markussun Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Hi everyone, in the past 7 weeks I've been working together with others on something that I initially thought not possible: To restore K2's music from its crappy MONO muffled quality to the way it should be -- in high-fidelity STEREO. It's been quite the adventure to research ways to make this happen. I would like you to give me feedback on the small sampler and tell me if I have succeeded: CLICK HERE to download the small STEREO sampler No, this is not an April Fool's joke! Sorry for the odd timing... Unless LucasArts releases the original high-fidelity true STEREO music in a game-patch, this is really the closest you can get to it, given that I only had the muffled MONO sources to work with. So, grab a good pair of headphones (and make sure your soundcard speaker settings are set to 'Headphones'), and do an A/B listening test. You can, of course, also play it back through your 4.1/5.1 speakers, but depending on your soundcard and driver software the music might be processed in unexpected ways by doing that. For a proper listening test, switch to 2.1 speaker config, or better switch to headphones for a pure STEREO playback. Everything else is explained in the readme.txt file. Note to Creative Audigy owners: If you have a Creative Audigy soundcard, make sure you DO NOT have "CMSS 2" enabled (this ensures that you hear the music in pure form without any EAX room reverb effects added). "CMSS 1" and "CMSS OFF" are both ok for the purpose of this demonstration. It goes without saying that you should also ensure that no EAX effects are active in your EAX console. Of course, this is just a restoration, and having the real stereo hi-fi music restored by LucasArts would be much more desirable. If you want LucasArts to patch the game and include the proper original STEREO music, it's still not too late to email them in a polite manner and ask them to do so. CLICK HERE to request the proper 44kHz *STEREO* music for KotOR2. I'd like to give credit to John Griffin for being a great aid to this project so far. -markussun
Judge Hades Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 This has been known for a while now and anyone who remotely cared about this issue has done all they could about it.
dufflover Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Yes, it does sound better overall, although there are a couple of quirks here and there (could just be my perception). But yes, I doubt they'd be any match for the original music files which I'm sure they've got archived somewhere at Obsidian or Skywalker Sound. As a side note, I'm still in Rome Total War "mode", and that battle music wouldn't be a bad addition to it... For those RTW fans, it would make a good "Mobilize" music Pure Pazaak - The Stand-alone Multiplayer Pazaak Game (link to Obsidian board thread) Pure Pazaak website (big thank you to fingolfin)
Nur Ab Sal Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 That's an enthusiasm! It's great to see another fanatic of game soundtracks! May the tunes be with you. HERMOCRATES: Nur Ab Sal was one such king. He it was, say the wise men of Egypt, who first put men in the colossus, making many freaks of nature at times when the celestial spheres were well aligned. SOCRATES: This I doubt. We are hearing a child's tale.
Blazewamp Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Man i dont know why you need head phones the diffrence is really noticble GOOD job
Astatine Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Good stuff. I'm impressed. Maybe the headphones thing is under the expectation that people have dodgy little tinny PC speakers
Pious D'Cathcart Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Ahhh sounds gorgeous on my 5.1 setup! Keep up the good work :D
dufflover Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 Good stuff. I'm impressed. Maybe the headphones thing is under the expectation that people have dodgy little tinny PC speakers <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've got crappy laptop speakers and even they showed a clear difference. Pure Pazaak - The Stand-alone Multiplayer Pazaak Game (link to Obsidian board thread) Pure Pazaak website (big thank you to fingolfin)
markussun Posted April 2, 2005 Author Posted April 2, 2005 Thanks for the comments so far. I've got crappy laptop speakers and even they showed a clear difference. That's really flattering if you could even hear a difference on a laptop... :D
11XHooah Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 This sounds a lot better! Keep up the good work War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. --John Stewart Mill-- "Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun.....you could send in your bleeding-heart do-gooders, you could hold hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only way to finally open the roads to the big-eyed babies was to show up with more guns." --Black Hawk Down-- MySpace: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendid=44500195
Meshugger Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 While it doesn't share the same quality as the samples at Mark Griskey's homepage, those are definately an improvement. Keep on the good work! "Some men see things as they are and say why?""I dream things that never were and say why not?"- George Bernard Shaw"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."- Friedrich Nietzsche "The amount of energy necessary to refute bull**** is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." - Some guy
Syphex Posted April 2, 2005 Posted April 2, 2005 I cannot play the original MONO tracks--what player do you need? EDIT: damn, forgot to read the READme. nevermind. but the stereo sounds so awesome. :D
dufflover Posted April 3, 2005 Posted April 3, 2005 That's really flattering if you could even hear a difference on a laptop... :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It did sounds best on headphones but all that muffling and distortion were noticeably gone with the speakers. Mark Griskey's homepage ? Pure Pazaak - The Stand-alone Multiplayer Pazaak Game (link to Obsidian board thread) Pure Pazaak website (big thank you to fingolfin)
Meshugger Posted April 3, 2005 Posted April 3, 2005 You can listen to "The Sith Lords" or "Darth Sion theme" at the composer's homepage-->linky. "Some men see things as they are and say why?""I dream things that never were and say why not?"- George Bernard Shaw"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."- Friedrich Nietzsche "The amount of energy necessary to refute bull**** is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." - Some guy
Darth Flatus Posted April 3, 2005 Posted April 3, 2005 Well, its different. A good effort considering the crappiness of the source material but upsampling is pretty difficult - keep at it though i want hear the finished result .
markussun Posted April 9, 2005 Author Posted April 9, 2005 I'm sorry, the STEREO music sampler file was temporarily unavailable due to some server problems. This has been fixed in the meantime. The file is available for download again. Go back to the top of this thread for the link.
markussun Posted April 9, 2005 Author Posted April 9, 2005 It's explained in the readme.txt file accompanying the stereo sampler download.
Bounce Posted April 9, 2005 Posted April 9, 2005 Well some of it sounds better, a bit too much ))) stereo ((( at some points. But overall I like it.
Mondo Posted April 9, 2005 Posted April 9, 2005 Good work! What if I wanted to kill the other bounty hunters but still have the Twi'leks chase me?
Illbleed Posted April 9, 2005 Posted April 9, 2005 It sounds fantastic! what a difference between the original and the remastered files! (w00t) This is what a SW soundtrack should sound like!! GOOD WORK
markussun Posted April 10, 2005 Author Posted April 10, 2005 Ok, so should I go ahead and remaster the whole KotOR II score for the game to STEREO? Is there enough demand for it? This was just a sampler to get some feedback.
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