High(er) quality, vanilla music replacement (musics.wad)

[rinsuru]

What do I mean by high(er) quality, original soundtrack? If you've noticed the inconsistent quality between the different tunes that come with a vanilla mm8bdm, and you like the 'authentic' sound of the vanilla music set, you might want to check this out. I doubt that those of you making and/or downloading music replacements will have much interest in this one, since you're probably doing more exciting things than making the same sound, sound better.

Download link is at the bottom, you can safely skip the following paragraphs of words if you are not interested in the technical details

How did I put a high(er) quality set together? For the most part, I captured the audio source playing back in Winamp via a quality .nsf plugin. For the sources that have no nes game (Rockman 7 FC, Mega Man 9, and Mega Man 10), I tried to get as close as possible to a clean, quality recording/rip of the original source.

What do I mean with the (er) part? Well, quality is a matter of opinion. Part of what I did was get cleaner sounding sources, but another part was some rearranging/restructuring here and there based on personal preference.

Also, you may note that the audio sounds 'rough' or harsh', this is because I applied no filter to the audio, only what happens as a result of the file conversions.

- I'm of the opinion that a 'master' source should be clean, unfiltered, 'line level'. If you like more bass or more treble to your music (pun not intended), and have the speakers to handle it, that's what software and hardware equalizers/adjustments are for.

- Of course, I'm no expert in music or in audio fidelity. For all I know, the programs I used and the file conversions made could have done something funky to the music, and I'm just not hearing it here.

- The only adjustment I've intentionally made deals with the overall audio level. I adjusted volume levels to match as much as possible across the whole set by ear and with my own specific speaker setup. I boosted whatever level of audio my recordings had to make a '0.0 peak amplitude' with audacity's 'amplify' function, tweaking to avoid any clipping, and then tweaking further to match overall audio level. It sounds fine on my setup, and audacity reports no clipping, but I can only assume there will not be distortions on your setup.


Notes on the changes:

Every file in 'musics.wad' (extracted from "MM8BDM-v2c.pk3") has been replaced with a higher quality version, with the following exceptions:

- The original CTF tunes have not been replaced, though I plan to search out the original sources and replace them with higher quality recordings, provided any higher quality source can be found.

- The endless mode music from Mega Man 9 that plays in Dr. Light's lab (starting area for campaign mode) is unchanged, mainly for it seeming to be nonexistent in both musics.wad and the music folder in the root of MM8BDM-v2c.pk3. That, or I'm blind and/or tired, which wouldn't surprise me as I spent a good chunk of yesterday getting this all put together.

- I have no idea which map 'SDEMUS.ogg' plays on, or what the original source is from. My guess is that, if the audio for the mm7 maps did indeed come from a different/older version of rm7-fc, that is the source; the latter half of the track matches Shade man's regular track melody-wise.

- I left the three S3M Modules in the 'music folder' unchanged. Part of the reason for this is that I have never messed with s3m modules, and part is that they don't sound that terrible at all (at least compared to various examples out of the original musics.wad)

For the music out of the original Mega Man 1-6, I used the wav out plugin of Winamp in conjunction with the nezplug++ plugin, which emulates nsf files (rips of the code directly from the original game's roms). Equalizer off, 44100 khz stereo raw pcm wavs. I pulled the originals into audacity and compared each recording to match the number of loops. Afterwards I dumped the identical stereo channel and amplified/normalized the audio level using audacity's 'amplify' function as mentioned above.

- I did the same for 'D_TTFTW.ogg' (Source: Moon stage in the nes Duck Tales).


Now, This is more of a personal preference, but since some of the tracks have an intro that would not normally be played in line with an endless, seamless loop after being first played, I have truncated some of the shorter/simpler examples so that the track plays a seamless, endless loop. I did take some liberties on deciding what was altered, and you may or may not like it.

