoustic Grand.

 

[Telemetius]

In Anvil Studio, set the drums` channel to an unused channel and in the unused channel, set the instrument to Acoustic Grand.

Hey thank you for answering. Can you give me an example of using an "unused channel" and setting Acoustic to an unused channel?
Is it where is says free? If i change it to the first free channel it automatically changes to Acoustic Grand and the drums are replaced by the piano.

Here's a screenshot of the song opened in Anvil. Where exactly should I work on?
https://imgur.com/CqKtJLq

 

[xGal]

Hey thank you for answering. Can you give me an example of using an "unused channel" and setting Acoustic to an unused channel?
Is it where is says free? If i change it to the first free channel it automatically changes to Acoustic Grand and the drums are replaced by the piano.

Here's a screenshot of the song opened in Anvil. Where exactly should I work on?
https://imgur.com/CqKtJLq

 

[Manolloz]

where I can find the game's audio tracks ?

 

[NewDenverCity]

where I can find the game's audio tracks ?

Assuming you're using a GBA game, Sappy and other GBA music hacking tools can try and find it for you. Other than that, you're pretty much on your own because I don't think there are any music hacking tools for any other system. There might be a DS one if you dig, but I've never seen any.

 

[PokemonValor]

Hey so I don't know a single thing about music editing but all I want to do is loop jigglypuff's song in a fire red rom. It can even over write the existing one. Anyone got a relatively quick fix?

 

[Oloolooloo!]

Is there a way to export all sample sounds from the entire ROM?

 

[PokéMew1]

This is probably the best place to post this, but I have encountered a problem with sappy. For some reason, it just decided to stop opening..? A few things to note: when double clicking on the application, it literally wont do anything other than load for a second and stop, no windows or anything. If there is no sappy.xml, it will ask to create one when double clicking and then create one, but still wont open after that. This is the newest version of sappy (the older one works but stops working when opening a game). I've downloaded it from 5 different places and all do the same thing, and I have tried it on different users with the same results. Literally all of my other hacking programs work besides sappy. Any ideas... :/

 

[GoGoJJTech]

This is probably the best place to post this, but I have encountered a problem with sappy. For some reason, it just decided to stop opening..? A few things to note: when double clicking on the application, it literally wont do anything other than load for a second and stop, no windows or anything. If there is no sappy.xml, it will ask to create one when double clicking and then create one, but still wont open after that. This is the newest version of sappy (the older one works but stops working when opening a game). I've downloaded it from 5 different places and all do the same thing, and I have tried it on different users with the same results. Literally all of my other hacking programs work besides sappy. Any ideas... :/

Sappy uses Windows' Registry to work, and once that fails it fails forever on that specific computer. IDK what causes it but yeah, that's what happened to you I guess
You'd probably have to find it in Registry somewhere (idk how to do that) and clear the data maybe

 

[PokéMew1]

Sappy uses Windows' Registry to work, and once that fails it fails forever on that specific computer. IDK what causes it but yeah, that's what happened to you I guess
You'd probably have to find it in Registry somewhere (idk how to do that) and clear the data maybe

So it seems the data was corrupted. Well I basically deleted all traces of sappy data in regedit and boom, back to normal. Thank youuuu gogo!

 

[GoGoJJTech]

So it seems the data was corrupted. Well I basically deleted all traces of sappy data in regedit and boom, back to normal. Thank youuuu gogo!

Share how you did it because this affects lots of people :0