vgmstream

vgmstream - A library for playback of various streamed audio formats used in video games.

vgmstream
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vgmstream

This is vgmstream, a library for playing streamed (prerecorded) video game audio.

Some of vgmstream’s features:

  • Decodes hundreds of video game music formats and codecs, from typical
    game engine files to obscure single-game codecs, aiming for high accuracy and compatibility.
  • Support for looped BGM, using file’s internal metadata for smooth transitions, with accurate
    sample counts.
  • Subsongs, playing a format’s multiple internal songs separately.
  • Many types of companion files (data split into multiple files) and custom containers.
  • Encryption keys, internal stream names, and other unusual cases found in game audio.
  • TXTH function, to add external support for extra formats, including raw audio in
    many forms.
  • TXTP function, for real-time and per-file config, like forced looping, removing
    channels, playing certain subsong, or fusing multiple files into a single one.
  • Simple external tagging via .m3u files.
  • Plugins are available for various media player software and operating systems.

The main development repository: https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream/

Automated builds with the latest changes: https://vgmstream.org
(https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream-releases/releases/tag/nightly)

Numbered releases: https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream/releases

Help can be found here: https://www.hcs64.com/

More documentation: https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream/tree/master/doc

Getting vgmstream

There are multiple end-user components:

The main library (plain vgmstream) is the code that handles the internal conversion, while the
above components are what you use to get sound.

Usage

If you want to convert game audio to .wav, get vgmstream-cli then drag-and-drop one
or more files to the executable (support may vary per O.S. or distro). This should create
(file.extension).wav, if the format is supported. You can also try the online web player
instead. See: https://vgmstream.org

More user-friendly would be installing a player like foobar2000 (on Windows) or Audacious
(on Linux) and the vgmstream plugin. Then you can directly listen your files and set options like
infinite looping, or convert to .wav with the player’s options (also easier to use if your file
has multiple “subsongs”).

See components in the usage guide for full install instructions and
explanations. The aim is feature parity, but there are a few differences between them due to
missing parts on vgmstream’s side or lack of support in the player.

Note that vgmstream cannot encode (convert from .wav to a game format), it only decodes
(plays game audio).

Windows binaries

Prebuilt binaries:

The foobar2000 component is also available on https://www.foobar2000.org based on current
release.

You may also try the alternative versions (irregularly) built by bnnm:

Or compile from source, see the build guide.

Linux binaries

A prebuilt CLI binary is available. It’s statically linked and should work on systems running
Linux kernel v3.2 and above:

Building from source will also give you vgmstream.so (Audacious plugin), and vgmstream123
(command-line player), which can’t be statically linked.

When building it needs several external libraries. For a quick script for Debian and Ubuntu-style
distros run ./make-build-cmake.sh. The script will need to install dependencies first, so you
may prefer to run steps manually, which the build guide describes in detail.

macOS binaries

A prebuilt CLI binary is available:

Otherwise follow the build guide.

More info

Enjoy! hcs