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GYM is a sound format for the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis.

The name stands for Genesis YM2612, since the file contains the data sent to the Yamaha YM2612
Yamaha YM2612

YM2612, aka OPN2, is a six-channel sound synthesizer integrated circuit, or sound chip, produced by Yamaha Corporation. It belongs to a family of sound synthesizer chips produced by Yamaha that uses 'FM', or frequency modulation synthesis to generate sounds, and is somewhat similar to the Yamaha YM3812 and Yamaha YMF262 FM ICs that...
 sound chip
Sound chip

A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode integrated circuit electronics....
 in the console. The data is logged to a file through the use of emulators running a ROM image
ROM image

A ROM image, or simply ROM, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a ROM cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's arcade system board....
.

The GYM format first appeared on the emulator Genecyst
Genecyst

Genecyst was a popular Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console emulator for DOS, by Bloodlust Software . Due to its high speed and then-good YM2612 emulation , it was widely regarded as the all-around best Mega Drive/Genesis emulator on the scene, with the nearest competitor being Kega Fusion....
 as a simple raw sound data log. This means the format does not present a proper heading or any kind of sample storage, that usually creates very large files for a complete song.

Also, the GYM format is designed around the NTSC
NTSC

NTSC is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories ....
 video framerate, and thus has a time accuracy of 16 ms (1/60th of a second), which makes it improper for logging audio in any frequency other than 60 Hz
Hertz

The hertz is a measure of frequency per unit of time, or the number of list of cycles per second. It is the SI base unit of frequency in the International System of Units , and is used worldwide in both general-purpose and scientific contexts....
 (such as the 50 Hz found in Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an or other PAL
PAL

PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is a color-encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analog television systems are SECAM and NTSC....
-based systems).






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GYM is a sound format for the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis.

The name stands for Genesis YM2612, since the file contains the data sent to the Yamaha YM2612
Yamaha YM2612

YM2612, aka OPN2, is a six-channel sound synthesizer integrated circuit, or sound chip, produced by Yamaha Corporation. It belongs to a family of sound synthesizer chips produced by Yamaha that uses 'FM', or frequency modulation synthesis to generate sounds, and is somewhat similar to the Yamaha YM3812 and Yamaha YMF262 FM ICs that...
 sound chip
Sound chip

A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode integrated circuit electronics....
 in the console. The data is logged to a file through the use of emulators running a ROM image
ROM image

A ROM image, or simply ROM, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a ROM cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's arcade system board....
.

The GYM format first appeared on the emulator Genecyst
Genecyst

Genecyst was a popular Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console emulator for DOS, by Bloodlust Software . Due to its high speed and then-good YM2612 emulation , it was widely regarded as the all-around best Mega Drive/Genesis emulator on the scene, with the nearest competitor being Kega Fusion....
 as a simple raw sound data log. This means the format does not present a proper heading or any kind of sample storage, that usually creates very large files for a complete song.

Also, the GYM format is designed around the NTSC
NTSC

NTSC is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories ....
 video framerate, and thus has a time accuracy of 16 ms (1/60th of a second), which makes it improper for logging audio in any frequency other than 60 Hz
Hertz

The hertz is a measure of frequency per unit of time, or the number of list of cycles per second. It is the SI base unit of frequency in the International System of Units , and is used worldwide in both general-purpose and scientific contexts....
 (such as the 50 Hz found in Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an or other PAL
PAL

PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is a color-encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analog television systems are SECAM and NTSC....
-based systems). Some new emulators and players had implemented headers, frequency compatibility and even some compression, but they do not follow any standard, which decreases the compatibility of the format.

GYM files can be played using Winamp
Winamp

Winamp is a proprietary software media player written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of Time Warner. It is skin nable, multi-format freeware/shareware....
 (with the proper plugins) or with special players.

The new file format VGM
VGM

VGM is an audio format for multiple video game platforms, such as Sega's Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis, SG-1000 Mark III, and possibly many others in the future....
 also supports Yamaha YM2612 logging and is already supported by many popular emulators. It includes a complete header with tagging and looping support that renders GYM files obsolete for this kind of music storaging.

Specifications


The GYM file format contains only four different instructions, each represented by one byte with 0 to 2 bytes of arguments:

0x00 Do nothing for 1/60th of a second (NOP
NOP

In computer science NOP or NOOP is an assembly language instruction, sequence of programming language statements, or protocol command that effectively does nothing at all....
) 0x01 R D write data D on YM port 0, register R 0x02 R D write data D on YM port 1, register R 0x03 D write on PSG port the data D

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