Cutter

I guess these were already referred to, but my strongest gaming memories are related to The Legend of Zelda series: The storm from the beginning of A Link to the Past... The feeling of freedom upon arriving on the Hyrule field in Ocarina of Time for the first time... I've lost my kid's mind. I'm not as fascinated in games and virtual worlds as I used to be...

I second the request for Castle of Illusion remixes, but Land of Illusion's soundtrack is better IMHO.

Hello, I'm requesting a remix of this track from Gremlins 2 (NES). I found it surprinsingly good. The complete soundtrack is at Zophar's Domain.

The Strikers - Body Music (intro) Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap - Boss Music

Gato's Theme from Chrono Trigger would make a pretty good ringtone I guess.

I don't like this remix as it is. The piano performance is far from perfection, you should have practiced it more. The sound quality is mediocre because of the inflated reverb, but the recording sounds OK. This remix had potential, but you submited it too early.

It may sound clean for you, but other people may be more sensitive to compression artifacts. Then don't listen to them...

It may sound clean for you, but other people may be more sensitive to compression artifacts.

Well if you encode it at a good quality with the proper command line that's enough. You won't have to check if the encoding is good since you will know that it's already the best possible.

Indeed. Did you use some particular command line like --alt-presets?

It's not only a matter of bitrate. Using the proper encoder with the proper settings can make you save a lot of quality. If you find that 128kbps vs uncompressed is very clear, you probably didn't encode it the best possible way. The latest listening test from HydrogenAudio has shown that LAME can produce near-transparent (un-noticeable) sounding MP3 at this bitrate, if used with the best settings. Sorry to sound so boring with these listening tests, but that's the only way I know to show concrete facts. I don't say "I prefer LAME", I say "people in general prefer LAME". That's what listening tests are for. I use LAME for everything, no need to convince me. 128kbps is still a massive difference for my ears. I do a lot of testing when I'm encoding my own music, and I found (like I said) that 256kbps seems to be the minimum for me to not hear a difference. edit; keep in mind I'm talking about CBR not VBR. You wouldn't have to use such a high bitrate as 256kbps to get transparent sounding music if you were using VBR. Like I said, it's a waste of diskspace.Oh, and let me add that simple VBR doesn't produce the best results. The recommended settings for LAME that I gave in the first post gives even better quality (they are "optmized" VBR).

the infeasibility of submitting remixes in lossless formats (wav/flac) has already been pointed out.. so what is left to discuss? that VBR should be mandatory? i don't think that's necessary. cheers. Size being a big problem and VBR not being madatory is almost paradoxical IMO. The point of VBR is precisely to reduce filesize while keeping the perceived quality at the same level. Why using CBR @ 160kbps when you could get the same quality with VBR @ 128kbps? In other words, CBR is a waste of space and bandwith. Remixers should know how to control the filesize without having to reduce the quality.

This is the reason why I said that this thread leads to nothing. You laughed about facts and standards, confirmed and set, by the AES (Audio Engineering Society) not to mention extensive tests. For me this discussion is over, sorry. Sorry, I didn't get that you were serious about this technical slang I don't unerstand anything about. I thought you were simply trying to show that all this mp3 encoding stuff is uselessly complicated. My aim wasn't to hurt you at all.

It's not only a matter of bitrate. Using the proper encoder with the proper settings can make you save a lot of quality. If you find that 128kbps vs uncompressed is very clear, you probably didn't encode it the best possible way. The latest listening test from HydrogenAudio has shown that LAME can produce near-transparent (un-noticeable) sounding MP3 at this bitrate, if used with the best settings. Sorry to sound so boring with these listening tests, but that's the only way I know to show concrete facts. I don't say "I prefer LAME", I say "people in general prefer LAME". That's what listening tests are for.

Lol! What better metering tool than the human ear? These tests aren't subjective: people didn't knew what they were rating. I won't try to convince you that these tests are reliable, this is off-topic.

Not self-proclaimed. If I claim that I can recognize artifacts in one of your remixes, I will prove so by taking an ABX blind-test. I will have to compare two files of the same music: one compressed, the other not. If I can recognize wich one is the original many times succesively, there would be no doubt that compression has damaged the sound quality, and that I can hear it. The harder would be to convince remixers to adopt a method wich they may not be familiar with and for wich they might not see (hear) the immediate benefits. My english skills are probably too low for that.

It really depends upon WHO listens to the MP3. You may find that it sounds fine, but someone who's used to the MP3 format will notice artifacts more easily. And everyone gets trained to notice artifacts sooner or later after listening to MP3s. It also depends upon your speakers / headphones. If you listen to remixes on your portable player outside (with ambient noise), you won't notice artifacts. But why penalize people with trained ears and/or good gear? PS: yes, AC3 is bad. Worse than MP3 anyway according to this listening test.

OK, forget about sending files in .wav format, but the remixers should be aware of the best method to encode their work. LAME should be recommended, VBR should be mandatory. It's a pity that there isn't a single topic explaining how to properly encode MP3s. Remixers may not be sensitive to compression artifacts, but a trained ear will suffer if the encoding is crappy (iTunes for example).

Hello! I noticed that the enconding quality of OC Remixes is uncertain. Some remixes are encoded in VBR, some other just stick to CBR @ 160kbps. Some sound pure, some other sound crap despite their musical quality (Time Chill, or Bonus Retreat for example). I imagine that not all remixers are aware of what is the best way to encode music into MP3. Shouldn't all remixes be encoded in a standard method? The remixer would send its uncompressed work (in zipped .wav format or in another lossless format), then djpretzel (or someone else) would encode it before releasing it on the site. Thus there will be no chance of disappointment finding a remix that rocks on the creative side but sounds crap because of compression artifacts. Anyways, remixers should always at least encode their work with LAME which is known to be the best MP3 encoder to date. You can download the actual recommended LAME version from here. This encoder is to be used with recommended encoder settings. Thanks in advance.

Sorry to sound like I have nothing new to say, but I like this remix very much.