FF7/PSX/Sound/Overview

Overview

PSX FF7 sound system is tightly connected with PSX SPU implementation. There are 2 main types of sounds in FF7: streaming sound (background noise in video sequences) and tracker sound. Square Enix programmers didn't use any standard PSX formats such as SEQ, VAB & VAG, they wrote their own custom tracker. Streaming sound is standard PSX XA-ADPCM format, all sound streaming data is in Mode 2 sectors on FF7 CDROM game discs.

The custom tracker is often called AKAO and was programmed by Square Enix sound programmer Minoru Akao. FF7 uses the earliest version of the PlayStation AKAO sound driver.

• 1st Generation (there are various minor differences between games)
  • Final Fantasy 7 (1997)
  • Saga Frontier (1997)
  • Front Mission 2 (1997)
  • Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon (1997)
• 2nd Generation
  • Parasite Eve (1998)
• 3rd Generation
  • Another Mind (1998)
  • Chocobo Dungeon 2 (1998)
  • Final Fantasy 8 (1999)
  • Chocobo Racing (1999)
  • SaGa Frontier 2 (1999)
  • Racing Lagoon (1999)
  • Legend of Mana (1999)
  • Front Mission 3 (1999)
  • Chrono Cross (1999)
  • Vagrant Story (2000)
  • Final Fantasy 9 (2000)
  • Final Fantasy Origins - Final Fantasy 2 (2002)