My general guidelines for this decision process was as follows:

- The overall idea was, when nothing too significant would be lost, make the piece loop seamlessly by removing the intro.

- If the intro was simple/generic (ie could be put in place of several original Mega Man musics with little to no modification) or under at most ~10 seconds for the longer pieces, I cut it out.

--This was the case for many of the tracks from the first Mega Man.

On the other hand, if the intro was very distinct or provided a lot of the character that the track has going for it, I left it. Also, If said intro made up a significant portion of the track, it also remained untouched. There are some cases were I had to make some tough calls; these were not strictly adhered to 'rules' by any means.

I left all the boss themes with intro intact. Why?

- For one, they need the intro. How else do you know that you need to get into the mood for an epic boss battle?

- Second, you'll only be hearing these in campaign mode typically (assuming you're keeping it 'authentic').

-- This isn't to mention that the length of these tracks should be enough for the average player to either win or lose the fight, of which both cases would traditionally call for either cuing victory music or a restart of the boss music.

There are many cases were the intro of a track seamlessly loops from the very start. For these, obviously I made no change.

However, there are definitely some cases where it's arguable just how seamless the original track loops to begin with. In some cases it's spot on, but for others it's a bit off, but not by much.

- I felt WAVMUS.ogg (Wave Man's stage) was one such 'close enough' to not bother.

For the Mega Man 7 stages' music, I downloaded a copy of the final(2?) version of Rock Man 7 FC from the author's web page, and used pxtone version 914 to convert the original pttune files containing the music data directly to 44100 khz, mono .wavs.

-I did notice that some of the tracks differ in composition from the versions used in musics.wad. I am not sure if another version of rm7-fc's music was used as a source, or if the conversion process I used had some differences in interpreting the .pptunes. I just sought to match the play-length, retaining the seamless loop and ignored this inconsistency.

- Since Shademan's 'alternate stage music' from rm7-fc is the main bgm for the nes ghouls and ghosts goblins, I used that as a source. (GHOULS.ogg)

- Given that the properties of the pttune format differ from the properties of the 2A0C, these are a tad more 'muffled' or softer in their raw, uncompressed form. This isn't really an issue; it just means that the it is impossible for the Mega Man 7 tracks to be 100% consistent with the quality of the rest of the set, barring a recomposition done in famitracker or similar.

Speaking of famitracker, for the Mega Man 9 and 10 tracks, I used the recomposition done in famitracker from: http://tssf.gamemusic.ca/emuplay1.html as a source. I then employed the same method for Mega Man 1-6 detailed above.   

- Since these were all made by ear and with careful attention to detail, in addition to fact that the music in both Mega Man 9 and 10 is not 100% true to nes hardware limitations, there are small inconsistencies here and there.

- I prefer this over the best ost audio rip I could locate online. (Every source I found was fairly compressed sounding/of dubious quality). Besides, tssf did one heck of a job on these.


Notes on more specific changes:

For BRIMUS.ogg (Bright Man's stage) and WOOMUS.ogg (Wood Man's stage) the order of things has been changed a bit.

- Normally, in BRIMUS.ogg and after the first loop, it starts the next iteration with the intro part played at a slightly higher pitch, (which was done to make the seamless connection between the higher pitch of the melody by this point in the track and the first repeat).

- Since the notes are the same (or at least work in the loop), just in a higher pitch after the first loop, I simply took 'intro' from the first repeat and pasted it over the part where it matched in the start, deleting the preceding part.

- The result doesn't sound too bad IMHO, and you probably wouldn't notice unless you've been listening to the original tunes as often and for as long as I have. (That start with the higher pitch gets me every time, but still not as grating the non seamless of the loop was for me)

In the case of Woodman I did a similar bit of cut, paste over, and truncate sorcery.

- Same scenario more or less, the first repeat of the melody after the intro slightly differs from the first repeat around. I deleted the intro part preceding this point, as well as the part from the end, and pasted the 'intro' I cut from the end where it matched up at the start.

