[Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambience HD Remake]

What I meant was, how did you obtain those better quality sounds, so close to the original?
Are those samples? Are those synth patches from a particular synth for SNES sounds? Did you program the synth patches?
I have no clue.

Good job in any case 

[Forum username change requests]

I'd also be grateful if my username could be corrected into "Niowiad", with a capital N.
Thank you in advance 

[Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambience HD Remake]

Interesting. I'm sort of confused but curious about this. Were are those sounds coming from?
I mean they are so close to the original. I'm probably missing something big. :O

[Best Midi breath controllers?]

On 1/15/2018 at 9:20 PM, mickomoo said:

 Also, just for my own edification, what're the advantages of a wind controller to a keyboard controller, or is one not better than the other?

They both essentially send midi notes and can be used to play any midi instrument. The difference is with keyboards you get the modwheel (and/or expression pedals) for sound modulations, with breath controllers you instead use the intensity of your breath which can be much more natural and expressive and can achieve more natural results.

There are midi controllers shaped and designed resembling actual intruments from the woodwinds family, such as the Roland AE-10 or the Akai EWI series.
But you can also get products like the TEControl stuff, which give you the benefits of breath midi control along with the benefits of any standard midi keyboard, so you don't have to learn a completely new instrument, and don't cost you nearly as much as an EWI or AE-10.

I've never had the chance of using one from TEControl but I'd really like to try it in the future.

In any case, check for compatibility with the type of libraries and sampler you intend to use it with.

 

[DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice?]

1 hour ago, pengwndude said:

My friend told me to download sforzando, but when I drop sf2 files into it it sounds like garbled trash. 

I also cannot for the life of me, figure out how to access the instruments via reaper after dropping them into sforzando -_-;;;

I might be wrong, but this suggests me you're opening the standalone version of sforzando, which is not made for usage within the DAW.

For Reaper or any DAW you need to put the .dll version (sforzando VST_x64.dll if 64bit, originated during the installation) in a folder dedicated to VST plugins, which your DAW can scan and get the software from.

It's easy to feel sort of disoriented at the start, but it gets better soon.

VSTs like sforzando get opened directly from the daw. Something like this video shows... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CByHPXk3Flw

As far as formats, I have only been using .sfz files with sforzando, I honestly never used .sf2
Searching "sfz library" or "sfz instruments" on google should point to a lot of free stuff.

And they don't necessarily have to be sfz libraries. they can be actual dedicated VSTs
http://www.vst4free.com/index.php?m=VSTi

 

[DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice?]

15 hours ago, pengwndude said:

Right now I'm looking into Reaper on a friend's recommendation, very largely based on its affordability 

Reaper is plain awesome. Robust and light software, highly customizable. The community/forum is vast and helpful. Many studios use it professionally and not just based on its affordability
Its stock mixing-tool plugins are underrated mainly because of the bland looking GUI, they're far from perfect but they're actually more than fine as long as you know what you're doing... and that has been proven several times in various mixing contests.

Its biggest downside at the moment is the lack of decent virtual instruments, which means you won't find good sounds in there to create music. You need to look for external VSTs, external sample libraries, sample players like Sforzando or actual samplers like the TX16Wx. 
Start with freeware, a lot of nice stuff. Eventually upgrade to paid plugins if you like them and want to take it to the next level. 

Other more expensive DAWs come with better sounds and plugins (and this is one of the reasons for the price gap), but at least as far as I am concerned, the best plugins and libraries come from 3rd parties anyway regardless of the DAW you use.

So if you want to go with Reaper and you're a beginner I would highly advise to follow the official tutorials https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php 
Many people end up blaming the software because they don't get to know enough about it.

[Metal Slug 3 - Desert Theme Remaster]

Nice one.

I think a different version with all those sampled instruments replaced by electric guitar solos would also sound great.
You don't lose the "oriental touch" by keeping those same notes and intervals, while maybe sounding a little bit more coherent with the rest.

A matter of balance between coherence and variety actually... subjective matter of taste after all.

[Parts in games so difficult they made you stop playing]

I also lived the 8bit era, I perfectly agree with most people about bad design issues and so on.
Although nothing got even close to how bad competitive online gaming (no matter what genre) had me flipping out on several occasions :L

[Super Mario Bros. 2 - Boss]

Whoah the wall of sound at 00:12 caught me by surprise even though I should have expected that  Was that double or quad tracked for the guitars?

One thing I was thinking about, you could change the strumming pattern as the double bass kicks trying to make it sound tighter. Come to think of it I would also probably postpone the double kick section, or repeat it later if you also wish to keep it like that in the first half of the track.

Overall I really like the idea.