Gone are the Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout days of data>music> folders to pop in your own MP3s...

Skyrim uses a new consolidated data structure for music files like Fallout New Vegas. I heard that the creation kit will be required to be able to add your own music into the game (please note I love JS's music in this game!)

Anybody working on something, or know of a current work-around?

Yeah, I want to know this. I would like to fight the Big Bad with some dubstep on my second time around.

Yeah it looks like it'll be more difficult this time. The music files appear to be in a .xwm format...

I think they've made music even more location specific, so maybe adding new music works more like how adding new songs to GNR Radio works, through an esp file.

Might be a noob question, but where are these .xwm files located? Does it require some sort of extraction process or is it already lying in the skyrim directory somewhere?

I assume we'll probably have to do it through the Creation Kit , like it was done through the GECK with the media controller for New Vegas. Hopefully i also would like to expand on BGM. It always makes the game more enjoyable for me I've done it for Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas so far. and hopefully will continue to do so on Skyrim and the eventual Fallout 4.

The XWM music files are located in the archive Data \ Skyrim - Sounds.bsa

They need to be extracted, there's a few tools out there, I use http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34.

But how to convert them, I don't know.

Might have found a way

Download the latest DirectX SDK

In the C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (date)\Utilities\bin\x86\ you'll find an exe called xWMAEncode

Open up command prompt and cd into this folder, run "xWMAEncode.exe -h" and it'll print the help text

Looks like you give it a PCM (.wav?) input file and specify an output file which is in xWMA

Haven't tried it yet, just about to...

VLC Media Player can open XWM files and convert them to MP3s.

Update, seems to have worked, I converted a .wav file into a .xwm file, then opened it up with this utility: http://www.din.or.jp/~ch3/down_e.html

And it plays!

Next is to see if I can get it to replace some song in the game.

Nice (and sad) to see it's not a module-format.

Update: SWEET This totally works. I replaced all the tavern music with the xwm file and it plays whenever the bard isn't singing or playing an instrument.

Music/sound modders, go nuts!

dude.. I've been nuts for...

nevermind

Anywho, could you would you pweeeeessse re-state whatever it was you just magiked with the sound files in a complete step by step idiot guide..


for us idiots

can your method be used to Expand the soundtrack rather then completely replace?

Step by Step Guide:

Converting a .wav file into a .xwm

1) Download the latest DirectX SDK from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/aa937788
2) Install it
3) Run cmd (open command prompt)
4) Go to \Utilities\bin\x86
This path on my computer was C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft DirectX SDK (June 2010)\Utilities\bin\x86, which means I run the dos command:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft DirectX SDK (June 2010)\Utilities\bin\x86"

You might have to replace "Program Files (x86)" with "Program Files" if you have a 32-bit windows version, and you might have to replace "June 2010" with another date if you're trying another version of DirectX
The easy thing to do is just to browse to that folder then copy the path link in the folder and paste it into cmd when you need it
5) Now you can use the dos command "dir" to see what's in this directory in the command prompt, you should be able to see a file called "xWMAEncode.exe"

dir

6) Assuming you have a .wav file prepared, use the following command to convert the .wav file to .xwm file:

xWMAEncode.exe  

So in my case, my .wav file was placed in the same folder, while I want to make my .xwm file on my desktop, so I would run:

xWMAEncode.exe mywave.wav C:\Users\Jack\Desktop\myxwm.xwm

That should create the .xwm file from the .wav file you gave
Note that if your destination .xwm location that you gave is a location that needs administrative access to write to, this wouldn't work. This is why I had to choose desktop instead of the same directory.

Actually Replacing A Sound or Music In Game
1) As Rianne kindly answered, we need to download some bsa extraction utility. The one she provided is Fallout 3 Archive Utility, downloadable from here: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34
2) The utility is a runnable .jar file, meaning you may need to download and install the latest java runtime environment (if you don't already have it) before you can execute such files.
3) Open up the Fallout 3 Archive Utility, it has a nice gui. Go to File - Open Archive
4) Browse to your skyrim data folder, in my case it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim\Data
5) Open up Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
6) Now you can browse the hierarchy of files contained in Skyrim - Sounds.bsa. Most will be .xwm files, and what file is what sound should be pretty self explanatory (the paths are very descriptive)
7) You can extract the files by first selecting the files you want extracted, then go to Action - Extract Files, and it'll ask you for the location to extract the files
8) If you want to listen to a .xwm file directly, download the tool "xwmaplay" from this link: http://www.din.or.jp/~ch3/down_e.html, run it, then drag xwm files onto it to open
9) To replace a sound file, you can simply place your new .xwm file in the data folder, in the same hierarchical location as the sound you want to replace, with the same file name. If you already installed some mods, you should be familiar with this.
For example, to get my .xwm file to play in all the inns in the game, I looked under music\tavern, and I saw five files with the naming scheme "mus_tavern_0X.xwm" (where X = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). So I made five copies of my .xwm file, named it in the exact same way, and copied them all to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim\Data\music\tavern". Then I launched the game, and it works!