- The result? It still has that last part of the intro that gives it the 'punch' before the main part starts, while looping seamlessly now.

TOAMUS.ogg (Toad Man's stage) is one example that had a disjointed intro, but I left it in. Why? Honestly I'd be cutting a good 15 seconds off a ~40 second track, not to mention that it gives the track a good bit of its feel.

I'm still undecided on removing the intro in PHAMUS.ogg (Pharaoh Man's stage). While the intro is short, it's a really great intro that does leave the track a bit flat without it. I may put it back in.

There are some tracks that originally faded out at the end, for most of these I did the same for the replacements. I also took the liberty to do the same for a few others that I felt would benefit from a fade out to (mainly to help counteract the disconnect in looping into the intro, and mainly/only? boss themes.)


On the note of alternate solutions to the looping issue:

- I did notice that FINAMUS.ogg (Source, Wily Machine battle in Mega Man 10) is separated between the intro and the looping part, in MM10FB1 and MM10FB respectively. I have not played the campaign mode to know when, where, or how these tracks are played. Even so, this does leads me to believe that implementing a track for the song intro and playing it into a separate track containing the rest of the track to loop endlessly, is either supported or can be implemented without too much trouble? If this is possible, and not some huge pain of a change to make, I'd love to see (hear) this in mm8bdm.

Finally, I did my best to check that everything was captured and inserted back into the wad as intended. Using the test player in Slade 3 confirms that they all play, and I quickly went through the maps via an offline multi-player match, everything sounds fine from what I heard. Regardless, with how focused I got on this, I'd be more surprised to not find some mistake I made.

If you end up using this and liking it let me know. If you have any problems using it, let me know as well. Comments, suggestions, and questions are encouraged.

Download: http://www.2shared.com/file/mXBPkVuY/musics.html

[Gummywormz]

SDEmus is shade man's stage. Dr light's lab theme is located in lightlab.wad, in the main mm8bdm pk3.

[rinsuru]

Ok mystery solved on my confusion with SDEMUS. The shade man music both from a soundtrack rip of Rockman 7 FC as well as the wav output straight from shade.pttune has the order of things backwards. Basically where SDEMUS starts is halfway into shade.pttune, and where shade.pttune starts is halfway into SDEMUS, but all the music is in both.

Thanks for that and the heads up for the light lab music being in the lightlab wad, and not in the musics wad, I'll update my pack as soon as I get some sleep first. XD

[Korby]

Keep in mind, Cutmanmike used a few of Baiisilisk's Megaman 7 remixes.

I know at least Turbo Man was his.

[rinsuru]

Keep in mind, Cutmanmike used a few of Baiisilisk's Megaman 7 remixes.

I know at least Turbo Man was his.

Yep, that definitely explains the differences in some of the mm7 map tracks I was hearing. Is Baiisilisk an active member here? If so, I may pm him to see if he still has any of the compiled famitracker sources for the tracks mm8bdm uses. (the nsfs, not the non-compiled famitracker source.) I found his page at http://baiisilisk.webs.com , but only mp3s are offered on the downloads page.

Anyways, SDEMUS is now replaced (with the rm7-fc version for now). This just leaves the capture the flag maps' music to do (CTFMUS1-10, WILYFLD, and WOODFLD). From what I've seen, most of these were also done by Baiisilisk. I decided to leave DRLIGHT.S3M sound module alone for the same reasons that I left the other s3m modules in the music folder alone.

Also, all of the Boss music now has about a 10 second fade out at the end; the length for some of these was adjusted to put the playtime at around sometime between 50 seconds to 1 minute. Beyond that, I made some more volume adjustments where I noticed any tracks sounding notably quieter or louder than the rest.

The updated wad is being uploaded as I type this, and I'll update the first post when it is finished. Upload done, grab the new version in the first post.

[Korby]

He's not too active, but he is signed up.