Investigating Lego Racer's Music Files

Happy 20th Anniversary Lego Racers! (well in a few months anyway)
Also I couldn't power slide to the left for some reason.
Also my dad was like "Wtf are you doing" when i went to go look out of the window XD
This took almost two full days to complete.
Using king kahuka served a dual purpose of being the de-facto weed guy and being my favorite racer when i was a kid.
Special thanks to www.zophar.net/ Been awesome for years!

[@Levi12O8]

Finally someone talks about Lego Racers.... everyone is all about Lego Island but man THIS game is childhooooood

[@greenytoaster]

I also noticed that the game is in French in his video for some reason

[@topo8444]

My greatest gaming achievement as a kid was beating all Veronica Voltage time trials and unlocking her car chassis. A great moment for 12 year old LEGO maniac me.

[@princegoatcheese9379]

"I bet he was born on the highway, because that's where most accidents happen!"

[@YouVidTuber]

I know this is an older video now, but I just digged out my CD "bin". I have a 2001 Lego software demo disk with a few games on it, including a demo of Lego racer. PC, of course

[@TheDibbun]

I have this game.

[@VDavid003]

A short druaga1 video? With research? Times change...

[@dustinsippel1845]

VDavid003 i think druaga1 could read the Eula for the windows 95 plus pack in 17 languages and I’d give it a thumbs up. 😀

[@eduardoavila646]

Yet problems aways comeback to hunt druaga

[@McGeri]

Fellow hungarian I see

[@VDavid003]

@@McGeri Good to see Hungarian people here

[@mrdaxtercrane]

Akbkuku: going to LTX to show of vintage hardware Druaga1: yo fam here's some pcm audio

[@TotemSP2]

IT BROKE NEW GROUND

[@safetydoge]

French man says no to dropping classic computers

[@RWL2012]

yeah but what kind of username is "Akbkuku" LOL

[@eduardoavila646]

@@RWL2012 the kind that is aways avaiable in registration lol

[@yiff]

pls upload more vinsaus but for real tho, i see we have the same recommendations from youtube.

[@GnzotheGr8]

Me: My KZbin feed: here’s how to extract the Lego racers soundtrack

[@therealjib]

To the admins of the old discord. You ruined everything. The least you can do is let us all talk so we can insult you directly.

[@eduardoavila646]

What did happen?

[@therealjib]

@Lord Inquisitor Shadowlord Basically the admins went on a power trip, messing with other users and basically trolling everyone. Druaga got sick of them and left, the the admins turned off commenting for everyone on the server but themselves. Here is Druaga's twitter statement: twitter.com/Druaga_1/status/1155221677095059458

[@indeepjable]

And This Is Why I Hate Bigger Servers

[@zuccx99]

Idea:convert in winamp and speed up 7.35 times.

[@cooliofoolio]

In audacity you can also change the sample rate and that will speed it up and keep the audio quality at 44100hz

[@zuccx99]

exactly what's what I thought of

[@eduardoavila646]

Quality would suffer really hard tho, i tried something simillar sometime ago.

[@cesartapia610]

Slow it down to 0.75x and put it over a Simpsons edit.

[@zorilla0]

@@eduardoavila646 Would it, though? All you'd be doing is adjusting the sample rate in the header from 6,000Hz to 44,100Hz. None of the PCM data would get touched.

[@Megatog615]

me: it's 3am, im bored youtube: Investigating Lego Racer's Music Files me: why not

[@ItsmeAz]

Have you tried the N64 version? A lot of N64 games used midi music to save space, it's a stab in the dark.

[@BillyTheCat128]

Yush! And if you're able to extract those midis, then load them inside of a music making program like FL Studio or LMMS and change the instruments to higher quality versions... bingo! Just export the live result to 4800Khz 32-bit Flac files and you'll basically have your own remastered soundtrack in the best quality possible. =D I know the people looking for the Beta files from Dinosaur Planet (originally an N64 game) had extracted the midi's that Starfox Adventures was using, except it uses its own soundfont so without the soundfont the music just sound like garbage. Still, it's worth a shot.

[@lyrareal]

Can confirm, Lego Racers midis can be extracted using N64 Midi Tool github.com/jombo23/N64-Tools/ Follow-up video incoming?

