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by valiant at 9:22 PM EST on December 5, 2007
Surprise release!

It would be cruel to hold that rip back for a few days just to meet the anniversary. So I decided to release it before the tentative date.

Get it here.

Thanks again for your help, hcs!

Another interesting note: Even if you overwrite all of the AW files with zeroes (instrument banks included), there are still two sound effects - the echo of the arrow and Zant's warp sound. Either they were produced by the sound hardware or are stored somewhere else. They didn't disturb the ripping process, though.
by hcs at 1:01 AM EST on December 6, 2007
Thank you once again! Undoubtedly better than any OST Nintendo themselves could have come up with. It's a shame that you had to go through so much trouble to get it all, but we appreciate all your hard work. Glad I could help with what matters I could.

Those two sounds are interesting... my assumption would be that they're stored somewhere else, odd as it may seem to store just those two. Maybe they have something to do with the Wiimote speaker?
by holyice7 at 5:05 AM EST on December 6, 2007
You...are...AWESOME!

And I'd love to see how these rips operate when a Wii emulation player becomes more simplified.
by Lunar at 7:10 AM EST on December 6, 2007
This is an incredible rip. Goes without saying really, but yeah... this is surely what many fans of the soundtrack have been waiting for. I really appreciate the hard work here, and I'm sure others will too. I hope this gets spread around... seriously I'm floored. However, I do have some gripes, and I think there are certain things that should be amended before you release it (or for a re-release, whichever the case may be.)

I think some of the comments in the text file were rude and unnecessary. Especially the thing about Minegeshi - that's a really asinine comment to make. For all you know, it could be composed by him (and actually probably is!) I personally don't think it's Kondo, and I certainly don't make those judgements just based on "how good it is." But, at least you did the right thing of crediting all the composers in every track. It's a really bad idea to make those sorts of personal judgements "official" and it's a huge discredit to the actual work you've done. Same as listing your personal favourites... that's kinda arbitrary.

I also think the composer names should have gone in the artist field. It seems unusual having applications/players read the tags as "unknown artist." If those aren't changed, I'll probably go ahead and change them anyway.

Another thing - some of these tracks aren't normalised. Take "5-23 - Sled Game.mp3" for example. The current max signal on that track is -8db, which is QUIET, especially for something upbeat like that. Normalising it makes a huge difference. Did you just forget to normalise the tracks, or did you not normalise them for a reason? Because they really should be normalised... I cannot think of any reason why you wouldn't, as clipping will not occur. The only thing that would happen is the noise floor gets dragged up with it... BUT you're going to hear the track exactly the same if you have to turn your speakers up to listen to it anyway. So basically, any noise in the track is already there, and normalising the track won't make a scrap of difference.

So my suggestions are basically:

- Normalise tracks.
- Put composer names in the artist field.
- And I'd strongly advise removing the value judgements and other rude comments. It's just very unprofessional and reflects badly on you.

If this is supposed to be a final final rip, then it's a shame, because I think it could have been even better, which I am sure is in your interest.

edited 7:19 AM EST December 6, 2007
by bcass at 8:35 AM EST on December 6, 2007
Great work Prime Blue. Can we expect a FLAC release soon? Also, as for normalizing, using the ReplayGain option in FLAC frontend when encoding should sort this problem out. Though make sure you don't have the 'Treat input files as one album' box ticked.

edited 8:43 AM EST December 6, 2007
by holyice7 at 8:40 AM EST on December 6, 2007
I'm not going to complain about the exactness of the fades on the third loop of the tracks that require them, but is there a particular reason the bit rates on these mp3's are all over the place?
by marioman at 9:07 AM EST on December 6, 2007
Nice. Thanks for your hard work.
by unknownfile at 10:00 AM EST on December 6, 2007
in before zelda fans rape the file to bits


