orangelando / nsf

Programs to read Nintendo Sound Format (.nsf) files and render them to Wav files.

NSF renderer in Java

Java project to render the music within a Nintendo Sound Format (.nsf) file to a wav file. This is still definitely a WIP. The 6502 core is not cycle accurate. I wanted to see if it is possible to do a higher level interpretation of the CPU and still get accurate results. So far it seems to be working.

Usage

Prerequisites

Maven is required so that the fat jar can be built:

$ mvn package
... bunch of stuff ...
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] --------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 11.201 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2019-02-04T20:50:13-05:00
[INFO] --------------------------------------

Viewing NSF Header Examples

$ ./lando-nsf-info ~/Desktop/nsf/metroid.nsf 
Version Number    : 1
Total Songs       : 12
Starting Song     : 1

Song Name         : Metroid
Artist Name       : Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka
Copyright Holder  : 1986 Nintendo

NTSC/Pal Mode     : NTSC
NTSC Speed        : 16666
PAL Speed         : 0

Bankswitch Vals   : [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5]
Extra Sound Chips : []

Load Data Addr    : $8000
Init Data Addr    : $a000
Play Data Addr    : $b3b4

Add the "-json" argument to the results in JSON.

Extracting a Single Track to a WAV File

NSF files that are extracted from NES ROMs are under copying and cannot be distributed so please provide your own NSF files.

$ ./lando-nsf2wav -nsfFile ~/Desktop/nsf/super-mario-bros-2.nsf -trackNum 2 -outFile ~/Desktop/out.wav

Extracting All Tracks at Once

NSF files that are extracted from NES ROMs are under copying and cannot be distributed so please provide your own NSF files.

$ ./lando-nsf2wav -nsfFile ~/Desktop/nsf/super-mario-bros-2.nsf -allTracks -outFile ~/Desktop/out.wav

The full list of options are:

• -nsfFile path Path to .nsf file
• -outFile path Path to output file
• -trackNum N Track num to extract
• -allTracks Extract all tracks. Appends '-00', '-01' etc to the output file.
• -disableChannels 12tnd Disable one or more APU channels. 1=pulse1, 2=pulse2, t=triangle, n=noise, d=dmc
• -maxPlaysSecs 30 Many tracks loop forever. This is the maximum play time before the track fades out. 30 is the default.
• -maxSilenceSecs 3 The tracks is stopped playing if more than this many seconds of silence is detected. 3 is the default.
• -disableBandPass Disables the highpass filter at 440hz and a lowpass filter at 14khz in the wav output.
• -splitChannels Output each channel into a separate file.
• -outFmt wav|system_raw The system-raw option outputs to 32-bit, little endian float samples per 1.79MHz clock tick. Useful for debugging. Default is wav which outputs a standard wav file with mono 16bit PCM samples at 44.1kHz.

Resources

• Nesdev Wiki - The jumping point for all my research
• Easy 6502 - My starting point for 6502 stuff.
• Obelisk 6502 Reference
• NMOS 6502 Programming Manual

nsf's Issues

Unlear licensing situation

There's no licence included.

The Meapsoft package is GPL2 so I guess this makes the whole project GPL 2 by default? You might want to add a licence using Github's licence picker

Pulse channel durations incorrect

In cases where original ROM (and other NSF players) play a long duration note, my player cuts short. I've looked at the writes to the pulse channels and see the envelope being see to constant volume and that volume going down to zero so it seems correct but does not match the output of other players. An example see the 2nd track of Castlevania. The 4th note that plays around 0.6 seconds in on the second pulse channel should play for about a second.