360XwbSoundExtractor

A small standalone C# utility for extracting audio entries from standard XACT .xwb wave bank files, including Xbox 360-style big-endian wave banks.

This project was created as a preservation/debugging tool for CastleMiner Z-related asset work. It is not required for normal gameplay, mod loading, or texture pack usage.

Features

• Reads standard XACT wave bank files using either signature:
  • WBND — little-endian / standard PC-style XWB
  • DNBW — big-endian / Xbox 360-style XWB
• Extracts PCM entries as .wav files.
• Extracts Microsoft ADPCM entries as .wav files.
• Dumps WMA/xWMA entries as raw .xwma.bin payloads with metadata sidecars.
• Dumps XMA entries as raw .xma.bin payloads with metadata sidecars.
• Uses embedded entry names when the XWB includes an entry-name segment.
• Falls back to numbered names when entry names are not present.
• Byte-swaps big-endian 16-bit PCM sample data before writing WAV output.

Limitations

This is intentionally a simple extractor, not a full XACT authoring or conversion suite.

Current limitations:

• Compact wave banks are not supported.
• XMA entries are not decoded to playable WAV audio; they are dumped as raw payloads.
• WMA/xWMA entries are not decoded to playable WAV audio; they are dumped as raw payloads.
• The extractor expects standard 24-byte entry metadata.
• Output quality and compatibility depend on the source bank format.

Requirements

• Windows
• Visual Studio 2022 or another C# build environment that supports .NET Framework projects
• .NET Framework 4.8.1 Developer Pack for building from source

Building

Open the solution/project in Visual Studio and build the project normally.

The included project targets:

.NET Framework 4.8.1
AnyCPU
Console Application

Expected output:

360XwbSoundExtractor.exe

Usage

Run the extractor from a command prompt:

360XwbSoundExtractor.exe <input.xwb> <outputFolder>

Example:

360XwbSoundExtractor.exe Sounds.xwb ExtractedSounds

A simple batch example is also valid:

360XwbSoundExtractor.exe Sounds.xwb ExtractedSounds
pause

Output

Extracted files are written to the output folder using this pattern:

0000_<entry-name>.wav
0001_<entry-name>.wav
0002_<entry-name>.xma.bin
0002_<entry-name>.note.txt
0002_<entry-name>.txt

When the source bank does not include entry names, the extractor falls back to the bank name and entry index:

0000_Sounds_0000.wav
0001_Sounds_0001.wav

Format Handling

XWB format tag	Behavior
PCM	Written as standard WAV
Microsoft ADPCM	Written as standard WAV with ADPCM format metadata
WMA / xWMA	Dumped as raw payload with metadata
XMA	Dumped as raw payload with metadata
Unknown	Dumped as raw bytes with metadata

Notes

• Xbox 360-style DNBW banks are big-endian. Header values are read using big-endian parsing.
• Big-endian 16-bit PCM payloads are byte-swapped before being written to WAV.
• Raw XMA/WMA dumps may require separate external tools if you want to decode them into playable audio.
• This tool does not modify the input .xwb file.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

See the LICENSE file for the full license text.

When reusing or modifying this code, keep the existing copyright and SPDX license headers intact where present:

SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later