How to extract audio from yakuza 3

This guide will help you through the now-not-so-painful process of ripping audio(songs, sfx, dialog, etc) from yakuza 3. This may or may not be useful when attempting to rip audio from yakuza 4, 5 and 0.

Essential Tools

Since the audio files are heavily compressed/encrypted in a lot of ways, you're going to need:

• VGMTOOLBOX[sourceforge.net](for the .acb and .awb files)
  
• HCA Decoder(HCA to WAV) by Nyagamon[github.com](for the .hca files that are compressed inside awb and acb files)
  FFMPEG based ADX converter by OSA413[github.com](for .adx files)

's all

Locating your desired audio

Go to where your yakuza 3 is installed(commonly located at .../steam/steamapps/common/yakuza3)

Then open the folder called "snda2". This folder will have all sorts of .acb files, primarily ones related to objects. In-game voices from kiryu and other main characters can also be found here with the file name being something like BTL_CHARACTER.

Inside SNDA2 there is a folder called "stream". This folder holds background music for minigames, places(such as the song that plays when you enter le marche) and alike. Inside STREAM there is also audio from karaoke, cutscenes and substories.

Decrypting/converting

When you have found your desired audio piece, open VGMtoolbox, then follow this path:

VGMtoolbox>misc tools>Extraction tools>Common Archives.

Click on CRI ACB/AWB Archive Extractor, and drop the acb/awb file into the program. This will create a folder inside wherever the audio file is located called "_vgmt_acb_ext_(filename)".


Then go through the folder until you find the .hca files that were compressed in the acb/awb file.

For the hca, we'll be using the HCA2WAV by Nyagamon. This software is in japanese, but you do'nt need to know japanese for the method we're using.

First of all, extract the files from Nyagamon's software into the same folder, if you did'nt do it already.
Afterwards, drag your .hca folder INTO the .exe file called "hca"(hca.exe). This will generate a .WAV file in the exact same folder hca.exe is on.


Done! You have succesfully ripped audio from the game.

Converting ADX files

Converting those files are much simpler than acb/awb using the FFMPEG based converter.

Drag the ADX file and drop it inside the SOUND folder.

Make sure the adx file is inside SOUND, then open adx_to_flac or adx_to_wav, whatever works best for you.
The .bat will create the sound file inside the SOUND_raw folder.

Done!

IMPORTANT

After ripping what you wanted,

DO DELETE THE FOLDERS CREATED BY VGMTOOLBOX INSIDE OF YAKUZA 3.

This is because the game might misinterpret those files, rendering the game unplayable, audioless, or making it crash frequently.

[Tapeworm Terrorist]

HELP!!

I for some reason HCAD is interpreting certain .acb as .awb, thus giving me this message: "Cannot find AWB file. Please verify corresponding AWB file is named [THE FILE]". Because of this it wont decomplie it what do i do?

[Krychur]

I actually found a way. I used Partool to extract sound.par and opened the individual .acb files with Foobar2000 using the vgmstream plugin. it extracts files by number, but the "title" section has the name of the sound itself. seems to work with every Yakuza game to use the vgmstream format, even works with the PS3 exclusives and Binary Domain, though Ishin! seems to refuse to open up.

[Imm]

i did this guide with yakuza 3 in mind, and by extent yakuza 4 and 5 since they use the same engine. This guide may or may not work properly with dragon engine, i never messed with it. Send me a message with you want some help with it

[Krychur]

edit: most of the files work, but act_common, bttl_common, and various other *text here*_common files don't seem to work. the basic stuff like arm_X or such do work, but the ones I'm looking to extract don't want to be played back.

[Krychur]

I followed all of the instructions, but it seems ACB2WAV isn't compatible with Dragon Engine files. it refuses to convert any of the .acb files I feed it.

[Overdrive]

Update - found an alternative ADX decompiler, and it successfuly dismantles an ADX file into multiple tracks within one WAV file.

https://github.com/Isaac-Lozano/radx

[Overdrive]

Do you have an idea about ADX files of Y4 Remastered? The converter produces files that can not be read