SPC

From Video Game Music Preservation Foundation Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
[[Category: Formats With {{{Header}}} Headers]] [[Category: Formats With {{{Content}}} Content]] [[Category: Formats With {{{Instruments}}} Instruments]]
SPC
SPC.png
Developer: Sony
Header: {{{Header}}}
Content: {{{Content}}}
Instruments: {{{Instruments}}}
Target Output
Output - Digital Audio - No.png Output - MIDI - No.png Output - FM Synthesis - No.png Output - PSG - No.png
Released: ?
First Game: ?
Extensions
  • *.spc
  • *.rsn

The SPC format holds SNES game music. It is named after the 8-bit Sony SPC700 chip that handles audio in the SNES. The SNES was a major jump in audio technology from the NES allowing for stereo sound, more channels, and a much better instrument emulation--especially percussion.

Unlike other console music formats, SPC doesn't store the actual sound code, but instead stores the memory of the extrapolated music files sent to SPC700 chip. This makes it much easier to rip music for SNES games, but it also has several disadvantages. For one, because an SPC file is a dump of the entire 64 KB block of memory, and not the used portion of memory, every song, even short ones, are 64 KB in size, each containing a lot of wasted space. See the Unsupported Games section for further details.

Because a good portion of SPC music files contain empty or repeated data, all SPC collections on this site will be compressed with the open 7z compression format in order to save space and not worry about RAR copyright restrictions.

SPC collections are sometimes distributed as a single RSN file which is an SPC collection compressed into a RAR archive and renamed to RSN.


Players


Games

Games That Use SPC


Unsupported Games

Because the SPC700 chip had a limit of 64 KB of memory, several games dynamically altered the memory during the course of a song and the static dumps of the SPC700's memory don't contain these changes. Therefore, games that use this technology will not play properly. Second, SPC dumps cannot be made at all for games that use the SPC700 chip in non-standard ways. In situations like these, SNSF files are ripped. Check the SNSF page for games with SNSF rips. The following games can not be supported by the current SPC format standards.


Links