High Quality/Lossless Soundtrack

Hello, everybody -- I've been lurking a long time.

Today, my OCD finally got the better of me and I converted all of the soundtrack (including 'unreleased' songs) from ORG to FLAC, AAC, and MP3 at higher bitrates -- I was bothered by the MP3s offered on the Music page being ~160kbps.
My method:

org2xm -> xmp -> audacity (for looping) -> flac,lame,fdkaac -> ??? -> PROFIT

The files are all at the highest sampling frequency possible for XMP (48KHz).

After converting the files to wav using XMP, I looped them to approximately the length of the MP3s on the site using Audacity.
(They were looped on average about ~2 1/4 times, with a ~3 second fade out effect applied to the last ~1/4 loop, again, like the MP3's.)

I converted the AACs from WAV using the command

fdkaac -m 5 --raw-rate 48000

The MP3s were converted from WAV using the command

lame -V 0

And of course the FLAC files were run with --best, and double-checked.

All of the files are tagged, with the tags from the Music page's MP3s as reference.

MP3 V0: http://www.mediafire.com/download/r3kv8ajfgirc7l2/CaveStory_HQ_Looped_MP3.zip
size: 133 MB md5sum: f3ca50cdd79a328420ecbd156786e9c9

FLAC: http://www.mediafire.com/download/t5r64g9kivtb7fr/CaveStory_HQ_Looped.zip
size: 372 MB md5sum: 37bab4745a971c9bd7322872bdb5c3dd

AAC: http://www.mediafire.com/download/q3a62jtb3hakkr9/CaveStory_HQ_Looped_AAC.zip
size: 111 MB md5sum: 597e2182d713da640e66ea1b53e7fa75

Here are also tagged, untouched FLAC files made from the original WAVs:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1g59fvjmo9iw3lg/CaveStory_HQ_Unlooped.zip
size: 167 MB md5sum: 47bc1d0f7856e8414dddd7ec5777a76e

It would be nice if these, or something like these could be posted on the Music page in addition, or as a replacement to the low-quality MP3s currently on it...

 

Ew, those were made with org2xm though, which from what I've seen doesn't actually reproduce the org's sound right. Who cares if it's lossless if the recording isn't accurate to what it sounds like in game.

You'd be better off recording directly from your soundcard while playing the OrgViewer that comes with Cave Story.

 

Ew, those were made with org2xm though, which from what I've seen doesn't actually reproduce the org's sound right.

When it isn't run in compatibility mode (org2xm FILENAME.org instead of org2xm FILENAME.org c) it misses entire notes -- in compatibility mode, it seems accurate.

I don't know how these would compare to recordings off of an expensive audio card if the recording and playing programs were run in realtime mode. However, this makes no difference if the org playing programs and org2xm work similarly.

I did notice that some artifacts are present in the MP3s on the Music page, and they aren't in these files -- I don't know if that is because those were recorded from a sound card or not. The MP3s were also amplified, unlike these, but i don't know if the XM files made by org2xm are quiet, or what.

Soundwise, I can't tell any difference between these and the in-game orgs, but I personally can't tell the difference between different sound qualities anyway.

 

I was bothered by the MP3s offered on the Music page being ~160kbps.

but I personally can't tell the difference between different sound qualities anyway.

 

Well, I can't tell the difference between a 320 kbps and a 192 kbps mp3, but 128 kbps mp3s sound tinny.

Honestly, I just wanted an archival-quality cavestory soundtrack.

 

I am working on reconverting all of the mp3s on the site. I'm 80% there.

In the meantime I must point out that the individual mp3 downloads on the music page are of high quality, but the grouped .zip is of medium quality (because I wasn't sure about bandwidth back then). I plan to make both high and medium quality mp3 grouped downloads one day, but only when I have finished the reconversion job.

EDIT: I have personally checked, an individual mp3 download rocks in at 320kbps while the group download mp3s play at 160kbps.

 

That's great!

Well, I guess I'll download those instead. I didn't realize the individual downloads were different from the grouped zip file.

 

[...]I personally can't tell the difference between different sound qualities anyway.

Then... I... but... What? What compelled you to imply or enforce a 'lossless sound quality' when you couldn't tell the difference? How could you possibly know if there even was loss to the sound quality to begin with?

 

What compelled you to imply or enforce a 'lossless sound quality' when you couldn't tell the difference?

Honestly, I just wanted an archival-quality cavestory soundtrack.

wow reading

 

What are you, twel--

Touche.

 

THANK YOU.
It would be nice if you looped each song 3 1/4 times though, to compensate for the shorter songs.
Also, Gravity and Oppression doesn't really loop right...