An SPC700 sound file is a video game music file consisting of scores and music data from RAM used by the SPC700

SPC700

The Nintendo S-SMP is the audio CPU of the SNES video game console.The SNES contains a sound module called APU which is almost completely separate from the rest of the system: it is clocked at a nominal 24.576 MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems, and can only communicate with the main board via 4...

 sound chip on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...

 (SNES) or Super Famicom

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...

. This sound data is usually obtained from a console emulator and not from the system itself.

The capabilities of the SPC700 DSP in the SNES sound system allow for music synthesis by samples

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

 (analogous to MOD

MOD (file format)

MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...

 or IT

Impulse Tracker

Impulse Tracker is a multi-track digital sound tracker . It was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. It was authored by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim, and example music was provided by Jeffrey Lim and Chris Jarvis...

 music formats), allowing long stretches of audio to be produced from only 64 kilobyte

Kilobyte

The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...

s of data.

The chip produces 16-bit sound at 32 kHz, but SPC700 emulators generally can be reconfigured to output at a different sampling rate

Sampling rate

The sampling rate, sample rate, or sampling frequency defines the number of samples per unit of time taken from a continuous signal to make a discrete signal. For time-domain signals, the unit for sampling rate is hertz , sometimes noted as Sa/s...

 (from 8 to 48 kHz).

SPC plugins are available for media player software and portable MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 players running Rockbox

Rockbox

Rockbox is a replacement for the standard firmware in various forms of digital audio players . It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the original firmware, which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functions...

. Some SPC players offer support for complex sound interpolation

Interpolation

In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points....

 methods to attempt to enhance sound quality. Several programs exist to produce MIDI files from the score blocks of SPC files.

The format is unable to support music which is played by swapping samples on the fly, a programmer's trick used to overcome the 64KB limit of the SPC700. The shortcoming is most apparent in the tracks "Yume-Wa Owaranai" from Tales of Phantasia

Tales of Phantasia

is a Super Nintendo game in the RPG genre published by Namco and released in Japan in 1995, selling 212,000 copies. It is the first mothership title in the Tales RPG series and was later remade/re-released on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable...

and "Be Prepared" from the SNES version of The Lion King

The Lion King (video game)

The Lion King is a video game based on Disney's popular animated film. The title was published by Virgin Interactive in 1994, and was released on SNES, NES, Game Boy, PC, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Amiga, Master System and Game Gear. The NES and Master System versions of the game were never released...

.

External links

• SPC file format reference (technical)
• SNESmusic.org Archive
• VG Emulation for Newbies: Extracted Game Music - tutorial for playing and converting SPC files

Plugins and players

• Gstreamer
  GStreamer
  GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...
  
   is able to play SPC files using libgme
• Moonshell OS - DS Homebrew that enables playback of certain sound formats on the DS.
• SnesMusic - app that play spc files on iphone.
• Noise Entertainment System - a NSF/e, GBS, VGM and SPC player for the iPhone and iPod touch.