SCUMM/Technical Reference/Sound resources

Music

Todo:

• Adlib, GM, MT-32 etc formats
• Digital
• iMUSE (separate tracks and specific markers in each song format)

Early v5

In Monkey Island 2 (MI2), music blocks are stored in LFLF blocks, outside of the ROOMs, so they can be accessed globally. The containing sound block looks like this:

Block name         4 bytes ("SOUN")
Block size         4 bytes
Block name         4 bytes ("SOU ")
Block size         4 bytes
Music block        variable

The redundant header is possibly due to building on a legacy implementation, or for easier identification in the table stored in the .000 index file.

The music block may contain any combination of ROL (Roland MT-32), ADL (Adlib/OPL FM), or SPK (PC speaker) blocks. They can also store a single SBL block for digitized sound (described in a later section). Aside from SBL, each of these blocks follow the same basic pattern.

 Block name        4 bytes ("ROL ", or "ADL ", or "SPK ")
 Block size        4 bytes
 MIDI data         variable

Every track is stored in MIDI format, in order to make use of the iMUSE technology through System Exclusive (SysEx) messages.

Due to the predominance of the Sound Blaster and Adlib/OPL FM technology at the time of MI2's release, every musical SOUN block contains an ADL block.

Digitized Sounds

Early v5 - SBL blocks

Digitized sounds first appeared in Monkey Island 1 & 2. They are contained in the .001 resource files, and are sub-blocks of "SOUN" blocks (see the music section above).

 Block name        4 bytes ("SBL ")
 Block size        4 bytes
 Sound header      4 bytes ("AUhd" or "WVhd")
 Unknown           3 bytes (always 00 00 80)
 Data header       4 bytes ("AUdt" or "WVdt")
 VOC data          variable

AUhd and AUdt are used in Monkey Island, while WVhd and WVdt are used in the non-interactive demo of Sam & Max. The actual sound data is stored in the Creative VOC format, without the identifying header.

Early v5 - CD tracks

Games that use CD tracks (Loom/CD, MI1/CD, Zak256/FM-TOWNS) are a bit different. For MI1/CD at least, the "SOU " block size is always 32 bytes and presumably points to the CD track to play.

v5-v6 - MONSTER.SOU

Original

From Indy 4 onwards, sound effects and speech are stored in a separate resource file called "MONSTER.SOU". The format is:

Block name         4 bytes ("SOU ")
Block size         4 bytes
One or more:
 Block name        4 bytes ("VCTL")
 Block size        4 bytes
 Lip-sync tags     variable
 Sound data        variable ("Crea" block / VOC file)

The lip-sync tags provide timing information. In v5 the number of tags is stored in the calling text, according to the formula ((num_tags / 2) << 1) + 8. The "Crea" block is an entire Creative VOC file.

Compressed

ScummVM can use compressed monster.sou files created with the tool "compress_scumm_sou.exe". Aside from using either MP3, OGG, or FLAC formats for the sound data, they contain a mapping table followed by the sound data, like so:

size_of_table  : uint32
size_of_table / 16 times {
 orig_offset   : uint32
 actual_offset : uint32
 num_tags      : uint32
 sound_size    : unit32
}
size_of_table / 16 times {
 num_tags times {
  tag          : uint8
 }
 sound         : sound_size (sound file - MP3/OGG/FLAC)
} 

Each entry in the table has 4 items, each item is 4 bytes, so a table with one entry has a size of 16.

The original offset is what the game will try to play, the actual offset is taken from after the index table.

Each sound is directly preceded by its lip-synch tags.