[@ScarLeRenard]

@@BillyTheCat128 Not really, the samples from the soundfonts would need to be increased in quality too, and the effects added to the music can't really be emulated properly on FL Studio. PS1 had a better quality soundtrack afaik.

[@BillyTheCat128]

​@@ScarLeRenard That is exactly what I meant when I said: "change the instruments to higher quality versions". So instead of using the default compressed soundfonts the N64 version is using, use a soundfont like: "Don Allen's Timbres of Heaven" --> midkar.com/soundfonts/index.html instead. Using a Good soundfont / Synthesizer / Digital Equalizer in combination with a Midi (which is just a set of instructions btw.) will definitely result in better and higher quality audio. The PS1 Soundtrack, (albeit sounding great) can never get better than how the orignal creators compressed those tracks to being with. With a Midi, you could hook your computer up to a Midi keyboard / input device of your choosing and get the best possible results from what is essentially a LIVE performance. What you need to keep in mind is that basically, Midi doesn't have 'sound', it just sends instructions to a receiver and tells it: "This is how long/hard you need to press this key, at this interval, on this bank number, with these values" So whatever "soundbank" your Keyboard/Computer/Digital Interface and etc. etc. uses, that is the "sound" that will be played back. So essentially if you hook up say: A Yamaha Tyros5 to your computer and let a midi play back though it- you will get a totally different (and better) sound than Windows' standard GS-Wavetable. Sure, Fl Studio was just an example I used but there might be better sound editors, VSTs and music mixers that could handle/emulate these instructions better. I've personally never had any problems loading Midi's up in LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio) which then allows me to essentially alter everything under the sun, including the original composition, which is why I suggested going after the Midi's as then you'll basically have full control of the end result. (depending on the flexibility of your editing software of course) In fact: Scratch that, if your Keyboard supports it, you could even upload the Midi's into its database and then record the feed. (which of course depends if those subtracted Midi's follow the Midi-standard, else you just get garbage.)

[@lazertag720]

I actually love the N64 versions music better,specially the Menu Theme,sounds much better on N64

[@actualhyena]

"I had to burn a CD just to get X to work" Never change, Ian.

[@xana3790]

Part 2 making childhood dreams come true... using cheat engine to turn number of competing racers to 0

[@anonymoususer638]

Nobody: KZbin: Ayy bruh you interested in the lego racer's music files?

[@BeingAGamerguy]

I feel this so hard dude. Back before I understood how a keyboard worked my dad would play some games on an extra PC we had in the basement and let me watch. Aside from this being how I was introduced to Tomb Raider, this is also how I became acquainted with a game I think mostly everyone has never heard of. It -was- is called "Blastdoors", and it came to us through a shovelware CD of sorts...I think we got it for $1.50 at about the same time as we got a floppy copy of Commander Keen. The site for the game is long defunct (parts of it are archived) and I've never seen a second physical disc that has the game on it (Although I'm still looking) and as far as I know I'm the only person on the planet who has intentionally gathered up everything they can find and secreted it away. This all because I can't ever forget some of the midi tracks in that game, and the sound effect for dropping a fatman on the map. I've still got the original disc we found it on, but it's increasingly difficult to find any mention of the game online. Probably doesn't help that the devs don't seem to have ever gotten a multiplayer mode working (although I think it was in the works from what I've read in some of the documentation I've found?) I guess what I'm trying to say is that I understand how it feels to have the music "burned into your brain", and what kind of adventure something as simple as a soundtrack can turn out to be.

[@imstupidbut]

MrSharkDoesThings cool

[@mspeter97]

Now, the question nobody's asking: What of the N64 version?

[@DxDeksor]

You're right, what if it's like a weird mod-like music format :D

[@pokemonduck]

I am asking this question :D

[@HumanShoot]

The menu song has been playing in my head since the games release

[@CaveyMoth]

Man, that's a TUN of music!

[@Someone89a]

If anyone is interested I could try to transcribe a custom MIDI file from the game music. Nothing technical, just making use of a music degree and a insanely deep love of Lego racers.

[@Electrizm]

do it bro!

[@luissantiago5163]

This is really neat and entertaining. Love these types of vids.

[@boomballing3598]

Why is your game in french ?

