Background Music Muting Procedures

[Maj]

Background music - the eternal mortal enemy of combo video makers everywhere. It's certainly been the bane of my existence over the past three or so years. And what better way to treat my anguish than to give you all the opportunity to profit from it. See, that way it's not for nothing.

Unless otherwise noted, i'm talking about MAME (v0.105) whenever i mention arcade versions. Good old MAME. Nothing beats that.

Street Fighter
Problem: In the arcade version, one of two sound channels handles sound effects while the other predominantly handles music. Unfortunately, some of the sound effects such as the impact noise and the kick whooshing sound come through the music channel. Therefore, muting the music channel leaves the sound effects sounding flat.
Solution: PS2/Xbox Capcom Classics Collection 2 includes a version of SF1 with an audio option menu which lets you adjust music and sound effects levels individually. It's not available from the main menu before loading the game, so i missed it the first time i looked for it at a friend's house. You have to load SF1 and then press Select to bring up the Pause Menu. Access Audio Setup to take Music Volume all the way down while leaving SFX Volume alone.

CPS1 SF2 Trilogy: World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting
Problem: Same problem, except the other way around - some of the musical drum beats are handled by the sound effects channel.
Solution: For whatever reason, creating a save state and loading it from any of the three introductory game loading screens (hardware check, game identification, regional warning) mutes the background music where the state was loaded. Unfortunately the soundtrack changes when one of the characters gets under 30% vitality and that brings back the music. So if you're gonna do a combo with 1P against 2P, beat up the 1P character until the music changes and then save the state. That way the music won't change even if your combo does 100% damage against 2P. This limits your options somewhat but it should be good enough for most applications.

CPS2 Library: SSF2/ST, Alpha series, Marvel series, Darkstalkers series, etc.
Solution: Kawaks does the trick with Sound -> QSound options -> Disable QSound music. Also crowbait created a solution for MAME which you can get from him if you need it.

Street Fighter Collection: SSF2 and ST
Solution: PSX/Saturn versions let you shut off music within the Option screen by lowering the BGM Volume stars down to zero while leaving the SE Volume setting alone. (This is the version that gives Guile access to CPS1 chains in both SSF2 and ST.)

SF3 Trilogy: New Generation, 2nd Impact, and 3rd Strike
Solution: Dreamcast versions of Double Impact and 3rd Strike as well as PS2 3S (SFAC) all have convenient soundtrack muting options.

SF4
Solution: Xbox360/PS3 versions let you shut off music via Options -> Sound Settings. Unfortunately there's no way to isolate the announcer samples and shut him up without disabling the character voices in the process. Turns out there's an effective alternate solution though.

CvS, CvSPro, and MvC2
Solution: Dreamcast versions don't have music options so you'll have to create custom soundtrack remixes with silent non-looping audio files. Kind of a hassle but fairly straightforward as far as hassles go.

CvS2
Solution: Dreamcast version lets you shut off music via Option Mode -> Sound Option. You can even save VS Mode matches onto your VMU and then watch them in Replay Mode after turning off BGM from the menu. But personally i keep BGM off at all times because there's no bigger waste of time than having to rerecord a combo due to this oversight.

CFE/CFJ
Solution: PS2/Xbox versions let you shut off music via Option Mode -> Sound Option -> BGM Level.

HSF2 and HSFA plus the rest of SFA Anthology
Solution: While neither of these PS2 titles offer BGM muting options, they do benefit from the awesome PS2 feature of being able to eject the disc during gameplay. Since the music is read off the disc in real time, removing it stops the music while preserving all other sound effects. The game will keep running as long as you don't encounter any loading screens. In most cases you can even change characters without having to put the disc back in.

SvC Chaos
Problem: Currently there's no way to turn off this game's background music in MAME.
Solution: Kawaks has a dope little feature where you can press numpad + or - keys to scroll through the game's music selection. Using this feature, you can flip through all the stage soundtracks until you reach one of the short samples like the Game Over tune. Let it play out and you'll have the rest of the round to do whatever you want in silence. Thanks ArT of AoFDB for coming up with this trick.

[NKI]

For the Dreamcast versions of MvC2, 3S, ST, and CvS2, another option is to download a copy of TDC Final v2 by Toodles. After selecting the game you want to play, it let's you choose what game's music you want to use, or you can turn off the music completely.

