NSF is a format, designed by Kevin Horton, that holds music ripped from the ROMs of games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES had a very weak sound engine supporting 2 pulse-waves, 1 triangle wave, a noise channel, and a delta pulse code modulation channel. However, some games also included their own sound chips to improve their audio quality. The NSF files store the machine code that is sent to the audio chips which makes ripping the audio data a difficult process.
In the days of the NES, the audio composers were limited to only a few instruments at a time, and each instrument ended up sounding like a weak synthesizer. Once the composers finished their song, an audio programmer would convert the song into assembly code that would be compiled into machine code for the NES audio chip. This was a difficult task and although the sound was primitive, a capable artist was able to make it sound impressive.
In order to rip audio data from an NES ROM, you must read through the machine code of the ROM and extract the information that gets sent to audio chip. It's a very tedious process.
Many NSFs are being converted to the upgraded NES audio format, NSFE.
The Nosefart Winamp plugin is suggested for optimal sound and accuracy.
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