A PlayStation Sound Format (PSF) file is a sound data file (akin to SPC from the Super NES) ripped directly from a Sony PlayStation video game.

The PSF format was created by Neill Corlett in 2003. Neill Corlett later created the PSF2 format. Highly Experimental is the name of the Winamp plugin that plays PSF and PSF2 files. This plugin can improve on the original Playstation sound by playing the PSF's at sampling rates above 44.1 KHz.

Generally PSF files contain a number of samples and a sequence player program. This takes far less space than the equivalent streamed format of the same song (WAV,MP3) while still sounding exactly like the original song (as opposed to formats such as MIDI which depend on the creator's accuracy and quality of the MIDI synthesizer it's played on). Several PSF subformats also have a miniPSF/PSFlib capability, wherein data that is used by multiple tracks need only be stored once (in the PSFlib) and the differences are stored, with reference to the PSFlib, in a miniPSF file, further increasing storage efficiency. Additionally sections of the PSF are zlib compressed. Generally, background music stored in PSF files can be played forever, as the sequencer properly handles its own loop points, another advantage over streamed formats.

A PSF2 file is a sound data file equivalent to the PSF, but ripped directly from a Sony Playstation 2 video game.

Both PSF and PSF2 files contains a header which specifies the type of video game system the file contains data for, and an optional set of tags at the end which can give detailed information on the file (game name, artist, length, etc.) The organization of the data is determined by each individual subformat.

PSF initially stood only for "PlayStation Sound Format", but with the addition of the PSF2, SSF (Sega Saturn Sound Format), DSF (Dreamcast Sound Format), USF (Nintendo Ultra 64 Sound Format), and QSF (Capcom Q-Sound Format) subformats, a more generic backronym was developed: Portable Sound Format.

External link

• Neill Corlett's PSF Central (http://www.neillcorlett.com/psf/)