[@Alpha-gk6hd]

I never thought i would see a thumbnail of that lego character. In fact i never thought i would see lego racers again. Wow.

[@doggoli]

I’m really liking the new format of videos, and by the looks of it you’re enjoying making them too, which is something I’m more than glad to see! PS: I’ve been listening to Island 2.0 on repeat for the past few days, it’s fucking awesome!

[@eduardoavila646]

Yeah its great!

[@kl657]

wtf

[@sugaryhull9688]

Have you tried using the "-volume" parameter in SoX to lower the volume of the input?

[@tomysshadow]

The thing about ADPCM is that unlike PCM which is consistent throughout, it's important for an ADPCM stream to begin at the correct spot or the whole rest of it will sound wrong. If there's just a few bytes of data at the beginning of TUN files, it could make everything after distorted If the format really is changed from ADPCM then depending on how easy the game is to reverse it might actually be easier to break on the API call to DirectSound and dump the audio from its buffer after the engine converts it to PCM, I have done this for other games before with proprietary formats when I was desperate Also, ADPCM will take up less space because it has a lower bitdepth. Despite this it still sounds close to PCM quality, which is why it was often used when space was limited.

[@FeelingShred]

The question remains: how the HELL was the engine able to decode and play the damn thing properly?

[@arunraman6630]

2:13 Not sure if anyone else mentioned it but luck luck.wav needs to be in quotes ("luck luck.wav").

[@Harvestjunkie]

Maybe an off-topic question but related to the game, would it be possible to look at unused car pieces that the AI is allowed to use, but not the player?

[@MizoxNG]

adpcm in one format or another has been very common in videogames since the mid 90s, since it offers 4:1 compression with almost no quality loss and is extremely cheap to stream and decode. common formats include ADX (common in sega games) and nintendo's own BRSTM (some revision of which is the default audio format of every nintendo console since the gamecube) also you probably could have simply taken the slowed down output from winamp and then used audacity to speed up the samples to the desired rate.

[@HUNDOLOS]

It's a strange thing with perception that you don't really notice the ADPCM noise during gameplay, but when trying to use these files as a game soundtrack to listen to (if no better source is available), it gets very annoying. Also not easy to filter the noise out, even with pro software like iZotope RX.

[@MizoxNG]

@@HUNDOLOS I suppose it may depend on the mastering as well, as I've totally ripped ADX files from sonic games and burned them to CD without really noticing any quality issues (the in-game versions of the songs were different from the ones on CD, so yeah) also, it's quite difficult to restore information that no longer exists in the files. for those who are reading along and not familiar, adpcm compression is a 2-step process, first step is to remap the originally linear PCM onto an approximately logarithmic scale (specifically mu-law), thus, more bits are allocated to quiet sounds than to louder ones, neatly aligning with how human hearing is more sensitive with minor changes in volume in quiet sounds than in louder ones next, (simplifying here) these now 8-bit samples are run through a sort of prediction scheme, so the decoder will attempt to "guess" the value of the next sample based on the previous few samples, and then a 4-bit value is used to encode a correction between the guess and the real value. so yeah, while this does produce a little bit of audible noise and distortion, it's usually fairly minor, and at higher sample rates like 44.1 or 48 khz it becomes nearly impossible to hear, at least for me.

[@vincentstriqe]

Tokin a blunt, Not minding anything but my business, *clicks on random lego vid* "Hey smokers"

[@Fuzy2K]

I had the N64 version of this game. I remember being a bit amused when I saw that one of the menu options basically told kids to get an adult to help them change the sound volume or something like that. :P

[@SunnerLP]

So, FFmpeg 4.3 was just released and I found this in the changelog: - LEGO Racers ALP (.tun & .pcm) demuxer github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/71f19bf5e31ec4039ef0f9e22b157657c57e2cb9/Changelog#L52

[@isaacsteen4828]

I never knew this game had a whole community around it. Good stuff.

[@lionkor98]

You could have someone from your community write a custom decoder; I mean the game knows how to decode it properly, you can reverse engineer that and write your own version of it. Oh, if only I knew more about audio. But maybe someone else with a bit more experience can chime in and we can do it together..?

[@Jacket430]

Ah yes, my favorite racer "Marijuana".

