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Syplheed-Reborn/docs/re/structures/bgm-two-stems.md
Sylpheed RE agent 86e52b01d0 re: the menu's music is BGM_103 -- found by accident while chasing Q6,
confirmed three ways

Chasing where the event code comes from, sub_821C5580 turned out to do
two things worth having.

For Q6 it arms the outer gate: li r11,3 ; stw r11,16(r28) is exactly the
value sub_821C7850 tests before dispatching, which answers the "what does
this+16 == 3 gate on" question I left open last iteration. It then passes
r5 = [r27+4], an event read out of a structure, so the vocabulary is
still not enumerable. Of the four callers of sub_821C7850, three pass
constants -- 0, 0 and 5 -- and this one does not.

The accident is a few instructions earlier: li r5, 1103 into a sound-play
call. 1103 is a BGM cue id, BGM_103. That closes a residual I had written
off as undecodable: which bank the menu plays. The cue table genuinely
cannot say, since its BGM entries are numeric -- but the code can, and it
checks out three independent ways. The census says BGM_103.slb is two
waves of 3876864 and 3930112 bytes; the XMA probe at the main menu saw
two stereo streams of 3876864 and 3930112 bytes. Byte for byte on both.

That also corrects me. bgm-two-stems.md said those observed sizes matched
no bank's declared waves and inferred the decoder gets a window rather
than a whole wave. Wrong on both counts -- I had checked only the BGM_0xx
rows of the census because that was the block on screen. METHOD gets it:
check a measurement against the whole reference set, not the part you
happened to be reading.
2026-08-28 20:10:41 +00:00

