For those who have viewed BlazeHedgehog's Sonic CD Comparison video on Youtube, you may have noticed that the PC and Gems version have lower quality SFX compared to the Sega/Mega CD version. I read that Retro managed to hack S3&K PC to have higher quality music as opposed to the MIDI tunes. So I was wonder if the same could be done in Sonic CD PC's case with it's 22khz SFX. I don't have the full game on me, although in the PC Demo, the SFX file appears to be PCM8.CMP(could be different in the full version, but it's probably the same). I also wouldn't mind if someone could hack Stardust Speedway 3 GF's Metal Sonic battle to play the BF music too, but that isn't the main priority(though I guess if people become interested in hacking Sonic CD PC, I can just turn this into a general Sonic CD PC hacking thread).
All I know about Sonic CD PC is documented on the wiki: SCHG:Sonic CD (PC). Although this post DID lead me to investigate the PCM8.CMP file further, and I managed to write an importer/exporter, SCDPCsnd. No idea how to change the samplerate or anything else yet.
Yeah, the sound switching works, as I managed to get the jumping sound replaced with the Genesis one(I still prefer CD's though). However, the sound quality degrades from just being placed into PCM8.CMP, like you said(samplerate issues). Someone should also try to a clean rip of all of Sonic CD MCD's SFX, direct from the disc itself. As there are no perfect quality Sonic CD SFX rips out there on the net(that "high quality" one on SFGHQ is not perfect quality). Another cool thing to hack in SCD PC would be what music slot each act plays; that way you could say have all of Palmtree Panic 1 play the JP music, but have Act2 play the US music.
Having both US and JP soundtracks would barely go over an 80 minute CD. However, 99 minute CD-Rs exist, and DAEMON Tools should accept a longer disc. That being said, the game may not store different values for each act. It's possible, but not guaranteed.
Speaking of soundtracks and Sonic CD PC. Does anyone know if I could burn a CD or maybe a hack like Sonic 3K PC's HD Tool is possible? I'd quite like to be able to play Sonic CD with the International Soundtrack.
Well, if your using an ISO with MP3 files for the music, all you have to do to change the songs is replace the music files with different ones under the same names. The music you replace will play instead. Of course, this will only work for the Present, Bad and Good Futures. The Past music is hard-coded into the ISO and therefore hard if not impossible to change.
That might work on the MCD version, but we're talking about the PC version here. If you can somehow burn a CD with the data and music, I don't see why it wouldn't work. Otherwise, it may eventually be possible to have it play music files on your PC, but probably not soon.
