[Speeder]

Over in the other thread, someone's told me that mv_music had the original music files enhanced. I've checked them, and... Well maybe it's just my speakers and headphone or something, but I've made an other version that - at least for me - sounds tons better. And there's no hearable clipping

Wanderer told me to bother about this, so blame him! Also, if you don't like these, feel free to swear at me. Lastly, anyone do whatever he/she wants with these files.

http://rapidshare.de/files/31744925/FreeSpace_Enhanced_Music.zip.html
(to download, scroll down, press the Free button then wait for the count-down)

EDIT: for someone it's not obvious for, after the countdown's over, select a server to download from with the radio buttons, then type in the safety code to the editbox next to the picture with the code, and press the download button...

[Mars]

Listened to a couple of tracks.... sounds really good.

[Speeder]

*happy*

[Dark Hunter]

Ugh! Do they have to be .ogg files? 

*Goes to download an OGG player*


Ok, that's done. Sound pretty good! *replaces mv_music with this*

[Mars]

Ugh! Do they have to be .ogg files? 

*Goes to download an OGG player*


Ok, that's done. Sound pretty good! *replaces mv_music with this*

Don't start that debate again, please! (What ever you do don't say it should be WMA)

[Dark Hunter]

Wasn't aware that there had been a debate on it.

I wasn't going to suggest WMA's, though I did consider mentioning MP3's. Then I decided to simply get an Ogg player, and so I did.

[Flipside]

Good job you didn't mention WMA's, because I installed a new version of Windows, I now cannot listen to music that I wrote. Good job I've got the .Wav's backed up somewhere...

[Cobra]

hmm, i hear no difference. plus there's a TINY bit of static in the background. it's barely hearable but it's there.

[Backslash]

I wasn't going to suggest WMA's, though I did consider mentioning MP3's. Then I decided to simply get an Ogg player, and so I did.

Well, I suppose the little detail that OGG works in the game and MP3 doesn't, might have something to do with it.

What player did you use to listen to MP3s that can't play OGG?

Nice, Speeder.  What in particular did you do?

[Mobius]

I can't dowload them...my mobile phone connections doesn't allow it...

[Polpolion]

[PotzUK]

winamp plays OGG files np

[Speeder]

Yup, use WinAMP ppl, best of all... Well, if it's tuned up with a couple of plugins
Anyway. Answers!
I've encoded the files to OGG, cuz the MV_MUSIC files are in OGG. I'd never ever use WMA btw My favoured compression is MP3Pro, as it's maybe even better a compresson than OGG, it's encoded about 4 times faster, and my MP3 Player supports it ^^ Otherwise HE-AAC is good too. But I think FreeSpace doesn't support them, does it? Oh, and normal MP3... Now that's worse than any of the others.

Cobra: Buy some real speaker system On a low-end system one would only hear that it's a bit higher in volume. Or if you have a better system, then maybe you've turned the woofer too high up and it can't handle any more, hehe About the static, yes, I know. Unfortunately the basic tracks had it as well, and the treble I've added to the songs emphasizes it a little. I couldn't really do anything about it, maybe I'll try to if many ppl will go on about the static, but I think it's just too hardly noticed and in too few songs, just isn't worth to bother

Backslash: Converted the sampling rate to 44kHz with an anti-alias filter (it should smooth the sound a tiny bit) then added harmonic bass (very low frequency), drum bass, and harmonic treble (very high treble). Added some echoing to briefing and debriefing tracks and... Well, all that turned up like hell for the Psamtik track.

[WMCoolmon]

OGG and Musepack were the best lossy formats around last time I did a listen test. I didn't try HE-AAC though. (MPC actually sounded comparable to FLAC)

The ones in mv_music aren't "enhanced" in any way. They're the original music, which was encoded to MP3, which I then decoded to WAV and cut up the tracks to (relatively) match the originals. Then I re-encoded them to OGG for fs2_open. So if you want the best quality, you should go ahead and download the MP3s from Sectorgame. (It's much better than that ADPCM stuff that shipped. )

I'm not sure how any clipping got in there, unless I did some normalizing that I'm not remembering or the originals had some clipping. Hopefully it's not in the originals.

[Speeder]

eerrrmm... The FS2 originals are way below maximum sound volume, while the mv_ ones aren't I could hear it clip out at some louder places at least.

HE-AAC is Nero's sound format, and is the best lossy sound format that I know of. Better than OGG and MP3Pro. (I've encoded some wave files to 64kbps once, and they were absolutely the same, xept for the HE-AAC being a tiny bit deeper. But when you're listening to it, it sounds perfect.)

And a tiny correction... ADPCM? Shipped are simple 22kHz, 16bit PCM waves. ADPCM compresses 16 bits of data into 3 or 4 bits if I remember right. It's for low quality small talk-recordings

[Mars]

Foobar2K FTW (in Windoze)

[taylor]

And a tiny correction... ADPCM? Shipped are simple 22kHz, 16bit PCM waves. ADPCM compresses 16 bits of data into 3 or 4 bits if I remember right. It's for low quality small talk-recordings

Most of the original music is ADPCM, only about 1/3rd of the music is 16-bit PCM.


And HE-AAC is only for low bit rates anyway, so saying that it's the best lossy format just isn't correct.  For low bit rates it does currently perform better than Vorbis, and is pretty close to MP3Pro at similarly low bit bits, but it's pretty much useless for anything above 96kbps.  Vorbis is one of the best available, perhaps not the best for every use, but overall it's pretty damn good (and keeps being improved).

[Speeder]

erm, MP3Pro, has a max of 96kbps and HE-AAC has 112 I think. At their close-to-max bitrate, they perform - at least on my speakers and headphones - close to perfect sound. For me, that makes HE-AAC the best, as it sounds perfect on the lowest bitrate of all If I wanted to have no loss I would instead prolly use FLAC instead of high bitrate lossy formats However I've never doubted OGG being very good... Especially that it's an open and free format!

[Mobius]

[Speeder]

I see you ppl are hardly working on writing long, deeply thought through and constructive replys Keep at it!