Something that's been bothering me for a while now is that the music from all the games I love, always sound better when I play the game, rather when I play the mp3/flac.

This is because the music is encoded in 5.1 surround. I get chills down my spine when I play the Halo games, or the Killzone PS3 games, or the Uncharted games. Especially Uncharted 2 had some awesome songs that I usually just load up the game to be able to hear. Even right now I'm letting Uncharted 3 play music for me in the background.

Do these game music rips exist out there, or do I have to do it myself? Because I'm seriously considering it. I -need- that music in 5.1 surround. :) If they don't but you know how to do this, please inform me, or send me a link. Help will be much appreciated.

Yes, yes they do exist.

My FLAC rips of Lego Universe and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are in their original 5.1 surround sound.

Awesome. I'll wait for a few more replies before asking you for help. By the way, how do you play the files in 5.1? Using VLC/Media Player Classic and the usual CCCP codecs?

Most media players like Winamp or foobar2000 play them back fine. VLC should be fine and MPC might if your channels are properly mapped in the settings, I'm not 100% sure on that one though.

Most games don't need 5.1 surround sources. AFAIK the audio sources from games are just enhanced with Dolby Digital / Pro Logic II (Sorta like the DFX for WMP) to give it that 'immersion' feel. Although of course you can't rip audio with the Dolby enhancement.

One thing we need more are surround sound VGM Soundtracks.

Here's a native 5.1 rip of SoulCalibur IV (PS3 version):

Thread 82902

(tracks however mostly use 4 channels)

Alright, so there doesn't seem to be any surround rips of the Halo/Killzone/Uncharted music. How do I go about ripping that myself? Do I just need to output the audio through the optical and wire that into my optical in on my sound card? I guess I need a program to record as well.

And yeah, I'm thinking about doing it the manual way. Playing the song in the game and recording it, like a casette player. :P If there are better ways of getting it, don't be shy.

Also, how do I figure out if the audio in the game is just "simulated" surround like that one poster suggested?

You need to crack the games codec to get full quality by direct conversion.

Ok, so how do I record it "manually" from the optical out on the PS3? Is it possible to just hook that up to the computer and record the songs that way?

Sorry to say, but really, the vast majority of games use plain stereo for music, which I was quite disappointed to learn. What Neo_Chip said is right, the console processes it with Dolby matrix decoding, etc. in its mixing stage where sound effects and everything are added in and then it gets output as a surround sound stream. This has the added value of fooling people into thinking they're getting something better than they are when their receiver reports they are indeed getting 5.1 or 7.1 channel audio, which you assume to mean extends to music. You would get virtually the same result if you just play your regular stereo music through a receiver with Pro Logic II, which I highly recommend, by the way. I've had music DVDs where it really sounds better to my expectations of what multichannel audio should be just to play the stereo audio with Pro Logic II than to listen to the real Dobly/DTS track.

I've never attempted recording an optical out before, but I have reservations about its success. I think they encrypt the data specifically so you can't make perfect copies of it, but I don't have a PS3 or have tried it with Blu-ray before myself. I'd say don't get your hopes up too much though.