PlayStation Development Network

Hi everyone, new here. I barely know ps1 sound/spu, yet I wanted to replace freely SEQ files between games (fixing pointers of course) like playing ff7 bgm in ff8, just to put an example.

I thought (wrongly) that a SEQ file had all the information to be played by the SPU, however it is not. There many spu reverb parameters and spu control (volume) to be adjusted in order to properly play a SEQ file (picture of parameters).

Back to the point, one way to transfer SEQ files between games could be to include the SPU parameters with the SEQ file and change them accordingly before playing the SEQ file (a coder way). Another way (I don't know if its possible) could be to remake the SEQ file for another spu parameters.

Anyone has been through this? Ideas are welcome.

Thanks in advance

Nevermind, it worse than i thought. Usually there is a VB file that contains the instrument sample (i guess? or something like that) so i order to play another game SEQ file u need the VB, plus almost all sound custom sound routines from the source game...

I guess it will be easy to use xa (heavy on file size) or make a new SEQ which is not easy since u will have to adjust sequence to use the destination VB file.

The VB file is the data file with all the sound data. The VH is the header. SEQ is different as it's more like MIDI data which actually tells the data file which data bank to play so you can actually hear a song constructed from different elements.

Shadow wrote: September 5th, 2022, 5:32 pm The VB file is the data file with all the sound data. The VH is the header. SEQ is different as it's more like MIDI data which actually tells the data file which data bank to play so you can actually hear a song constructed from different elements.

Thank you for the explanation. Didn't know the VH part.

Jabba wrote: September 6th, 2022, 1:48 am

Shadow wrote: September 5th, 2022, 5:32 pm The VB file is the data file with all the sound data. The VH is the header. SEQ is different as it's more like MIDI data which actually tells the data file which data bank to play so you can actually hear a song constructed from different elements.

Thank you for the explanation. Didn't know the VH part.

No problem.

VB is also known as VAB. They are basically identical however if I recall the VAB file includes the header information so there is no VH file needed for it. Both the VB and VH files can be extracted from a VAB by using VABTOOL.EXE from Sony.

.VAB files are .VH (VAB header) and .VB (VAB body) files merged in a single file.

Jabba wrote: July 28th, 2022, 2:48 am like playing ff7 bgm in ff8, just to put an example.

Afaik it wouldn't work in this example.
While both games use the custom AKAO format (which had many different revisions), specs aren't the same.