hurleybird wrote:For starters, the new music files are quite a bit quiter than the old ones, which makes comparison a little difficult, probably part of the reason I said earlier that the new songs have a lot less of an edge.
The volume difference was very intentional. It was the first reason I had to process the music files. Most of the original music files were clipped, which in conjunction with 22Khz sampling created very, very "hard edges", or more precisely, square-wave distortions (awful high-pitch distortion).
First step in getting rid of that, is lowering volume. As a standard, normal tracks should mantain an average intensity of -10dBFS. So, that's what I did: bring them down to an average of -10dBFS, without loosing the relative intensities among them.
Ingame, in CVS, volume balances out perfectly. (I'm not sure I commited volume .config changes... I'll check that)
hurleybird wrote:Aera theme battle – Electronic distortion sound has lost edge, as well it, is seems to be too high and is overall distracting. -definite overall deprovement for this song.
Odd... I found the original even more distracting. I'll go through a listening session to see a) what you mean, and b) what can be done. About the lost edge: I know what it is. I can fix that. Just not sure I want to. I'll have to critically listen to it.
hurleybird wrote:Alien rock - Seems to have lost some of the punchiness from the original
Agree. One of the processings I used has a hard time with some kinds of sounds, and the result is reduced "punch", or more precisely, pre-echo. I developed a second pass for that algorithm that reduces that effect, but I didn't apply it (both because of lazyness and because I hoped it wouldn't be that noticeable). I'll apply it, and see if it improves.
hurleybird wrote:Battle 1: seems to be too airy, while the original was very concrete
Not sure what you mean. I'll listen to it, and hope your meaning comes clear then (it's quite usual that things make sense only after a listening session or two).
hurleybird wrote:Military base P: Better than original but IMO the snare too loud, and should be in the background.
Agree. I'll try to bring it down a little. It won't be easy, though. And I'm not particularly fond of this one.
hurleybird wrote:Terrain battle: Definite lack of midrange, high frequencies for the snare and cymbals lead to fatigue IMO.
I kinda like the snare and cymbals, and agree about the midrange. I'll try to give a little more measure to the high frequencies (they're a little noisy - that's the only thing that bothers me, product of the original clippiness), but I think the only thing really bothering you is the lack of midranges. Lacking midrange usually has that effect: makes the high frequencies stand too much, and produce fatigue. Also, I'll apply the previously mentioned second pass - snare and cymbals will benefit from it.
hurleybird wrote:Peace 2 - Why anyone would want to listen to (very crappy) dance music in space is beyond me. Every time I hear this song it makes me want to quit the game
Agree... but it has a very distinct VS feeling for me... perhaps because 0.4.3 plays it over and over and over...
hurleybird wrote:Battle 4 - This is supposedly battle music, but it does not convey the image of battle at all, battle5p is also bad in this regard, but not as bad as battle 4.
Battle 4 is actually pretty good, it's only misused. I rearranged their use in CVS (still needs work, though), and it fits much better now.
hurleybird wrote:In general, to my listening, there was a deprovement in the midrange and highrange (highrange is exagerrated, and midrange is deprived) and both the orignal and the redone versions could have somewhat stronger bass.
Hm... stronger bass... perhaps...
hurleybird wrote:Keep in mind that listening is subjective, what I hear could be different than what you are someone else hears.
Always in my mind. But... until now, you're the only one providing feedback, so...
hurleybird wrote:for reference, listening was conducted on an audigy gamer and z-5500 with surrond mode set to stereo x2 (rear speakers mirror front speakers)
That's quite messy, you know. If you have the rear speakers actually at the rear, pointing towards the front speakers. Phase cancellations will create a messy environment. Try putting them like this, in the same mode:
M=monitor
U=you
rl=rear/left
fl=front/left
fr=front/right
rr=rear/right