X68000

The AICA was made by Yamaha and is used inside the Sega Dreamcast aswell as several Arcade Systems like the Naomi and the Hikaru. The Name that is actually printed on the chip is “SEGA 315-6232″.

Technical Specifications

• Channels: 64
• Channel 1-64: ADPCM Playback
• Speed: 45 Mhz
• DAC: External, the Burr-Brown PCM1725
• Sound RAM: External, either 2MB (Dreamcast) or 8 MB (Arcade Systems). Runs at 66 Mhz.
• Supports XG Midi, Panning, Volume Control, ADSR, ..
• The name on the chip is followed by a Date Code. e.g. 9923 means that is was assembled in the 23th Week of 1999
• Datasheet for the PCM1725 is available here (PDF)

Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)

Used in

Videogame Consoles

• Sega Dreamcast

Arcade Systems

• Sammy Atomiswave
• Sega Hikaru
• Sega Naomi
• Sega Naomi 2

Special Applications

• Sega Hikaru | uses 2x the AICA

Variants

• Sega 315-6232 | The name thats actually printed on the chip.

Emulation / Ripping

DSF

• DSF is a format for ripped and sequenced music from the AICA. At this time, there are rips around from the Dreamcast and the Naomi System. Soundbanks may be stored inside .dsflib files, while the single songs would be inside .minidsf files then. DSF Files can be played, for example, with Audio Overload, which is a Music Player thats available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Others

• CD-DA / GD-DA can be ripped into various Streaming Formats like flac/wav/mp3 as usual.

Music Creation

• O.TO.I.RE Music Sequencer (お。と。い。れ　ドリームキャスト　シーケンサー)
  This commercial software runs on the Dreamcast and allows you to make music with any standard Midi Controller, which you can connect to the Dreamcast using a special Midi Interface. It does not save to standard Midi Files though, as it has some custom format. There is also a prequel to it for the Sega Saturn, called “Saturn Music School”

The Otoire Music Sequencer