[@Ringtail]

Since this video was made the TUN format has apparently been cracked and can now be played and converted. Turns out it's only 22050 Hz and very compressed! So the PSX version's music was better all along.

[@dustinsippel1845]

Your videos are always awesome. Anyone who’s been into computers long enough has gone down a rabbit hole like this trying to get some random file exported or converted, ah the memories!

[@jhsevs]

I am not a smoker.

[@Rudzge]

i would love to see the unedited 1 hour+ version of this video druaga1 style. but still very good video!

[@Aeduo]

ADPCM formats are based on funky lookup tables and magic constant values and stuff. it'd require a lot of experimentation to figure out the exact tables the game used. It's probably just similar-enough to VOX, or however the stereo tracks are interleaved might be messing with it.

[@rxtmfe1327]

This reminds me of my own perilous journey to extract the music from Gunnm: Martian Memories for the PS1. I never did figure it out all the way, but over the many hours and tens of programs I tried, something kinda sorta worked and now I have some low-ish quality versions of most of the soundtrack. I want to figure it out someday but it's tough.

[@niklasbade]

Legends says, people are still stuck at the last race.

[@abyssstrider2547]

I never had beaten the spaceman dude when I was a child.

[@alperen194]

nobody: Druaga1: investigates lego racers music files

[@landoflogic107]

Why is your game in French?

[@irtbmtind89]

The music in this game is a proprietary pcm format and ffmpeg can decode it now. The decoder is adpcm_ama_ilp.

[@kacperw587]

Well that backstory sure is relatable, ain't it.

[@desther7975]

I'm sure your past 20 years have been more rewarding than mine, sir.

[@brainpalace6781]

Hey, just gonna add a little bit of information here. ADPCM is a format that seperates an input sound file into two separate pieces of data. The first one is the frequency information, which writes everything at maximum volume. The second is another type of data that encodes the change in volume of a certain amount of those samples using a really tiny number of bits. When you put the two together, you can get a reasonable sounding approximation of the original file using much less data. It seems like the PCM data is being extracted fine using the encoder, but the volume levels are probably held using a non-standard data format and thus get ignored. That's why everything is playing at maximum volume and clipping.

[@YEE941]

Ensoniq Paris was a legendary digital audio workstation with analog vibe

[@Ignacio.Romero]

Couldn't you just use winamp and speed it up later?

[@CybershamanX]

Presenting: the soothing ASMR sound of Druaga's voice talking about ear rape. :P BTW, I didn't know Eric Nofsinger was a spawn of Yog-Sothoth! Maybe that explains some things? ;) (5:47) EDIT: My bad. It's actually SCP-066 (after Incident 066-2). Gotta love Google reverse image search. ;)

[@heiwa3713]

Soooooo... Ian, I tried kinda the same thing with Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed. And apparently it uses a VERSION of ADPCM called Electronic Arts ADPCM Encoding. I suspect Lego Racer has it's own encoding as well. This one supports 33Khz, stereo audio........ yeeee that's not VOX. so don't try it in audacity. actually to tell you the truth I tried mine in audacity and it was straight ear rape. I found some guy's github repo where he had a list of encodings and NONE of the EA's ADPCM versions are...well encodable. They're just decodabble. Have fun

[@heiwa3713]

Also forgot to mention, I ran my files through a file type identifier(a real one not just some random site which looks at extensions. my files were "extensionless".) And they turned out to be ASF files. (Advanced Systems Format) also a type of sound thingy. and they only play back right in VLC. everything else refused to play them back and WinAmp was a tragic accident.... I blew my favorite pair of earphones.(thank god my ears are just fine)

[@metallicarabbit]

yo, i was trying this same thing with Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver and its the same PCM VOX files and the same distortion problem, i was also looking into SOX to do this but i had the same distortion problems. i was doing this last week!! this is so weird

[@kartoffelbrei8090]

The Intro .xa file is 3 MB. How they did that is beyond me. For reference: The converted wav file unrespampled is 10 MB I tried the conversion myself. Compressing the wav with flac on lvl 8 only yields 6 MB. That is impressive. The conversion process is extremely slow tho.

[@futureshock7425]

Seeing the thumbnail of Windows Sound Recorder just gave me them feelz...