...stupid zelda fans
by valiant at 11:19 AM EST on December 6, 2007
I think some of the comments in the text file were rude and unnecessary. Especially the thing about Minegeshi - that's a really asinine comment to make. For all you know, it could be composed by him (and actually probably is!) I personally don't think it's Kondo, and I certainly don't make those judgements just based on "how good it is." But, at least you did the right thing of crediting all the composers in every track. It's a really bad idea to make those sorts of personal judgements "official" and it's a huge discredit to the actual work you've done. Same as listing your personal favourites... that's kinda arbitrary.
As I've explained in the README, "field music" is too vague an expression to put only Minegishi as composer for a lot of tracks. For example, we can't be sure about "Shop" or "A Beast in the Village" being field music, as they're technically a crossover between field and cutscene tracks. And I don't feel it's right deleting other composers from the specific tags when we can't be 100% sure they were not involved.
Regarding the compositions: It's just that a lot of Minegishi's supposed tracks sound repetitive and predictable. Others, I really enjoy (his three tracks in Majora's Mask were great, he sure is a magician when it comes to battle music). That's my personal criticism of him.
But that has nothing to do with the tags at all.
Thus, I didn't make anything "official", the tags credit them all. We just can't be sure who did which track, that's why it doesn't say "Toru Minegishi" in most of them.
If I tried hard to be a hypocrite, I would've put my assumptions into the tags.

I won't take the favorite tracks thing as criticism, as it's kind of "whatever". This is a text file after all. It's not like it's saying "VITAL INFORMATION FOR THE RIP, DON'T PROCEED WITHOUT READING MY FAVORITE TRACKS". ;-)

I also think the composer names should have gone in the artist field. It seems unusual having applications/players read the tags as "unknown artist." If those aren't changed, I'll probably go ahead and change them anyway.
I always associated the artist field with the person that actually performs the song. But there's no problem with updating the tags and reuploading my rip. Thanks for the heads-up!
I've got one question, though: What is the composer tag for? Is that only used when the track is sung by someone and the artist field is full? I really don't know, so it would be nice if you shed some light on that topic.
Also, in case it wasn't that clear from the README: It's not of my business what you do to the files on your HDD, of course. I just don't like it when tracks I personally ripped turn up on the interwebs with different names.

Another thing - some of these tracks aren't normalised. Take "5-23 - Sled Game.mp3" for example. The current max signal on that track is -8db, which is QUIET, especially for something upbeat like that. Normalising it makes a huge difference. Did you just forget to normalise the tracks, or did you not normalise them for a reason? Because they really should be normalised... I cannot think of any reason why you wouldn't, as clipping will not occur. The only thing that would happen is the noise floor gets dragged up with it... BUT you're going to hear the track exactly the same if you have to turn your speakers up to listen to it anyway. So basically, any noise in the track is already there, and normalising the track won't make a scrap of difference.
I applied Track Gain via MP3Gain because it's more accurate when it comes to average volume. The tracks on previous official soundtracks have pretty much the same volume for all songs.
It's true that you can make a lot of the files louder (especially cutscene tracks) without clipping, but some of them are already at their absolute maximum, and average volume was my highest priority there.

So, to sum it all up (and just for clarification: not a single passage of that post is meant rude, I'm always grateful for criticism and will try to improve in the future ^_^):

- Normalise tracks.
- Put composer names in the artist field.
- And I'd strongly advise removing the value judgements and other rude comments. It's just very unprofessional and reflects badly on you.

- ReplayGain > Normalization
- I'll do that in future releases and will update my existing rips
- I'm not trying to win a popularity contest here, I just want to make rare music available to everyone

I'm not going to complain about the exactness of the fades on the third loop of the tracks that require them, but is there a particular reason the bit rates on these mp3's are all over the place?
Did my best to get the most accurate fade points. I'm afraid it doesn't get any better, sorry. :-(
As for the bitrates: Some are obviously lower because of the lower frequency (1-03 and x9-04 in particular). The other differences are probably best explained by taking the vast changes in instrumentation into consideration.


EDIT: Sorry, forgot to get to your question bcass.
Can we expect a FLAC release?
Yes.
Soon?
No.
...more specifically, I'll get around to it when I'm in the mood to upload 2GB worth of FLAC galore.
Also, as for normalizing, using the ReplayGain option in FLAC frontend when encoding should sort this problem out. Though make sure you don't have the 'Treat input files as one album' box ticked.
Yup, did the same thing for the Four Swords Adventures rip earlier.

edited 11:44 AM EST December 6, 2007
by hcs at 12:58 PM EST on December 6, 2007
For any unable or unwilling to download from megaupload:
The rip.

(similarly the Four Swords Adventures rip in FLAC; I finally updated my mirror to the updated version (tag fix).)

edited 1:40 PM EST December 6, 2007

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