[Maj]

Pugsy and NotAGoodName on the MAME Cheats forum succeeded in finding a MAME 0.126/0.105 cheat to disable background music in SvC Chaos.

This seems to work in MAME 0.126...not done any thorough testing

Code: Select all

:svc:20800000:011276:00000060:FFFFFFFF:No Background Music

What i like to do is create a whole new folder for the files i'm going to use for cheats, containing a separate copy of the emulator, roms, save states, everything. After recording a combo with the music enabled using my non-cheat emulator, i duplicate it from scratch using the cheats and record it again. Then i pair the video feed from my original recording with the audio from the cheated recording. That way there's no question whatsoever that the combo is legit and that the cheats didn't play any part in altering gameplay, randomness, etc.

Definitely an annoying process, but thankfully there aren't too many games that require cheats to mute background music.

[error1]

I feel I should mention that any cd or dvd based game that plays the music off the disk/iso you can mute the music by taking the disk out or loading a savestate with the wrong disk.

[Maj]

Even if you disable background music in CvS2, you still hear noisy background objects like the bus in London, the helicopter in New York, and the racecars in Nairobi. However, you can kill each of these by waiting until the sounds are audible and then pausing the game. When you unpause, the sound will be gone and should stay gone for the remainder of the round.

I don't think there's any way to silence the lightning or the earthquakes in the Osaka stages though.

[Tizoc]

Would using VirtualDub help in the muting process? Only drawback here is that the SFX gets muted as well :/
Alt. aren't there some video editting programs that show the audio as streams which you can edit/delete?

[Maj]

Nah, that doesn't help us. All good video editing programs let you do that on the timeline so it's always available as a last resort, but this thread is about muting BGM without affecting SFX.

It's damn near impossible to clean out BGM in post-processing, so finding a way to silence the music in-game is ideal.

[Maj]

Okay this is fucking stupid. I have SF4's BGM level set all the way down to zero yet i can still hear music playing faintly in the background. It seemed to mute fine when i had it hooked up to my TV via HDMI cable, but i can only capture via composite output. How the hell does this bullshit get through testing? Also tried ejecting the disc but it automatically exits the game. I'ma import a silent MP3 track onto the PS3 hard drive and try to play it during the match. If that doesn't work, i'm out of ideas.

edit: Praise Jesus, it worked!

[error1]

I read this brought up in a q&a with Christian Svensson on event hubs so it's a known problem.
"In the PC SFIV options menu, turning down the background music all of the way doesn't completely mute the soundtrack, it just turns down the volume a ways. Could you guys fix this?

Sven: I'll report this to the team on Monday and see what they say."
No telling if they'll fix it, I had to turn my sound way up to notice it.

[fullmetalross]

thats what it does in the console version so I doubt they'd fix it. You could record your combo on the training mode stage, then record it on the stage you want without sound, then just rip the sound file out of the training mode stage and boom your done! ahha, or use maj's easier solution. Mine is much funnier though.

[CPS2]

Does anyone know of a cheat to disable the BGM in SFA2 on FBA-RR?

I've got this 23MB cheat file (it says 005.xml<mamecheat version="1"> on the top line), and usually search through it, find what I'm after and convert it to this kind of format:

cheat "background music"
0 "default"
1 "kill", 0, 0x206CE16, 0x00

It doesn't seem to have this option for SFA2 tho.

[error1]

you can just go into the jukebox and change the bgm to something short

[CPS2]

Cheers, I'll give it a shot.

edit: got it =] thanks again.

[Dammit]

I should probably mention this now. I've been doing some memsearching and found a couple of mute codes that work on all the CPS2 games.

Code: Select all

cheat "background music"
0 "default"
1 "kill", 1, 0xF026, 0x00, 1, 0xF027, 0x00

works on:
mshvsf, mvsc, sfa3, sgemf, vhunt2, vsav, vsav2, xmvsf

Code: Select all

cheat "background music"
0 "default"
1 "kill", 1, 0xF018, 0x00, 1, 0xF019, 0x00

works on:
cybots, dstlk, hsf2, msh, nwarr, ringdest, sfa, sfa2, sfz2al, ssf2, ssf2t, xmcota

The full list:
http://www.mamecheat.co.uk/forums/viewt ... 032#p12032

edit: revised

[CPS2]

Sweet as

[ShinjiGohan]

you could probably test that code in mame since the SFEX games also run on q-sound.