[@l-eaglestone]

While I don't have much of technical knowledge, I have a theory on how the devs made a usually mono file output stereo sound. Since there's nothing fancy going on with the tracks' channels, it could be possible the game is being told to play a normally mono sound separately and simultaneously for each channel, and that being reflected in the encoding. If it were a 'hacky' stereo, it could be that the file's twice as long, has a divider that the game knows to separate the file into playing for each channel separately, or something to that effect, hence the clipping and loudness of your attempts at converting the files, especially since it seems like the output from those is in a singular channel, but should be in two. I think that's what happened with a bunch of games around that time in order to 'fake' stereo sound (two Nicktoons games with FMOD solution, that can be ripped into mono versions that'd have tracks be twice as long than normal - especially Battle for Volcano Island, and Fairly OddParents: Breaking Da Rules with a bug that misaligns channels of a few tracks, come to mind). The way I see it, devs were making do with the technology they had at the time. It's far more likely that I'm wrong, especially in this particular case, though.

[@SkysNest]

As other people have pointed out, vgmstream can decode the PC version "TUN" files with no problem, giving a perfect wav output. It's open source so you can check how it's implemented: github.com/losnoco/vgmstream I also gave it a try and the output is indeed 22050 Hz. It also seems to be stereo since at 4 bits per sample the data encodes two channels, given the size of the files (so it's 44.1 KHz, counting both channels). I don't know, however, whether the PSX version at 37.8 KHz is accounting for both channels, only one, or if it's mono to begin with, so I'm not sure which the superior version is. Also, could that explain the cracking in Audacity? Decoding as if it was one single channel at 44.1 KHz would effectively mix the data from L and R into a single stream without proper interleaving, so it would sound as cracking/skipping. In any case the vgmstream TUN implementation takes care of all these details, with a clean output. ~Sky

[@manonthedollar]

Are you okay, man? You sound coherent.

[@PatchCornAdams723]

Can someone explain to me why people are so fascinated with the music from this game?

[@noahismango]

Do an episode on Lego Island 2

[@Spin_Music]

The N64 version is straight up midi So yay samples

[@gui18bif]

hey mate. could you make a video on how to create neew tracks for this game

[@MegaMech]

This is like that onion interview video about the ant eaters

[@FeelingShred]

It's not just you, man... It's not just you... We are all nerds #MidiMusicFetish #GiveDaikatanaAChance #LowPolyGang #BringBackTheBush The mystery still remains though, we have to find this guy and ask how the engine is able to decode the damn thing

[@eduardoavila646]

I really would love if companies made game music like rockstar made with gta libertcity stories for psp. The radios are just .wav files in good-ish quality!

[@Klook6950]

The LEGO Racers soundtrack was originally designed for the Nintendo 64, so the PC and PlayStation versions basically use streamed versions of the sequenced soundtrack.

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

This is a great fun video and depressing at the same time... LOL Where did the years go...????????

[@Delta135Z]

The VGMStream plugin for foorbar2000 supports the .tun file without any distortion, among many other game music files. You could try that on the PC version of the files

[@urzaz]

"Zophar's Domain" Now that's a name I haven't heard in a loong time... I had this playing in the background and whipped my head around when I heard this, haha.

[@alfredjonathankwak955]

Eric?

[@ddogg14]

I'm so glad I'm still awake

[@VDavid003]

Couldn't you use winamp then just speed up the thing to normal with something?

[@jonkoxl2069]

this

[@Nikku4211]

Oh, this weird format on the PC is a hack to save disk space? They should've used tracker music files to be honest. SMH

[@Sypaka]

They probably didn't even know how to play midi files, so they load it up into tracker, exported it into wav, noticed how huge the files were and compressed them with a shitty codec to play async using the Windows API.

[@mahj]

1:25 - Now I have to explain to my audience that the volume was very loud. Better make a rape joke!

[@KitsumiTheFox]

For the Sox issue, I was having this problem no more than a few weeks ago, and I think the issue is that the input file needs a specific extension, It might be .raw or something. I cant really remember since sox didn't help me in the slightest, i ended up needing to use Yamaha AICA for my project.

[@be4ns]

Why am I watching a video about extracting audio files from an old lego game?

[@burntnoogit5793]

bro i know.

[@TechnokidYT]

You could plug in a external audio recorder and record it to that.

