Shenmue's music rendering system

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Shenmue's music rendering system

Postby mrslig100 » Wed Dec 11, 2013 12:39 pm

Ive been picking at the texture files in shenmue for a while but not the sound files.
Needless to say voice and sound effects will be compressed somewhere but what about the music?
Ive ran shenmue with crap sound plugins and have it hang on notes and sound seamless.
The some of the dialogue doesn't sound like it was compressed very healthily and the music in
shenmue renders wonderfully im pretty certain it will be rendered with an audio tracker rather than playing a compressed wav/vorbis/whatever.
If this is the case could anyone direct me to a sample of each instrument if there not synthesized.
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Re: Shenmue's music rendering system

Postby MiTT3NZ » Wed Dec 11, 2013 1:19 pm

The compression may be to do with the rip itself. As for the music, apparently it was all sequenced. I'm assuming that this was to ensure that the music is played as it should be on each playthrough on any version of the console, and to avoid any synchronisation issues. Also, some tracks were synthesized, others were recorded live. Or so I have come to understand, at least.
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Re: Shenmue's music rendering system

Postby BlueMue » Wed Dec 11, 2013 1:59 pm

Most of the music in both games is produced directly by the AICA through soundfonts. Multiple channels playing back samples and so on. That's why notes can drop out during emulation, also happens with SIIx on the 360.

Only a handfull of songs are actually prerecorded, like in the intro of the first game or the credits of the second. There is a big advantage of storing much higher sound quality at much less space compared to prerecorded stuff. That's how they got so many music in there. The disavantage is that you're limited by the samples you use, the music won't be as lifelike as a fully produced song. BUT you rarely ever get that impression in Shenmue or Shenmue II. They did an excelent job with the samples, creating fantastic music .
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