@Obdulio: I don't think so. It just replaces what's already there. I would imagine if we want to expand the soundtrack, then there needs to be code in place for telling the game where and when the song is to be played. That's a lot more complicated than what we're doing here, which is just to override the existing files using files in the data folder.

That said, there are alot of music in this game apparently, so there's a lot of room for customization just with this.

Expansion needs to be done in an ESP.

Seems to work like in Fallout3: You have a region-specific "Media Location Controller" in which you define what "Media Sets" shall be used.

Ah, I must have an old version of VLC... I'll have to update...

How if I can't use this program ? after I downlad and launched the installation after a while it says failed ot install ... all the time .. I cant use that ? isn't there any other simplier program?


Also is not possible to add more music instead of replacing them?

Other sugestions?

Up!

(Sigh) Modding usually needs quite a bit of self-initiative

1. Read here for how the music works:
http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Fallout_New_Vegas_Music

2. Get FOMM from here:
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36901

3. Get the Fallout New Vegas GECK from here:
http://fallout.gamesas.com/eng/downloads/updates-GECK-fnv-eula.php

3a. If you don't have Fallout3 or NV create a new text file in the folder where you extracted FOMM to and rename it to "Fallout3.exe"

4. Install FOMM and the FONV Geck

5. Right-click on Skyrim.esm and use "open with" and choose FOMM. If you don't have an "open with" option hold SHIFT while right clicking.

6. In the TESsnip window select file/new.

7. click on the "+" at Skyrim.esm and search for GRUP (MUST) select it and press Ctrl+C

8. Select the "New plugin" and press Ctrl+V

9. Now search for GRUP (MUSC) and again use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy it.

10. Save the new plugin.

11. Open the new plugin in the FONV-Geck (need to copy it to your FONV Data Folder first)

12. Create a new Media Set for each of your new XWM files.

13. Add that new "Media Set" to each "Media Location Controller" that is named after a region/scenario where you want that tune to play.

14. Save the ESP, copy it back to Skyrim/Data

15. open the ESP again and activate the TES4 entry.

16. Double click on MAST and replace "FalloutNV.esm" with "Skyrim.esm"

16a If TES4 only contains HEDR and CNAM forget step 16

Completely untested, it might work, it might not. If it doesn't work, either you or I did something wrong, or NV handles music differently than Skyrim. In the first case you need to experiment a bit, in the later you need to wait for the Creation Kit.

Yeh but to me modding is usually done trought simple plugins import export , all of this looks like a hacking process.. anyway I really thankyou to share this , I hope someone with more time could experiment? perhaps and tel us ifit works or not and eventually make a mod to add new songs like morrowind and conan ? ....

They already HAVE experimented with it, and stated that it works. The steps described are, in fact, the steps needed to mod most games (barring a CK or equivalent). And it "looks like hacking" because, in a sense, it IS hacking. But don't confuse it for the "bad hacking" stuff....like pirating, hacking forums, etc. While they have similar traits, they are different forms of hacking.

What it appears to me that you want (and I mean no disrespect here) is someone to make you a plug-and-play drop-in mod that you can use. Pretty sure that isn't gonna happen, as the copyright stuff on exchanging music files (MP3, WAV, OGG, whatever) would then come into play. And, though I haven't tried to replace the sounds (not that interested in doing it, to be honest.), reading the step-by-step instructions shows that it isn't hard, just takes a bit of time and attention to what you're doing.

Good job on figuring out that you can do this, and HOW to do it, guys!

Well, *you* want that mod *now*. With the CK it will be much easier to make. It should also be possible to make a mod that overrides the regional music and plays a tune of your choice, like the dragon-battle music overrides standard combat music. With or without SKSE or Script Dragon it should be possible to write a script that plays random music tracks from a folder on your HD just like in previous games. But without the CK all we can do it basically hacking, if there weren't existing tools made for previous games we would still try to decode the file formats, or maybe not, because in January we will get the Creation Kit.

So if you don't want to learn low-level editing that's fine. It can make things easier if you know what you do, but it's nothing you really need. You just need to wait until the CK is released.

You still need to download the DirectX SDK for the XWM converter, though. Microsoft doesn't like it when their tools are available for download separately. So while we can make a batch file to ease up work with the tool from explorer-level, we can't put together a complete package (unless there's a free XWM converter somewhere, or someone is willing to risk getting a C&D order form MS.)

Currently the meh-approach is turning off music in Skyrim and playing your custom songs with the media player in background. If you also want the skyrim songs you still need to convert them to Wav or MP3.

Well my problem is that fr unknown reason the drect x sdk just aborts installation halfway and dont say why ... error occurred orsomething like that and stop ....

Aye I had the same problem, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2011/12/09/known-issue-directx-sdk-june-2010-setup-and-the-s1023-error.aspx fixed it for me.
And now I've got a new problem where the xwmaencode file runs for a split second and then hangs. *sigh*
Edit: No, I just needed to read the instructions properly and put the command window over the folder that it's in. Now to work out what the hell I do here.