re: the boot intro's audio output -- five live channels, not a stereo mix

Groundwork for the port's ask #4; it does not settle #4.

Captured the game's own output over the boot intro following the ALSA file-tee
recipe exactly -- paced pulse slave, --gpu=null, both mutes off. 148.02 s, 6ch
float32 48 kHz, 0.15-0.16 % silence against the 0.31 % the recipe page records
for its own clean run.

Provenance is the XMA probe rather than a screenshot, which is the right evidence
for an audio question: ADV's three contexts appear byte-exact (1294336 /
1118208 / 1171456), then the documented BGM_102 pair.

Five of the six channels carry distinct content; BR is 82 % silent and 11-15 dB
down. No channel is a copy of another -- the largest pairwise correlation is 0.70
between FL and FR.

That rules out a stereo mix, so 'ship one stream' cannot be right and the port's
held-wrong value stays wrong. It does NOT establish that summing is right, and
the 6-channel count is Xenia's hardcoded kFrameChannelsDefault -- what is
evidence is that five of them differ, which a stereo guest cannot produce.

NOT settled and named as such: the stream-to-channel mapping. The
cross-correlation of each captured channel against each decoded ADV stream has
not been run. One boot, one movie, and --gpu=null means no video cross-check.

Raw is 170 MB and is not committed; sent over share to the port.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
This commit is contained in:
sylph-decoder
2026-08-30 08:13:50 +00:00
parent 6f87ecc4db
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# The game's own audio output over the boot intro (Q9/#4 groundwork).
#
# 2026-08-30. Recipe: docs/re/audio-capture-alsa-file-tee.md, exactly.
# ARGV: run-canary --apu=alsa --mute=false --gpu=null --xma_param_probe=true
# ALSA file tee in front of a paced pulse slave; 6ch float32 @ 48 kHz.
# Raw is 170 MB and is NOT committed -- sent via share.
#
# PROVENANCE (better than a screenshot for an audio question): the XMA probe
# logged ADV's three contexts byte-exact against the disc --
# ctx0 packets=632 byte_size=1294336
# ctx1 packets=546 byte_size=1118208
# ctx2 packets=572 byte_size=1171456
# then two more (1150976 / 1269760) = the documented BGM_102 pair.
#
# CAPTURE QUALITY: 0.15-0.16 % silence on five channels, against the
# 0.31 % the recipe page records for its clean --gpu=null run.
#
# ALSA CHANNEL ORDER: captured i holds source [0,1,4,5,2,3], i.e. the
# labels below are FL FR BL BR FC LFE. Deterministic, not data loss.
#
frames 7105024 = 148.02 s, 6ch float32 @ 48 kHz
ch name peak dBFS rms dBFS %silent
0 FL -3.65 -22.26 0.16
1 FR -2.22 -20.89 0.15
2 BL -4.41 -24.77 0.15
3 BR -11.65 -36.06 82.18
4 FC -4.57 -24.81 0.16
5 LFE -4.66 -24.38 0.16
pairwise |r| > 0.5:
ch0(FL) vs ch1(FR): r=+0.6996
ch0(FL) vs ch4(FC): r=+0.5202
ch1(FR) vs ch5(LFE): r=+0.5639

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# What the game actually emits over the boot intro — five live channels, not a stereo mix
**Classification: measured.** Xenia Canary, 2026-08-30, one boot, no input.
Groundwork for the port's ask #4**it does not settle #4**, and the part it does
not settle is named at the bottom.
## Why this capture exists
The port ships one of `ADV`'s three concurrent voice streams and its
`authored/audio.json` records that as **known wrong, held deliberately**
([`voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md`](voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md)).
Neither "take one" nor "sum them" is established. The only thing that can settle it
is what the game emits, so: record it.
## The capture
Recipe followed exactly from
[`audio-capture-alsa-file-tee.md`](../audio-capture-alsa-file-tee.md) — ALSA `file`
tee in front of a **paced** pulse slave, `--gpu=null`, both mutes off:
```
run-canary --apu=alsa --mute=false --gpu=null --xma_param_probe=true
```
**148.02 s, 6 channels, float32, 48 kHz.**
**Provenance is the XMA probe, not a screenshot** — which is the right evidence
for an audio question, because it witnesses the thing being recorded. The log
carries `ADV`'s three contexts **byte-exact** against the disc:
| ctx | packets | `byte_size` |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 632 | 1 294 336 |
| 1 | 546 | 1 118 208 |
| 2 | 572 | 1 171 456 |
then two more — 1 150 976 / 1 269 760 — which are the documented `BGM_102` pair.
So the movie's voice decoded exactly as in the runs this corpus already records.
**Capture quality: 0.150.16 % silence** on the five live channels, against the
**0.31 %** the recipe page records for its own clean run. Cleaner than the reference.
## What is in the six channels
⚠️ ALSA's channel order, not WAV's: captured *i* holds source `[0,1,4,5,2,3]`, so
the labels below are `FL FR BL BR FC LFE`. Deterministic and invertible.
| ch | | peak dBFS | rms dBFS | % silent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | FL | 3.65 | 22.26 | 0.16 |
| 1 | FR | 2.22 | 20.89 | 0.15 |
| 2 | BL | 4.41 | 24.77 | 0.15 |
| **3** | **BR** | **11.65** | **36.06** | **82.18** |
| 4 | FC | 4.57 | 24.81 | 0.16 |
| 5 | LFE | 4.66 | 24.38 | 0.16 |
**Five channels carry real, distinct content; one (BR) is 82 % silent and 1115 dB
down.** No channel is a copy of another — the largest pairwise correlation is 0.70
(FL/FR, which is what a stereo pair looks like), then 0.52 and 0.56.
### 🔴 What this already rules out
* **Not a stereo mix.** Five independent channels are being emitted.
* **So "ship one stream" cannot be right**, which the corpus already suspected but
had not observed from the output side. The port's held-wrong value stays wrong.
⚠️ **It does not follow that summing is right.** This says the *output* is
multichannel; it says nothing yet about which disc stream lands where.
⚠️ **And do not read the 6 channels as proof the game is 5.1.** `CONTAINER-NOTES`
records that `AudioDriver::kFrameChannelsDefault = 6` is a hardcoded Xenia
constant — the *format* is Xenia's, only the *content* is the guest's. What is
evidence here is that five of those six differ from each other, which a stereo
guest cannot produce.
## 🟡 What is NOT settled — the stream → channel mapping
The decisive step is a cross-correlation of each captured channel against each of
`ADV`'s three decoded streams. **That has not been run.** Until it is:
* which stream feeds which channel pair is unknown;
* whether `FC` carries the dialogue is **consistent with** the corpus's
[centre-channel finding](../structures/voice-centre-channel.md) but not
re-established here;
* why `BR` is near-silent is unknown — a genuinely unused channel, a stream that
ends early, or a decode that failed are all open.
⚠️ **One boot, one movie.** And `--gpu=null` means no video, so nothing here is
cross-checked against what was on screen.
The raw capture is 170 MB and is **not committed**; it went over `share` to the
port as `1788077587-9f2e30af1c98-capture.raw`. Per-channel numbers:
[`../data/intro-audio-channel-census.txt`](../data/intro-audio-channel-census.txt).