I'm requesting help with making a proper full game rip of the music of this game. It was released on PS2, and later remastered for PS3 and X360
I don't know how to get the music off the game disc in a digital stream format, but I can and would do all the sorting, editing, conversion, tagging, etc.

I know there's been a game rip available on zoneoftheenders.org (http://www.zoneoftheenders.org/music/zoe2/), which has also been shared (Thread 65767) on this forum, but that is AFAIK an analog line rip and some of the tracks are even mono.

I have the PS2 game disc, I can provide a disc image if needed.

Well here's my experience with it. It is something I attempted a while ago but never finished the whole thing.

PS2 disc of ZOE2 can be scanned with PSound. link (http://www.zophar.net/utilities/psxutil/psound-soundreaver2.html)
Other tools like CubeMediaPlayer and ADPCM Player v1.44h are not up to the task.

Scan VOX.DAT and it will find 1659 tracks in USA version. Convert all to WAV. Load the folder with all WAVs into foobar2000 and assign them according to Duration so that the longest tracks show up at the top. Now most of the longest tracks are music, but some are dialog.

The problem is I don't understand why there isn't a lot of music tracks. It's way less then OST (http://vgmdb.net/album/959) had. In particular track 03 Seek Taper from the OST is nowhere to be found. And I'm sure it's a stage music, I remember hearing it while playing the game, so it's not like the track is hidden in some cutscene or something.

And you can scan the same way all the other DAT files and the same way convert everything it finds into WAV.

For example DEMO.DAT contains audio from real-time cutscenes. And I think it contains all the other data for those cutscenes, such as enhanced textures and whatever (those cutscenes are not video files, the only video files are in MOVIE.DAT; real-time cutscenes run on game's engine but use better textures and effects than those during the gameplay).

STAGE.DAT contains speech and sound effects from during the gameplay. There's a few useful music tracks in STAGE.DAT but they have to be forced to 44100 frequency in PSound before converting to WAV, otherwise they will sound funny. Go to Options > Configure > Sample Rate , force to 44100 > OK.

Some tracks that I identified from VOX.DAT according to OST:

VOX_01646 = Jehuty -Vivid Transparency (not exactly the same)
VOX_01652 = Leo! Leo!
VOX_01649 = Ardjet
VOX_01653 = ALOIVIA (not exactly the same)
VOX_01656 = Compression Space
VOX_01654 =
VOX_01655 =
VOX_01645 =
VOX_01647 =
VOX_01657 = Final Battle
VOX_01658 = (happy go lucky tune)

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ZOE HD Collection on PS3 & X360 uses Wwise audio. Which *WEM and *BNK files. Wwise is vorbis but not exactly as OGG Vorbis, however here's a tool that rebuilds them into regular OGG. ww2ogg

Here's the best guide to deal with Wwise files: XeNTaX ? View topic - Star Wars - The Old Republic Beta Audio Files (http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?p=66311&sid=94de722e2842869af2f4141f3bb82e2f#p66311)

But then again I got stuck with BNK files. Just couldn't extract them with the tools and steps described. BNK files are containers with multiple tracks inside, usually small ones for sfx and speech. I was checking other places for a way to extract BNKs but just couldn't get it done. Maybe ZOE HD uses a slightly different version of BNK. Or maybe I wasn't doing something right.

The reason I tried to open BNKs is because again WEM files didn't seem to contain all the music from the game. It's pretty much the same as in PS2 version. Once again I couldn't find "Seek Taper" which is not a good sign.

HD Collection does have longer ambience tracks, but they are just extended tracks from PS2 ver, and they are not really music, it's just very monotone ambience. In PS2 they were several seconds long before they loop, in PS3/360 they are several minutes.

One more thing. When ww2ogg converts WEM to OGG it strips the header, which basically means when this Ogg is loaded into foobar2000 it doesn't show (doesn't know) duration of the track and doesn't let you skip to a different time, fast forward and whatever with this track. A work-around for this would be convert all Oggs to WAV using the same f2k and go from there. Then it shows time yes, but as you might know converting from lossy (ogg) to lossless (wav) isn't a way of the samurai.

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tl;dr Use PSound on DAT files from your PS2 disc, that will get you all the audio from the game.

Hey, I'm just typing you the email! :D

Make sure it's at least 10000000 words long.

I read the whole thing, it's amazing, I want to do it right now. Thank you so much for typing up all that.

