[Nix]

I actually have the DT770 Pro, which is from the "broadcast, studio, video & production" line, the ones people have called "DT 1980's" due to the dated look.  I'm going to email the guy I got em from as he's probably an authorized Beyerdynamic warranty guy.  It's odd, cause the cheaper, muddier sony headphones have lasted longer than these, and these were genuinely new when I got them.  They might not look like much, but they're comfortable, and do the job right, when they don't sound blown that is...

I can still pick out the hiss myself in the tracks, but if I increase the cut any more from this point, it cuts out a lot of the high-frequency sounds, resulting in a really flattened high end, and in my mind, a severe loss of fidelity.  Increasing the cut makes it sound like it's playing from inside another room, for example.  Maybe I should encode this in OGG, because the hiss is fairly reduced under OGG encoding, as evidenced before. 


Edit - Again:  I've uploaded an OGG-version of the hiss cut test, under the same name with the .ogg extension.  Filesize is cut down quite a bit, but there's a minor difference in quality.  This was encoded VBR, Quality 7.  I think I'll be using this in the VP, Q7 that is.   

[CP5670]

Yeah, I think that's the older model. You're actually the first person I've seen having problems with those; the Beyer cans in general are well known for their long term durability. Where did you get yours? Mine came off ebay (for $135 instead of the normal $200 price ), although it was new and the seller was an online store that has their own website elsewhere.

I tried out the ogg and there was no perceptible difference in the hiss this time. So much for that theory. I think that particular piece (FS2 ambient 3 part A) is just somewhat quieter than the other tracks, which may be making the hiss more noticeable. You may want to apply the full hiss removal to that one only, which sounds very low quality anyway.

[achtung]

Why does the stuff that wasn't used in the game sound so much better......

[Agent_Koopa]

This stuff is great! Good luck finding the rest!

[Dark Hunter]

Why does the stuff that wasn't used in the game sound so much better......

Because you're hearing it for the first time, and therefore it's more impressive to you.

[CP5670]

I have started to put some of the stuff you uploaded into the game (the FS2 ones, mainly). The briefing tracks are very easy to do (only some volume adjustments needed), but the ingame ones take some more work. As long as the new tracks are the same length as the old ones, we can use the existing data in music.tbl to get the new values for the parameters.

What compression level are you using for the oggs that are going into the game? I have been using the 256kb/sec setting in Goldwave and they're generally coming out indistinguishable from the flacs. The samples per measure values in music.tbl depend on the bitrate.

How much space does that Shackspace service give you? Can you upload some more? I'm just itching to get more of these things.

[Nix]

Sorry for the delay, I've been caught up in a lot of real-life stuff lately, mainly moving all the stuff I own into my girlfriend's house, and getting my old job back.  This weekend I'll probably have the time to get the office assembled, and later on I'll be able to actually make progress on this again.  I'm actually waiting on Dan for some more material before I get way too far ahead of myself.  In fact, I'll PM you with more, CP. 

Anyways, to awnser your questions directly, I'm using Quality 7 on the OGGs.  I'm sure for the 44K tracks, all we need to do is double the timing numbers to get the correct timing + "lean in" that Dan had originally intended.  Getting the raw values will play the track from start to finish, then start again.  With the lead-in, I think it sorta mixes them into each other for a more seamless feel.  I don't have access to Freespace at the moment to check though.  Shackspace gives you a gig, and if I just compress and upload, I'm sure everything would fit, but there's a lot of redundant stuff on the DVD I have.  It's just a matter of weeding everything out, in that respect.

Yes, I know I've been slow, but I know I'll have time in the future to get back to this.  Sorry to keep everyone waiting.

[Cobra]

There's still no sign of cinema2

Oh well, they're all kickass.

[CP5670]

Sorry for the delay, I've been caught up in a lot of real-life stuff lately, mainly moving all the stuff I own into my girlfriend's house, and getting my old job back.  This weekend I'll probably have the time to get the office assembled, and later on I'll be able to actually make progress on this again.  I'm actually waiting on Dan for some more material before I get way too far ahead of myself.  In fact, I'll PM you with more, CP.

