ACB Studio

GUI tool for extracting and injecting CRIWARE ADX2 audio banks (ACB/AWB) from the PS4 and Switch ports of Resident Evil 4. Drop a replacement WAV on a cue, save, copy the modified bank onto your console, and hear your audio in-game.

Version 2 is a ground-up rewrite in C#/WPF (previously Python/tkinter) with a fully overhauled interface: sidebar navigation, a Home screen with plain-language task cards and recent banks, drop-a-file-anywhere routing, smooth animations throughout, and a single portable EXE instead of an installer. An Advanced mode toggle keeps the default flow simple while giving power users Quick Extract, waveform internals, and encoder options. HCA encode/decode now runs on VGAudio (the C# reference implementation), which also let two 1.x workarounds disappear: loop points are set programmatically instead of via the smpl-chunk injection hack, and the broken upstream smpl parser is no longer in the pipeline at all. The 1.x Python version lives on in legacy/.

Features

• Browse — open an .acb, explore cues by name, extract the whole bank as named WAV files.
• Extract — open an .awb directly for quick numbered extraction when you don't have or need the ACB.
• Inject — queue one or more waveform replacements, auto-resample your WAV to the source bank's sample rate, preserve loop points, rebuild the AWB, patch the ACB mirror fields + cue lengths, save both files in lockstep.
• Convert — standalone WAV ↔ HCA, batch-capable, drag & drop.
• Audio preview on every tab: hear a waveform from the bank, or hear your replacement WAV before saving. Spot check is a double-click away.

Supported games

• Resident Evil 4 — Nintendo Switch (2019) — verified (1.x pipeline; 2.0 produces the same bank layout and passes the same round-trip suite).
• Resident Evil 4 — PS4 (2016 Ultimate HD Edition) — same bank layout expected; light testing.

Other CRIWARE games may work — the core layer is format-generic — but only RE4 is supported and tested. Use on other titles at your own risk.

Installation

Windows 10 / 11, x64.

1. Download AcbStudio.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it. Single self-contained EXE — no installer, no .NET required on the target machine. Portable by design.

Usage — minimal inject workflow

1. Rip your own bio4evt.acb + bio4evt.awb (or whichever bank) from your Switch / PS4 install. ACB Studio does not redistribute game data.
2. Open Inject tab → Browse… → pick your .acb. The companion .awb auto-pairs by filename.
3. Pick the waveform row you want to replace. Double-click (or ♪ Preview source) to hear it.
4. Click ↻ Replace with WAV… and pick your new audio file. Any sample rate / channel count works — the tool auto-resamples to match the source bank. ♪ Preview replacement to A/B.
5. Click ▶ Save modified bank. The tool writes a matched pair of modified .acb + .awb with the same filenames.
6. Switch: drop both files into atmosphere/contents/<TitleID>/romfs/sound/ via LayeredFS. PS4: use your preferred file-replacement route.
7. Boot the game. Your audio plays in place of the original.

The loop-aware pipeline keeps BGM and long ambient cues looping seamlessly. Short SFX and voice lines play cleanly without tail garbage or early cutoff.

Building from source

Requires the .NET 8 SDK.

dotnet build AcbStudio/AcbStudio.csproj            # debug build
dotnet run --project CoreTests/CoreTests.csproj    # round-trip tests
dotnet publish AcbStudio/AcbStudio.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 `
    --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true   # portable EXE

Project layout:

AcbStudio/
├── Core/          @UTF parser/serializer, AFS2 archive (KI-001 fixed),
│                  HCA codec via VGAudio, resampler, inject pipeline
├── Services/      audio preview (winmm)
├── ViewModels/    MVVM layer — all app behavior
├── Views/         one XAML view per tab
└── Themes/        dark theme + animated control styles
CoreTests/         43-assertion round-trip suite (AFS2 / @UTF / HCA / inject)
docs/              format notes, phase reports, known issues (still accurate)
legacy/            the original Python/tkinter version (1.x)

Not distributing game files

ACB Studio contains no game audio. You must dump your own .acb and .awb files from your own legally-owned copy of Resident Evil 4. Don't ask where to download game banks — the answer isn't here and won't be.

Credits

• VGAudio by Thealexbarney — C# HCA encoder/decoder powering 2.0 (MIT).
• vgmstream — canonical HCA/ADX reference decoder (BSD-3-Clause).
• PyCriCodecsEx by mos9527 and PyCriCodecs by Youjose — powered the 1.x Python version (MIT).
• SonicAudioTools and CriTools — ACB/AWB structure references.

All attributions also appear in the tool's ? dialog.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. Copyright © 2026 Mogolt.

Related projects

• XWB Studio — sibling project for the XACT (.xwb) wave banks used by RE4 2005 PC. Same UX, different container family.

Author

Mogolt.