Soundtracks

The Xbox allows for soundstracks to be stored on the harddrive and played in-game. Music is copied from audio CDs using the dashboard and converted to WMA audio files. The notes gathered here are from decompiling StDB.dll from Xbox Soundtrack Manager.

Folder Structure

All soundtrack related data is stored in E:\TDATA\fffe0000. Songs are organized into groups of folders containing up to 6 WMA files. Zero-padded 4 decimal integers are used for the folder names, and zero-padded 8 decimal integers are used for the WMA file names. Metadata such as song title and which soundtrack a song belongs to is stored in the ST.DB file

ST.DB

The ST.DB file contains information about soundtracks loaded on the Xbox. Up to 100 soundtracks with 500 songs each can be used. Each header and struct described below is padded to 512 bytes.

File Layout:

(start of file)
0000  Main Header
0200  Soundtrack Struct 1
0400  [Soundtrack Struct 2]
      ...
CA00  Song Group 1
CC00  [Song Group 2]
      ...
(end of file)

Main Header

Type	Description	Comment
int32	magic	always 0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00
int32	numSoundtracks
int32	nextSoundtrackId
int32	soundtrackIds[100]
int32	nextSongId
char	padding[96]

Soundtrack Struct

Type	Description	Comment
int32	magic	always 0x71 0x13 0x02 0x00
int32	id
int32	numSongGroups
int32	songGroupIds
int32	totalTimeMilliseconds
wchar	name[64]	Unicode string
char	padding[64]

Song Group Struct

Type	Description	Comment
int32	magic	always 0x73 0x10 0x03 0x00
int32	soundtrackId
int32	id
int32	padding
Song Struct	songs[6]
char	padding[64]

Song Struct

Type	Description	Comment
int32	id
int32	timeMilliseconds
wchar	name[64]	Unicode string
char	padding[64]

Default Encoding Settings

These are the encoding settings used by the dashboard when encoding WMA files:

Key	Value
Format	WMA Version 2
Codec Description	Windows Media Audio V8
Encoding Tool	Windows Media Encoding Utility 8.0.0.403
Bit Rate	128 kbps
Channels	2
Sampling Rate	44.1 kHz
Bit Depth	16 bit

The track number is added to the metadata.