Custom Soundtrack Support on PsP

[Gadfly2317]

I've googled this and I'm just not finding anything definitive. Anyone technically knowledgeable. . . is there any reasons WHY the PsP'S games couldn't use custom soundtracks by reading the Mp3's on your mem card?

Is there any "official" or semi-official leak about this feature being included in future games? (It would be THE reason I buy Gran Turismo PsP. . . otherwise, pass.)

Custom Soundtracks would also be the reason I buy a bigger memory card. Right now, I just don't see the point. One of my Mp3 players already functions as a mass storage device, music player, Jpeg viewer, text viewer. I just don't see ripping and watching movies as an incentive yet. . . I got this thing to game, and custom soundtracks for racing especially was one of the best features of the xbox. If Sony doesn't rip off this idea. . . CURSES!!!!!

[Aylmer]

The only reason I can see is perhaps a CPU usage conflict. I am pretty sure that game soundtracks on UMD disks use Sony's proprietary ATRAC audio compression. So, for MP3 playback to be used as an alternate sound system, the PSP's processor would have to be able to decode two audio tracks at once, the one on your card and the one on the UMD. This is because the audio on the UMD is in all probability 'interleaved' with the other data, meaning it's mixed in with the other data and not easily separated out.

All compressed data formats take processing power to uncompress on the fly, whether they are video or audio. Although there are custom chips that can handle most of the workload, the system processor would still have to be aware of both soundtracks.

That'd be my best guess. One of the few things I missed about the Xbox was the fact that some games supported alternative audio playback. However, those AIFF sound tracks from a CD are uncompressed, and the XBox had cpu power to spare.