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

[@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

[@Megatog615]

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

[@actualhyena]

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

[@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

[@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

[@ChocoRainbowCorn]

​@@indeepjable Not all big servers are bad but whatever. 5 years ago anyway.

[@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?

[@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

[@xana3790]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@VeRT-SBNS]

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

[@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

[@luissantiago5163]

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

[@thefudgebot]

I do not understand anything you said in this video, but it's about Lego Racers so I liked it

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@anonymoususer638]

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

[@CaveyMoth]

Man, that's a TUN of music!

[@isaacsteen4828]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@irtbmtind89]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@YEE941]

Ensoniq Paris was a legendary digital audio workstation with analog vibe

[@niklasbade]

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

[@abyssstrider2547]

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

[@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

[@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!

[@ChocoRainbowCorn]

5 years later, whatever, but no thanks. I would really much rather actual game audio files than someone attempting to mimic it or recreate it themselves.

[@alperen194]

nobody: Druaga1: investigates lego racers music files

[@vincentstriqe]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@odditica]

Might give a shot writing an extractor/packer for the PC music files over the weekend if I don't feel lazy...

[@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.

[@samr5043]

I'd almost forgotten about Lego Racers until now. Thankyou for reminding me of all the hours I spent playing this game!

[@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.

[@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.

[@arunraman6630]

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

[@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.

[@Jacket430]

Ah yes, my favorite racer "Marijuana".

[@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.

[@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

[@TheBenjaman]

I love this game so much. The music I thought was absolutely perfect for a racing game like this.

[@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

[@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.

[@abyssstrider2547]

This game brings childhood memories.

[@futureshock7425]

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

[@Rudzge]

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

[@desther7975]

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

[@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.

[@danielr.7062]

i'm loving these disecting videos about lego game soundtracks of all things.

[@kacperw587]

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

[@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.

[@NoogahOogah]

It’s comforting to hear from someone who loved this game as much as I did. You should totally put those tapes on SoundCloud.

[@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..?

[@HunMadav]

I loved lego racers! The Soundtrack still Brings me back :)

[@MegaMech]

This is like that onion interview video about the ant eaters

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

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

[@thehostler0]

Just like the last upload, this is some great content. Keep em coming :D

[@fargeeks]

I remember this mech warrior 2 windows 95 game where you dont see any music files on the disk but yet if you pop it into a cd player then it will play all games music tracks!

[@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!

[@sugaryhull9688]

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

[@Envinite]

The perfect recommended video to watch at 3AM when you have to get up early tomorrow

[@Journey_to_who_knows]

Oh man I spent so long messing around in that test arena by the start, memories

[@pinkamenadianepie8609]

*You will never unhear this song*

[@jhsevs]

I am not a smoker.

[@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)

[@princegoatcheese9379]

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

[@PatchCornAdams723]

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

[@ChocoRainbowCorn]

Because it's great music which I and many others always really liked. Yes, 5 years later, don't care.

[@PatchCornAdams723]

@@ChocoRainbowCorn Cool I just didn't remember this game being very big or popular back in my childhood so I was surprised to see that it had such a large following

[@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.

[@ddogg14]

I'm so glad I'm still awake

[@arsaeterna4285]

I'm upset at how much of this i understood I feel like.. i should have spent more time outside in my life

[@be4ns]

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

[@burntnoogit5793]

bro i know.

[@HQ_Default]

Of all the strange things to show up in my recommended, I'm glad this was the one I clicked on.

[@computercatgaming02]

LEGO RACERS my childhood

[@fromaggio7654]

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

[@SikaTamminen]

I’m watching this high af

[@Spin_Music]

The N64 version is straight up midi So yay samples

[@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.

[@luigikoopa8771]

The audio is actually in a custom format (ALP ADPCM), and is 22050 hz stereo, not 44100 hz mono. FFmpeg can now decode it

[@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

[@brendan9734]

Somehow you always find the games that are nostalgic to me

[@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

[@stevenborck1279]

I forgot all about this game! I really enjoyed this game as a kid.

[@jacanapes]

The N64 version uses sequenced music due to it being a cartridge. If you care enough, you could extract it from there. It even has the samples intact, although it seems they have been resampled down to 22050hz presumably for cartridge space. I have done this and for whatever reason the samples are stored at a much *lower* base note than C5, so that means the game changes the pitch for every sample when it plays music. My only guess for why this was done is because it would potentially sound better in quality when played at a faster rate? I don’t know. There are so many weird quirks behind this game.

[@blazeelvirafirehoof7844]

Roses are red, Music come in many styles. Druaga1 investigate lego racer music files.

[@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

[@manonthedollar]

Are you okay, man? You sound coherent.

[@cptcrogge]

Literally nobody. Druaga1: Investigating Lego Racer's Music Files

[@jamesmichael8847]

for some reason in the n64 version of dark forest dash, it sounds way faster and more energetic and that goes with the build theme in the n64 version as well so I wonder how that works

[@DraxTrac]

I also have an obsession of extracting audio files from games. Sometimes I say fuck it and attempt to convert them by using Format Factory to see if it'll work if it was some weird format. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't.

[@chloedegurechaff1941]

Rocket racer was the one I was never able to beat.

[@SyThiCProductions]

My entire life I never knew there is a short cut in the water fall when you start the race.

[@joshsowers]

Zophars domain, havnt heard that in 100 years.. Damn the good ole days!

[@J0ester1234]

THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR!!!!!!!!

[@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

[@ff_crafter]

My favorite video game soundtrack as a kid