But with mame you can just the sliders to turn off the BGM anyway -shrugs-

[Dammit]

Here's a set of codes for sf2, sf2ce, sf2hf. Only the two bytes at D048 control the music, but the first notes will stick forever unless you find and kill them also.

It's pretty hideous but it works. I left them on by default to save some clicks.

Code: Select all

cheat "BGM"
default 1
0 "BGM default"
1 "BGM off", 1, 0xD048, 0x00,1, 0xD049, 0x00

cheat "D300"
default 1
0 "default"
1 "1st note off", 1, 0xD300, 0x00, 1, 0xD301, 0x00, 1, 0xD302, 0x00, 1, 0xD303, 0x00, 1, 0xD304, 0x00, 1, 0xD305, 0x00, 1, 0xD306, 0x00, 1, 0xD307, 0x00, 1, 0xD310, 0x00, 1, 0xD311, 0x00, 1, 0xD312, 0x00, 1, 0xD313, 0x00, 1, 0xD314, 0x00, 1, 0xD315, 0x00, 1, 0xD316, 0x00, 1, 0xD317, 0x00, 1, 0xD320, 0x00, 1, 0xD321, 0x00, 1, 0xD322, 0x00, 1, 0xD323, 0x00, 1, 0xD324, 0x00, 1, 0xD325, 0x00, 1, 0xD326, 0x00, 1, 0xD327, 0x00, 1, 0xD330, 0x00, 1, 0xD331, 0x00, 1, 0xD332, 0x00, 1, 0xD333, 0x00, 1, 0xD334, 0x00, 1, 0xD335, 0x00, 1, 0xD336, 0x00, 1, 0xD337, 0x00

cheat "D340"
default 1
0 "default"
1 "1st note off", 1, 0xD340, 0x00, 1, 0xD341, 0x00, 1, 0xD342, 0x00, 1, 0xD343, 0x00, 1, 0xD344, 0x00, 1, 0xD345, 0x00, 1, 0xD346, 0x00, 1, 0xD347, 0x00, 1, 0xD350, 0x00, 1, 0xD351, 0x00, 1, 0xD352, 0x00, 1, 0xD353, 0x00, 1, 0xD354, 0x00, 1, 0xD355, 0x00, 1, 0xD356, 0x00, 1, 0xD357, 0x00, 1, 0xD360, 0x00, 1, 0xD361, 0x00, 1, 0xD362, 0x00, 1, 0xD363, 0x00, 1, 0xD364, 0x00, 1, 0xD365, 0x00, 1, 0xD366, 0x00, 1, 0xD367, 0x00, 1, 0xD370, 0x00, 1, 0xD371, 0x00, 1, 0xD372, 0x00, 1, 0xD373, 0x00, 1, 0xD374, 0x00, 1, 0xD375, 0x00, 1, 0xD376, 0x00, 1, 0xD377, 0x00

cheat "D380"
default 1
0 "default"
1 "1st note off", 1, 0xD380, 0x00, 1, 0xD381, 0x00, 1, 0xD382, 0x00, 1, 0xD383, 0x00, 1, 0xD384, 0x00, 1, 0xD385, 0x00, 1, 0xD386, 0x00, 1, 0xD387, 0x00, 1, 0xD390, 0x00, 1, 0xD391, 0x00, 1, 0xD392, 0x00, 1, 0xD393, 0x00, 1, 0xD394, 0x00, 1, 0xD395, 0x00, 1, 0xD396, 0x00, 1, 0xD397, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3A7, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3B7, 0x00

cheat "D3C0"
default 1
0 "default"
1 "1st note off", 1, 0xD3C0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3C7, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3D7, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3E7, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F0, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F1, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F2, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F3, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F4, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F5, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F6, 0x00, 1, 0xD3F7, 0x00

you could probably test that code in mame since the SFEX games also run on q-sound.

The same code probably wouldn't work but the solution could be just as simple.

[Xenozip.]

The BGM mute codes crash VSav in FBA and nFBA, haven't gotten around to testing FB.

[Dammit]

Well. Everything crashes FBA. It especially shits itself if you try to load one rom and then another without quitting and restarting.

Try it again, like several times.

[Xenozip.]

I did. And even with another person in another state using a different install. We crash.

