(Help!) RESOURCE.AUD to mp3

[BlockMaster]

Hey guys! Since I'm a Space Quest fan, I always look for more secrets in the game code. One of the things that I thought that I could do is listening to Space Quest 4 CD RESOURCE.AUD. The only bad thing is that I don't know how to convert it to mp3 files. I tried to do so with Audacity and something went wrong. It's now an mp3, that's not the problem. I suggest that you listen to my mp3 to hear it yourselves. Skip to the middle of the track. WARNING : Can trigger lols.

 

So that's that. It's funny, but I wanted to listen to Gary Owens, not a chipmunk. Can anyone tell me how to convert RESOURCE.AUD to mp3 properly?

 

BlockMaster

[Collector]

Before you can do anything with the audio resources, you need to extract them from the archive. You can do this with such tools as the Game Audio Player, but it will extract i9t as one large file. Some tracks will be distorted, which if this is something like what you did would explain it. You can use the Resource viewer to save the individual resources as WAV files, but you would need to do it one by one.

 

As to compressing it into an MP3, there are a number of tools that can do this for you. In fact, a tool that I have been developing for working with SCI0 games is able to do this for working with the sciAudio extension.

[Troels Pleimert]

Actually, Collector, SQ4's audio file is uncompressed, so it'll open straight in Audacity.

 

You will, however, have to set the bitrate and sample rate manually; otherwise you end up with Blocky's chipmunk syndrome here.

 

To the best of my knowledge, it's 22Khz 8 bit mono.

[Collector]

I was talking about SCI audio resources in general. I have never tried to do anything with SQ4's. But yeah, the digital audio in SCI games is usually 22,050Khz 8 bit mono.

[BlockMaster]

Thanks. With that, I think that I will be able to extract the sound properly. :)

[BlockMaster]

I managed to fix the chipmunk recording by adjusting the speed to 0.5x. Thanks for the help. :)

[Troels Pleimert]

My heartiest congratulations. :)

 

One thing, though: If you happen to come across Roger's opening spiel that he delivers to the aliens in the Magmethean bar, that one still suffers from chipmunk syndrome, because it was apparently recorded at a lower bitrate than all the other voices. But it is, IIRC, the only one.

[BlockMaster]

I heard that one before. It is weird.

[Troels Pleimert]

Weird, yes, but nonetheless interesting, because the file is usually never allowed to finish playing in the game (it's meant to be cut off once the Sequel Policeman reaches Roger's table). So it's actually really interesting to listen to uninterrupted.

 

If you isolate that bit and bump it even further down to 11khz 8 bit mono, it should play as intended.

 

Or you can just boot up SQ4, watch the intro and hit the space bar while Roger's talking. The game will pause and bring up the "wanna skip?" box, but Roger will keep talking.