Primary repository on GitHub.
NCSF C# Libraries and Utilities by Naram "CyberBotX" Qashat.
This repository is meant to replace the utilities in the SDATStuff repository. Note that not all of the utilities from that repository have been ported to this one.
NOTE: These libraries and utilties are currerntly a Work In Progress, so there may be bugs. If you do encounter one, I'd like to know, so please contact me using one of the methods listed later in this file.
This is a collection of libraries and utilities, written in C#, for working with NCSF files. NCSF is short for "Nitro Composer Sound Format" and is a PSF-style music format for playing Ninteod DS music that utilized Nintendo's 1st-party SDAT (Sound Data) container for SSEQ (Sound Sequence) files. Nitro Composer was the internal name of the tools used to create the SDAT containers. NCSF was created to superceed the 2SF format, which is also for playing DS music. The difference between 2SF and NCSF is that 2SF contains a DS ROM and requires a player that uses a DS emulator to load that ROM and play the music, while NCSF only contains the SDAT and uses code from a decompilation of Pokémon Diamond to play the music. 2SF could also technically play any format of DS music, while NCSF specifically only handles music in the SDAT container format.
NCSF came about around in 2013 some time after I had attempted to make a 2SF set for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attoeney: Trails and Tribulations, and was unable to get any audio from the Legacy of Ys driver that most 2SFs use, specifically all the music unique to that game (the 2SF rip was able to play any of the music from the previous 2 games that was in Trials and Tribulations). While I do not know the exact reason for why this happened, my gut feeling is that the Legacy of Ys version of the SSEQ player could not handle the position of newer music within the SDAT.
While I'd had the idea for NCSF for a while, it was upon finding FeOS Sound System by fincs, a library for the DS homebrew OS, FeOS, that I had a way to parse and play an SSEQ. I ported FSS to work on a PC without a DS, simulating the registers that the DS contains and finding out how to output the audio correctly. Over time, as I gained more knowledge of the SDAT container and the SSEQ format, I would eventually extend my version of FSS so it could handle more things correctly, such as some misconceptions about the PLAYER block and the events for controlling variables and random events. But after some reports that some songs were not being played back correctly, without being able to find the cause, development on NCSF halted. But in late 2024, a decompilation of Pokémon Diamond by pret was released and the code for playing back SSEQs was there, written in C, so I was able to utilize that code to replace the now aging FSS code, and this lead to more proper playback.
In short, NCSF could not have existed without FeOS Sound System, some code from DeSmuME (mostly tables that would've normally been in the DS ARM7 BIOS, along with a few other concepts) and more recently the above mentioned Pokémon Diamond decompilation.
- NCSFCommon: A base library containing classes for the various Nitro Composer components, as well as a ReplayGain analyzer and base classes for handling playback of an SSEQ (Channel, Player and Track).
- NCSFPlayer: A library containing specialized versions of the Channel, Player and Track classes specifically for playback.
- NCSFTimer: A library containing specialized versions of the Channel, Player and Track classes specifically for timing of SSEQs.
- 2SFTagsToNCSF: A command-line program for taking tags from an existing 2SF set (specifically the ones which used the Legacy of Ys driver) to an NCSF set. This is useful to avoid needing to retag an NCSF set if the contents are the same as a 2SF set.
- NDStoNCSF: A command-line program for creating an NCSF from a Nintendo DS ROM (although it could also work on a standalone SDAT too).
- NCSF123: A command-line program to play or output an NCSF. Play refers to audio playback while output refers to either sending the audio data to a RIFF WAVE file or to standard output for use by other programs. While it does not currently exist, being able to send to standard output will be utilized by plugins for other audio players, such as Winamp.
The libraries and utilities in this repository are written in .NET, and currently require .NET 9. To build, you will need to have the .NET 9 SDK installed. You can either download and use the command-line version, or you can use Visual Studio 2022. If you wish to just use the pre-built binaries, you only need to ensure you have the .NET 9 Runtime installed.
NOTE: There are currently no pre-built binaries, this will be corrected in the future once the tools are no longer a Work In Progress.
The programs are command-line only and do not have a GUI currently. Running them with no arguments should print the syntax for the program,
and all of them allow for a -h/--help argument to print out the full help.
I can be contacted about these libraries and utilties in the following ways:
- For bug reports, submit an issue via GitHub's issue tracker.
- Discord: username
cyberbotx. - Email: [email protected], please include NCSF in your subject line.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2013-2025 Naram "CyberBotX" Qashat
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
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OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.