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# A music bank is two stems of one performance, played together
**Status:**`CONFIRMED` for the structure — **decoded**, with a disc-wide check
over all 32 BGM banks. 🟡 for the *role* of the second wave — **measured** by
signal analysis, and the two readings that survive are named below. ❔ which bank
is the menu's music is **undecodable from the disc**, with the reach stated.
Answers [MISSION Q10](../../port/MISSION.md). It also **withdraws the premise**: the
handoff said `BGM_001.slb` is *three* sub-waves of 10 KB / 4.47 MB / 4.67 MB. The
10 KB is the bank **header**, not a wave.
## The structure — decoded
```
BGM_001.slb (9 178 040 B)
0 BANK id=1001 data_size=9175992 hdr = 5 blocks (10240 B) 16bit/2ch
10240 RIFF data@14336 size=4466688 (2181 packets) 25697 B/s → 173.82 s
4481024 seek 2181 packets
4491264 RIFF data@4495360 size=4673536 (2282 packets) 26887 B/s → 173.82 s
9168896 seek 2282 packets
```
A bank is a 10 240-byte header and then **exactly two waves**, and the two always
have the **same duration** — different byte sizes and different bitrates, same
number of seconds. Duration is `data_size / PsuedoBytesPerSec` (the u32 at
`RIFF+0x20`; `RIFF+0x24` is the sample rate, 48 000 Hz except `BGM_020``023`
at 44 100).
### Disc-wide
`tools/re-capture/bgm_wave_census.py`, full output in
[`../data/bgm-wave-census.txt`](../data/bgm-wave-census.txt):
> **28 of the 32 BGM entries** read straight off their own pak entry as two waves
> of equal duration — equal to 0.01 s, over lengths from 37 s to 277 s.
The other four — `BGM_106``BGM_109` — are **not counterexamples**, they are the
known leading-region straddle ([`slb-data-offset.md`](slb-data-offset.md)): those
entry windows start mid-bank, so an entry contains the tail of the previous bank,
one whole wave of its own, and the `BANK` header of the *next* one.
`slb_segment_phase.py bank` shows it directly — the entry named `BGM_107.slb`
contains `BANK id=1108`. Realigning across the boundaries with the `seek` packet
counts, which pin each join exactly (bank 1107: a `seek` for 1164 packets and a
2 383 872-byte wave = 1164 packets), restores the same shape:
| bank | wave 0 | wave 1 |
|---|---|---|
| 1107 | 2 383 872 B → 65.18 s | 2 418 688 B → 65.18 s |
| 1108 | 3 696 640 B → 128.91 s | 3 696 640 B → 128.91 s |
| 1109 | 2 887 680 B → 81.50 s | 2 932 736 B → 81.50 s |
Bank 1106's wave 0 begins in unclaimed bytes before its entry and is known only
by its `seek` count (1 718 packets), so it is 🟡 rather than measured.
**So: intro + loop is dead, and so is two halves of one piece.** Both would give
unequal durations; 32 banks give equal ones.
## The role of the second wave — measured
Decoded `BGM_001`'s two waves to PCM and compared them.
| | wave 0 | wave 1 |
|---|---|---|
| duration | 173.809 s | 173.809 s |
| first sound / last sound | 0.001 s / **167.663 s** | 0.003 s / **167.663 s** |
| RMS | 6 824 | 3 961 |
| L↔R correlation | 0.61 | **0.14** |
| energy below 200 Hz | 16.5 % | **6.7 %** |
| energy 14 kHz | 31.1 % | 42.5 % |
**They are sample-synchronous.** Transient-envelope cross-correlation searched
over ±5 s peaks at **lag +0.00 s** (0.5624), and both waves stop at the *same
millisecond*, 167.663 s. Two takes, two halves or two alternates would not do
that. They are two stems of one performance and are meant to sound **at the same
time**.
**Therefore concatenating them is wrong**, and not subtly: it plays the piece
twice, the second time as a bass-less secondary stem.
### 🟡 Which kind of second stem — two readings survive
* **The rear pair of a 4-channel mix.** Fits every number: quieter, far more
decorrelated between L and R, and with the bass managed away to the front pair.
* **A second intensity layer** to be mixed in or crossfaded.
**Not settled, and the obvious field does not settle it.** `ChannelMask` is
`0x0002` on *both* waves, and [`sound-slb.md`](sound-slb.md) already records that
this game writes meaningless channel metadata (movie voices declare 2 channels
over mono content). What would settle it is a runtime observation — whether the
game submits both waves to the mixer at once — which needs an emulator with audio
this container does not have.
## ❔ Which bank is the menu's music — undecodable, and here is the reach
The cue table binds cue names to sound ids and banks
([`sound-cue-table.md`](sound-cue-table.md)), and its **32 BGM cues are named
`BGM_001``BGM_109`** — pure numbers, no `TITLE`, no `MENU`, no semantic name
anywhere. Looked in: the `SOUNDS` record (5 798 cues), `FILES` (5 135 bank
paths), and the bank headers themselves (a `BANK id` that simply repeats the cue
number, `id=1001` for `BGM_001`). Nothing names a screen.
So the menu↔bank binding has to come from the running game — the same route Q8's
event bindings need — and until then the port is **choosing** a track, not
transcribing one.
## What the port needs to know
* a music bank is **two waves that play together**, not one track and not a
sequence — do not concatenate;
* both are full length; align them at sample 0;
* **the track is not a seamless loop.** `BGM_001` fades out and is followed by
**6.15 s of silence** (last sound 167.663 s of 173.809 s; the final second
before silence is at RMS 168 against 4 788 at the head). Looping the wave as
stored gives a fade-out and six seconds of nothing every cycle. No loop-point
field has been identified in the XMA header, so a menu loop is **authored**.
## ✅ Confirmed at runtime — two stereo streams decode at once
The page above said the "played together" reading needed "a runtime observation
of whether the game submits both waves to the mixer at once", and that this
container could not do it. It can: `--xma_param_probe=true` logs every XMA stream
the decoder is handed.
Sitting on the **main menu**, two stereo 48 kHz streams were decoding
simultaneously — **1 893 packets / 3 876 864 B** and **1 919 packets /
3 930 112 B**. Two stereo streams alive at the same moment on a screen with one
piece of music playing is the direct observation this page was missing: **a music
bank's two waves are simultaneous, not sequential.** Concatenating them is wrong,
now measured as well as inferred.
🟡 It still does **not** separate the two readings — surround-rear pair versus a
second intensity layer — because both predict simultaneity.
## ✅ The menu's music is `BGM_103` — three independent routes agree
An earlier version of this section said the two observed byte sizes "do not match
any bank's declared wave sizes". **That was wrong** — I had checked only the
`BGM_0xx` rows. They match `BGM_103` exactly, and the code names it:
| route | evidence |
|---|---|
| **static, code** | `GamePart_Title`'s phase handler `sub_821C5580` does `li r5, 1103` into a sound call (`sub_8217ACF8`, with `r4 = 4`) — **cue 1103 = `BGM_103`** |
| **static, disc** | [`../data/bgm-wave-census.txt`](../data/bgm-wave-census.txt): `BGM_103.slb` = two waves of **3 876 864** and **3 930 112** bytes, 87.75 s each |
| **runtime** | the XMA probe at the **main menu** saw two stereo 48 kHz streams decoding simultaneously, of **3 876 864** and **3 930 112** bytes |
Byte-for-byte on both waves. So:
* **which bank the menu plays is decoded** — `BGM_103`, from the executable, since
the cue *table*'s BGM entries are numeric and name no screen;
* and the two-stems-play-together finding is now confirmed **on a named bank**,
with the runtime stream sizes equal to the bank's declared wave sizes — so the
game hands the decoder the whole wave, not a window, which is the opposite of
what the earlier note guessed.