Anyways, to awnser your questions directly, I'm using Quality 7 on the OGGs.  I'm sure for the 44K tracks, all we need to do is double the timing numbers to get the correct timing + "lean in" that Dan had originally intended.  Getting the raw values will play the track from start to finish, then start again.  With the lead-in, I think it sorta mixes them into each other for a more seamless feel.  I don't have access to Freespace at the moment to check though.  Shackspace gives you a gig, and if I just compress and upload, I'm sure everything would fit, but there's a lot of redundant stuff on the DVD I have.  It's just a matter of weeding everything out, in that respect.

Yes, I know I've been slow, but I know I'll have time in the future to get back to this.  Sorry to keep everyone waiting.

No problem, I replied to your PM. It looks like I have been using quality 8, so I might cut that down a bit. One of the numbers should be easy to compute, although I think they depend on the bitrate so they may come out a little different depending on the type of ogg compression used. I need to double check that though. The thing with the timing numbers is that they aren't based on the length of the file, but on some other component of the music. In most cases this shouldn't matter though.

There's still no sign of cinema2

Oh well, they're all kickass.

He posted it already. It's called introextendedmix or something.

[Ace]

Either that, or BlackWater Operations, but that's just a wild guess as I have no idea about whether it'd fit BWO's content or not.

BWO has some custom music that's a bit more of a Tom Clancy-esque feel. But at the same time some tracks have FS1 themes like the beta music.

This stuff is awesome, and some of it will be definately used in BWO for at the very least briefing tracks. "Menace" definately fits with the mood of one of the secret missions...

[Zantor]

I know one of those files is an OGG Vorbis audio file, but what about the rest? What format are they? What program would I use to listen to them?

[CP5670]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac

There are several free plugins for Winamp that let you open these files; a google search should turn up a bunch of them.

[Dark Hunter]

I have a codec pack for Windows Media Player that allows it to handle both OGG and FLAC. There's also a free media program called Quintessential that can play oggs with no additional support, though I don't think it's equipped to handle FLACs.

[Gregster2k]

http://www.foobar2000.org/

Can play FLAC

[Uninvited]

When this is done, will it be included in the FSO downloads? Or will we have to pick it out separately? I'd nominate this for a sticky just to keep track of it.

Still downloading the first audio file. Which file do I have to dig into to find the old game music? I'll go digging through right now, but please respond anyways.

[CP5670]

They're in freespace.vp (FS1) and warble_fs2.vp (FS2).

They will be added to the mv_music media VP eventually, although there is some work needed to get them into the game.

[Dark Hunter]

Is the game able to play them as-is? Or do they need to be converted to .wavs if we want to use them now (I'm refering here to those several songs posted that weren't in the game, and therefore don't have a .wav alternative already in the VP)?

[CP5670]

It depends on where you want to use them. For briefing and mainhall tracks, all you need to do is make them into oggs (if they aren't already) and drop the filenames into music.tbl. It's the ingame tracks that are a bit more complicated.

[taylor]

...make them into oggs (if they aren't already) and drop the filenames into music.tbl...

Which reminds me, the updated 3.6.9 build, and all future builds, will ignore the file extension on music.tbl entries.  It will instead try for both .ogg and .wav, searching for .ogg first and then .wav, for each directory.  The first one it finds it will try and use.  It's the first use of the new searching function outside of the movie player code.  This allows it to search for both formats at the exact same time, so there are no real priority issues, it will just load the first filename of either format that it finds.  The normal sound code (sound.tbl) will be the next to get this change, but not until 3.6.10.

Hopefully this change will make life a little bit easier on everyone.

[CP5670]

That sounds convenient but might actually cause a few problems. One of the music.tbl parameters is based on the bitrate and would vary depending on whether the file is an ogg or one of the old, low quality wavs.

Would this also work for voice files later on? That would save a little work for something in my campaign in the future.