No, the cheat codes that we have for lifebars and whatevertheshit don't crash anything, all my cheats function as intended. This mute code we have does indeed cause a crash consistently, right as we try to enable it. Guru meditation /boom (on my end)

[Dammit]

In response to this post:

This works for kof2000. All I did was add a line to an existing music code.

Code: Select all

cheat "BGM select"
0 "default"
1 "KD-0084: Hero Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x00
2 "Inner Shade: Benimaru Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x01
3 "Terry115: Fatal Fury Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x02
4 "Beauty + the Beast: Art of Fighting Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x03
5 "The Trooper: Ikari Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x04
6 "Will: Psycho Soldier Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x05
7 "Come Up Smiling: Gals Fighters Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x06
8 "Wild Party: Korea Team", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x07
9 "Ice Place: Kula", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x08
10 "Slasher Zero: Zero", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x09
11 "Good Bye Esaka: Kyo", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x0A
12 "Stormy Scream - Arashi no Saxophone 4: Iori", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x0B
13 "disable", 0, 0x10ED15, 0x0C

cheat "stage select"
0 "default"
1 "Factory", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x00
2 "Scrap Dump", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x01
3 "Garbage Dump", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x02
4 "Desert", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x03
5 "Korea", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x04
6 "Aquarium", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x05
7 "Temple", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x06
8 "Frozen Factory", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x07
9 "Frozen Scrap Dump", 0, 0x10A7AE, 0x08

Only works in 2P mode and you have to activate it before the music would start.

I might look into a more general solution for NeoGeo some time.

[Dammit]

I might look into a more general solution for NeoGeo some time.

Made some progress:
http://www.mamecheat.co.uk/forums/viewt ... 184#p12184

[oKutabareo]

Anybody know how to mute the background music for MAME32 Plus Plus? I use that most often.

[Dammit]

What kind of formats does it take?

If it's newer than MAME 0.126 you can just get the latest XML pack and put cheat.zip with the emulator.
http://cheat.retrogames.com/download/cheat0137.7z
Puggsy was nice enough to add the mute codes to his official pack.

If it's not that new it's going to only take the horrible dat format.
http://cheat.retrogames.com/download/cheat126.zip
You can add them to the end of the huge cheat.dat file, or make your own cheat.dat with just the codes.
The trouble is converting to that format. It's like heiroglyphics. Plus there's at least two different versions.

The ini format is easy to deal with but I think only Kawaks and FBA use it.

[oKutabareo]

Yeah, MAME32 Plus Plus! runs on a .dat cheat. Do you happen to know just that line of code for Super Gem Fighters for background music mute?

[onReload]

Speaking of Mame+ or ++, (didn't know there was a Plus Plus) - My cheats don't show up as an option in the TAB menu anymore; my default game options > miscellaneous > enable game cheats is on, and i have both the current zip file, and the above posted .dat...no idea why it's not showing up as an option.

[Dammit]

Yeah, MAME32 Plus Plus! runs on a .dat cheat. Do you happen to know just that line of code for Super Gem Fighters for background music mute?

Pugsy delivers:

Code: Select all

:sgemf:01100000:F026:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No Background Music

For other games, just switch the rom name in the 1st group and the code in the 3rd group:

Code: Select all

:kof98:01100000:FD89:00000000:FFFFFFFF:No Background Music

That method should work for all the CPS2 and NeoGeo codes.

Speaking of Mame+ or ++, (didn't know there was a Plus Plus) - My cheats don't show up as an option in the TAB menu anymore; my default game options > miscellaneous > enable game cheats is on, and i have both the current zip file, and the above posted .dat...no idea why it's not showing up as an option.

Are you sure "cheats" is set to "1" in mame.ini?
Some versions also specify the name and path of "cheat_file".

I'm not familiar with these variants.

[onReload]

cheatpath is set to the correct directory

cheat is at 1, supposedly.

[desk]

annoying that I can't find a quick answer for this, just had a big, fruitless search

Anybody know how to go about muting gens (megadrive emulator)? individual channels so I can be left with only the SFX? Or any megadrive emulator really. Got something I need to get started on but can't!

[error1]

yah under the sound tab unclick z80, then once your past the part where the bgm should have loaded turn it back on. That method has some flaws, because if a new bgm starts playing you have to do it over, but it might work depending on what you want to do.