[@JacobHollis96]

.fap Me: lol XD I really need to get my head out of the gutters

[@McGeri]

same

[@dewdude]

*smdh* I can already tell you what you're doing wrong.

[@ReshiLuna]

Your story reminds me of how when I was a kid, I would record pokemon music onto cassettes, (specifically the pokegear radio tracks.) and narrate over them. Nostalgia.. :3

[@DaVince21]

9:25 Someone should write a DruagaBrain2WAV sound converter to extract the highest quality sound from Druaga1's brain.

[@yoshi314]

i'd like more videos about digging around in games.

[@fromaggio7654]

Hmm I should do something valuable with my life 4 am: *LEGO RACERS MUSIC FILES*

[@SpiritedSpy]

Not my proudest .fap

[@SikaTamminen]

I’m watching this high af

[@abyssstrider2547]

This game brings childhood memories.

[@notthesameman]

Great video and great story, i had games like this where i couldnt stop listening to the music, and recoreded on tape along time ago but i did lose.

[@JohnnyBricks]

Great video, Druaga1 !

[@enelabe]

Hey there! Your video was extremely interesting, especially for someone who has absolutely no idea about informatics nor ripping (like myself). I am really interested in the soundtrack and the sound files of this game, as I've been working on transcribing the music of this game for quite some time now. I was hoping to come across the soundfont that the original tracks use in order to transcribe them properly and accurately as they are in-game, but as you well explained, the PC game uses sound files and not MIDI files. However, I've read in multiple forums that the N64 version of this game does indeed use MIDI files, and some people in the Rock Raiders United community were able to extract them along with the soundfont. There's a problem though, the soundfont is a .dls file that I am unable to use or open; to import it in MuseScore (which is the program I use to transcribe) I would need an .sf2 file. I've read that there are some apps or soundfont editors that could convert the file (like Viena or Awave), but none that I could download/use on my Mac and worked. Could you somehow investigate deeper into this or offer any help?

[@Lu9_ST]

Next you should try to investigate LEGO Island 2's DirectMusic files. They're like MIDIs but some of them have... randomly assigned segments so the music never plays the same all the time. ...Oh yeah and the N64 version of LEGO Racers is definitely sequenced, so you can get MIDIs out of it.

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

Interesting...... I always looked down on the PS1's default streaming music format, being lower than CD quality. Guess getting the PC version of this game is now out. And you could have saved yourself a LOT of time by just using jPSXdec. That baby works with PS1 games better than the rest.

[@wombatcat26]

In college, I started transcribing the music from this game as an exercise. I've been continuing off and on over the years even though I know I could just get the midi files from the N64 version or something. It's really fun to see what little background instruments and flourishes I never noticed as a kid, and the wacky key changes that just work.

[@SynaMax]

I did a high quality rip with the LEGO Racers N64 midi data, but unfortunately that port's soundtrack is incomplete, so you can only get the MIDIs and samples for the track specific songs and not any of the extra songs that the PC or PS1 ports shuffle through.

[@FanTazTiCxD]

I went here and was expecting music theory-like analysis of the Lego Racers soundtracks, what makes them unique, the scales used, the time signature, the licks in the melody, the rhythm and such... But then he only talks about audio formats and files and stuff like that. Was disappointed... :-(

[@BabzaiWWP]

isnt the n64 version midi

[@Maniac4Bricks]

Very nice research, and good hard work. But there is also another version of LEGO Racers on the Nintendo 64. Since cartridges at that time were lower storage capacity than disc games like PlayStation, I suppose the audio files would not only be smaller than the PC but even more compressed and clippy?

[@SunchippRadio]

Someone on RRU did remake the soundtrack in MIDI (the main songs at least) which I have reorchestrated in its own playlist. All I'm curious to know about is how to get the sound fx out

[@BrandNewByxor]

Typical Vox news fanboy spouting all that PCM (pro conservative movement) rhetoric... I should have known

[@Mat-tg4fk]

It genuinely makes me smile to see other people as passionate about Lego Racers as I was. It was the first PC game I ever played and words cannot describe how many times I reinstalled it on different PC's until I got my first laptop.

[@coondogtheman]

You can try a program called MFAudio. It's a pretty manual program but I've used it for many game audio formats. Maybe you can upload a few of the files on dropbox and I can take a look,