Extracting digital audio from SCI games?

[Fancia]

Does anyone know how to extract digital audio from Sierra's SCI games? I'm particularly interested in King's Quest V.

[Tom]

This may be a silly question, but did you try GAP (Game Audio Player)?  If that doesn't work, I wonder if the "SD" or "SDI" (DOS-based) utilities would work; it extracts all the resources from most Sierra EGA and VGA games.

[Fancia]

I have tried GAP - I used the SDV utility for DOS, as well, but unfortunately it doesn't seem able to extract from the audio resource files on King's Quest V CD. :/

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm not sure about KQ5 or any other SCI1 games, but I know for SQ5 and maybe other SCI1.1 and up games you can open the resource.aud file into any audio editor and all the sounds are contained there. I'm not too sure as I haven't tried other games. I know the voices for SQ4 are in the resource.aud I'm not sure about the digital sounds, though.

[Alistair]

KQ5 is a weird one. Like games such as 'Jones in the Fast Lane' (CD Release), the CD does NOT contain a resource.aud file. Rather, it has an 'audio001.002' file. Which is a pain in the ass.

What digital audio you after specifically, Fancia? I might be able to help you out.

- Alistair

[Fancia]

I'm looking for the two vocal songs, The Ants and The Weeping Willow. (I'm looking for versions, hence why I'm not using the versions on the Quest Studios site.)

[Tom]

"I'm looking for versions..."

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I, too, will look at my RW Anthology CD and see what I can do.  The two digital KQ5 song files I have posted were extracted by Luke a long time ago.  At least, I think he extracted them.  You can always record them as well.

[Zemus]

If you have an audio editor, then all the speech and recorded music should be in the audio001.whatever file Alistair mentioned. Since the file got no header, you have to manually select the properties. It's either 11111kHz or 11025kHz for sampling frequency and 8 for bitrate.

[MusicallyInspired]

It's not 22050khz? I always thought most audio in old dos games were all 22050khz.

[Zemus]

No, the first ones had half that or 11111kHz sometimes if they used Creative's VOC format.

[Fancia]

If you have an audio editor, then all the speech and recorded music should be in the audio001.whatever file Alistair mentioned. Since the file got no header, you have to manually select the properties. It's either 11111kHz or 11025kHz for sampling frequency and 8 for bitrate.

Oh, that's great! Thank you very much, Zemus! 11025kHz seems to be working well - now just to find it. :3

[Zemus]

If you choose the wrong frequency, it'll simply be played back at a different pitch and speed. You can check if you got the frequency correct  by saving a clip from the audio001 file and then compare it to when the game plays it.

Good luck in finding it, the file is looooong

[Fancia]

Yes, it took a bit.. ^.^; I have both clips now, fortunately. Thank you again!

[Edit: I'll check the game itself later, but they do seem to be playing at the same speed as the clips Tom had up, so I imagine they're probably fine at 11050.]