Decoding ES5506 sample ROMs

[cmccaff1]

Tried my best to figure this out on my own, but decided to swallow my pride and ask for some help.
Recently, I've become interested in ripping samples from various arcade games...it's been very interesting to poke inside different sample ROMs, and I've been able to successfully work with various formats, including the signed 8-bit mono PCM data found in Taito F3 games (ES5505).
I thought the ES5506 would be equally easy to work with, but I hit a bit of a roadblock.

For example, a friend recently asked me to take a look at the samples in "Macross Plus," but when I opened up the sample ROM (bp964a.u24) in GoldWave, the waveforms come out distorted no matter what settings I use.
I get the best results selecting unsigned 8-bit mono PCM, but it's not good enough for my needs...I had similarly bad results with "Twin Eagle 2," which I took a look at back in July.
Does anyone know if there are any decoders capable of processing ES5506 data without any distortion whatsoever, and ideally exporting the contents of an entire ROM to .wav format?

Thank you very much for your help...all the best!

[stestairs]

Tried my best to figure this out on my own, but decided to swallow my pride and ask for some help.
Recently, I've become interested in ripping samples from various arcade games...it's been very interesting to poke inside different sample ROMs, and I've been able to successfully work with various formats, including the signed 8-bit mono PCM data found in Taito F3 games (ES5505).
I thought the ES5506 would be equally easy to work with, but I hit a bit of a roadblock.

For example, a friend recently asked me to take a look at the samples in "Macross Plus," but when I opened up the sample ROM (bp964a.u24) in GoldWave, the waveforms come out distorted no matter what settings I use.
I get the best results selecting unsigned 8-bit mono PCM, but it's not good enough for my needs...I had similarly bad results with "Twin Eagle 2," which I took a look at back in July.
Does anyone know if there are any decoders capable of processing ES5506 data without any distortion whatsoever, and ideally exporting the contents of an entire ROM to .wav format?

Thank you very much for your help...all the best!

I can confirm that the ES5506 can be a bit tricky to decode, especially if the samples have been processed or compressed in a way that's hard to decode with standard software.

[stestairs]

snake game wrote: ↑
I can confirm that the ES5506 can be a bit tricky to decode, especially if the samples have been processed or compressed in a way that's hard to decode with standard software.

I’d suggest is checking out MAME's documentation for the ES5506 sound chip. It's possible that they’ve already implemented a decoder that you can use or adapt for your needs.

[cmccaff1]

Thank you very much for your response!
I will take a look at the MAME source in the future, though I wouldn't know where to begin as far as taking that code and making a custom decoder.
Hopefully someone much more savvy than I will someday make it happen...in any event, I am grateful to have finally heard back on this topic.

[thomasfrank]

Tried my best to figure this out on my own slope game, but decided to swallow my pride and ask for some help.
Recently, I've become interested in ripping samples from various arcade games...it's been very interesting to poke inside different sample ROMs, and I've been able to successfully work with various formats, including the signed 8-bit mono PCM data found in Taito F3 games (ES5505).
I thought the ES5506 would be equally easy to work with, but I hit a bit of a roadblock.

For example, a friend recently asked me to take a look at the samples in "Macross Plus," but when I opened up the sample ROM (bp964a.u24) in GoldWave, the waveforms come out distorted no matter what settings I use.
I get the best results selecting unsigned 8-bit mono PCM, but it's not good enough for my needs...I had similarly bad results with "Twin Eagle 2," which I took a look at back in July.
Does anyone know if there are any decoders capable of processing ES5506 data without any distortion whatsoever, and ideally exporting the contents of an entire ROM to .wav format?

Thank you very much for your help...all the best!

The MAME emulator includes tools that can help extract and decode Ensoniq ES5506 samples. I recommend using mame -debug to inspect how the emulator processes audio data.