The only problem is, I won't have access to an optical drive, indefinitely. :D

Oh well in this day and age it's very easy to find an ISO of a game online. Especially a PS2 USA release. Just check Emuparadise.
When I was working on this I also checked JP Special Edition version of ISO, and it had more audio files. But still didn't seem like a full OST.
Just get Daemon Tools Lite (which is free and legit) to mount an Iso.
Virtual drive + ISO, is the same as having a disc drive and an actual disc. Easy stuff. You'll be good to go.

I thought PSound was a PS1 utility. Ah, version 2.00 is for PS2 as well.
I'm not sure Foobar is even needed.

I've found the US version on Emuparadise, and the EU Special Edition on Rutracker.
Where did you get the JP Special Edition from?

What's new in the Special Edition of the game?

The tracks you couldn't find are in STAGE, in pieces, because they're dynamic (or PSound couldn't make them work as a complete track). There are a lot of small samples like snare drums and kicks, seems like they're for sequencing. For example, STAGE_01034 is the start of Bahram Battleship (I remember that one is dynamic).
It also seems not all tracks in STAGE were meant to be stretched to 44.1kHz: some are 32kHz, others may be for 22.05kHz.
It seems DEMO is the non-anime cutscenes.

Could you please check if PSound works with Nocturne?

Any media player can be used not just Foobar, the point was to align tracks according to Duration. F2K is just my favorite and what I used.

You can get JP special edition ISO from here (http://pan.baidu.com/s/1c0DzTBi). Which is a part of this list (http://bbs.a9vg.com/thread-3427737-1-1.html). It's all hosted on pan.baidu, which is kind of a pain in the ass.

Special Edition had an additional song or a track or a different rendition of a track. I dont remember exactly to be honest.
I think it had more real-time cutscenes which means more dialog hence more audio files.
And in general the game was more refined and polished for Special Edition. More orbital frames for versus mode, slightly improved graphics and increased framerate.
Fan site ZOE.org (http://www.zoneoftheenders.org/) probably has the detailed info about it, if you want to look it up.


It also seems not all tracks in STAGE were meant to be stretched to 44.1kHz: some are 32kHz, others may be for 22.05kHz.
Yes, only the longest tracks such as STAGE_00040 have to be forced to 44.1khz. I was only looking at the longest in duration and considered only them to be useful. The rest (the overwhelming majority) are 22.05khz, or as you further investigated 32khz.

So it turns out most of the tracks are dynamic in nature. Well that's crazy. They are spliced in tiny tiny pieces and I guess they are not in chronological order at all. Or at least not in chronological order as PSound finds them.

Needless to say would be one heck of attempt to sew them all together, if each piece is 2-5 seconds long.


It seems DEMO is the non-anime cutscenes.
Yep that's what I meant when I said DEMO.DAT is real-time cutscenes. They are not anime and not video files. They use enhanced textures & fx, but still run on game's engine. Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 was doing the same thing.

This for example are the type of stuff in DEMO.DAT : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYcsQEJ_-oM

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I scanned SMT Noctunre with PSound. It found 10361 audio files in JP version. This includes all sound effects, monster voice effects, short music tracks (a few seconds long) and such, but no real music tracks. You know, the ones that are several minutes ones.
Except there's a couple. One shows to be 21 minutes long and the other 15 minutes. Their sample rate and interleave are messed up though thus they sound distorted. If those are adjusted to a correct value then their time will shrink in half, which is their real duration time.
In PSound it's possible to adjust only sample rate, which I did play around with, but no success. Cube Media Player can adjust both sample rate & interleave, but I didn't scan Nocturne with it, not yet at least, because it takes several hours to scan a big file. And everything in Nocturne is in one large data file.
Also scanned it with ADPCM Player but it didn't really find anything.

I already have the EU Special Edition. Do you think there's any point in getting the JP Special Edition? (If I'm not interested in the japanese voice tracks.)


Yes, only the longest tracks such as STAGE_00040 have to be forced to 44.1khz.
You could've said that before, I forced all. > : )


most of the tracks [...] are spliced in tiny tiny pieces and [...] would be one heck of attempt to sew them all together, if each piece is 2-5 seconds long
One could do that in a digital audio workstation but screw that. Toshiyuki Kakuta had already done that.

So Nocturne works in PSound 2... Goood...Gooood!...*Palpatine rubs hands* :-)
Someday...

You could've said that before, I forced all. > : )
I could but that wouldn't be so fun. *rubs hands* *hehehe*
Just kidding. I did say it. Kinda. I said the few tracks that are useful (from STAGE) have to forced to 44.1. But I didn't say which ones exactly because didn't have them in front of me, only an old TXT file with notes about this project. Either way I think it's good that you experimented with it and figured something out on your own.

No need for JP edition then. EU is just as good.