Portable Sound Format

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The Portable Sound Format (PSF) is a sound data file format (akin to NSF from the Nintendo Entertainment System, and other console related sound formats) ripped directly from video games from a variety of game consoles. The format was originally used for Sony PlayStation video games.

The PSF format was created by Neill Corlett in 2003, who also wrote the Winamp plugin Highly Experimental that plays PSF1 and PSF2 files.

Generally PSF files contain a number of samples and a sequence player program. This takes far less space than the equivalent streamed format of the same song (WAV, MP3) while still sounding exactly like the original song (as opposed to formats such as MIDI which depend on the creator's accuracy and quality of the MIDI synthesizer it's played on). Several PSF subformats also have a miniPSF/PSFlib capability, wherein data that is used by multiple tracks need only be stored once (in the PSFlib) and the differences are stored, with reference to the PSFlib, in a miniPSF file, further increasing storage efficiency. Additionally sections of the PSF are zlib compressed. Generally, background music stored in PSF files can be played forever, as the sequencer properly handles its own loop points, another advantage over many streamed formats.

A PSF2 file is a sound data file equivalent to the PSF, but ripped directly from a PlayStation 2 video game. PSF2 is internally structured as a file system, rather than PSF which is a single PS executable. PSF's native sample rate is 44100Hz, while PSF2's native sample rate is 48000Hz. The sample rates vary from 8000Hz to 96000Hz.

Both PSF and PSF2 files contains a header which specifies the type of video game system the file contains data for, and an optional set of tags at the end which can give detailed information on the file (game name, artist, length, etc.) The organization of the data is determined by each individual subformat.

PSF initially stood only for "PlayStation Sound Format", but with the addition of the PSF2, SSF (Sega Saturn Sound Format), DSF (Dreamcast Sound Format), USF (Nintendo Ultra 64 Sound Format), QSF (Capcom Q-Sound Format), and GSF (Game Boy Advance Sound Format) subformats, the more generic backronym "Portable Sound Format" was developed. As a result, PSF and PSF1 interchangeably refer to PlayStation sound data files.

[edit] Plugins and players

Audio Overload Mac/Windows/Linux player that supports PSF1.
Audacious *nix player that accepts PSFs (PSF1.)
Chipamp - Winamp plug-in bundle compiled by OverClocked ReMix allowing playback of over 40 chiptune and tracker formats