Copyright © 2024-2025 SFe Team and contributors.
| Revision | Date | Description |
| 1.0.4 | February 8, 2025 | Replaced references to SFe32 A few other fixes |
| 1.0.3 | November 26, 2024 | Updated versioning and SFty subchunk information Fixed name |
| 1.0.2 | November 19, 2024 | Versioning update Added SFty subchunk information |
| 1.0.1 | October 17, 2024 | First version Specification based on SFe 4.00.5 |
This isn't an integral part of the SFe specification. This is a supplementary specification that may or may not be implemented alongside SFe by program developers.
This is a draft. Expect errors, and feel free to report them. sylvia-leaf has access to a computer with an Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium, so they will be able to test or reproduce any issues found on real hardware.
Do not use "draft" specifications (version number x.y.zL) to base final products on. Always refer to a "final" specification (version number x.yL).
Please send all comments about this specification to the SFe Team:
The table of contents is currently not implemented.
- This is a draft specification for TSC (trailing
sdta-listchunk) mode for legacy SF and SFe. - It corresponds to SFe version 4.0.
The organisation of the document is similar to that of the SFe document (and thus also SFSPEC24.PDF), but adapted to the requirements of the TSC specification.
The TSC specification will go through a few draft milestones, after which the specification will freeze. This is a very simple feature, and there is little need for extra features to be added to this specification.
As sagamusix of OpenMPT has found out, it is in fact possible to increase the maximum size of the legacy SF2.04 format to 8 gibibytes (GiB), if the sdta chunk is placed at the end of the file rather than in the middle as usual for legacy SF2.04. This is referred to in this specification as trailing sdta-list chunk mode, or TSC mode for short.
- When TSC mode is off, only the first 4 GiB of the SFe file using 32-bit chunk headers is loaded.
- When TSC mode is on, up to 8 GiB of the SFe file using 32-bit chunk headers can be loaded.
- No SF file that uses TSC will have exactly 8 GiB. The size of the
sdta-listchunk, which contains the sample data, is still limited to 4 GiB.
The ISFe-info sub-chunk in an SFe bank contains two sub-chunks that contain data related to TSC. Because TSC can be used with legacy SF, the absence of an ISFe-info sub-chunk does not mean that a TSC bank is invalid.
The SFty sub-chunk found inside the ISFe-info sub-chunk can have the values SFe-static with TSC or SFe-static (8-bit) with TSC. This tells an SFe-capable program that the sdta-info chunk is the last chunk.
If the program can handle such a bank, then it should assume that sdta-info is at the end.
If the program cannot, then it should reject the file as unsupported (but not Structurally Unsound if it is a syntactically valid SFe bank). All SFe players should recognise the above values and respond accordingly.
Such files will not work with all legacy SF2.0x players, including sound cards. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you use 64-bit static (RIFF64) headers rather than TSC mode.
sagamusix also warns against using TSC mode due to compatibility concerns.
No SFe programs will require TSC. However, SFe programs should detect the TSC feature flag in the ISFe-list sub-chunk and reject TSC banks that aren't compatible.
SFe players not compatible with TSC should automatically detect a file size above 4 GiB, and return a suitable error message.
If an SF player that supports TSC attempts to load a bank larger than 4 GiB, and a 32-bit static RIFF header is found, then TSC mode is assumed.