[7.1 Surround] Trials of Mana: Remake Intro — But this time, we mean it (Pipe Organ Enhancement)

[Woody mC]

Trials of Mana, also known as Seiken Densetsu 3, is the 1995 successor to the famous SNES "Secret of Mana" JRPG and, back then, was published only in Japan. About two years ago, in April 2020, fans were gifted with a full state-of-the-art remake after a quarter of a century, during which fan-translated ROM versions toured all around the planet.

Being one of these fans, I recently finished multiple runs of that game and found the opening scene — and, most notably, the orchestrated soundtrack — to be one of the major highlights of the remake. Needless to say that this called for an "organic" extension.

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:

• URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/AhilFIYNgjiwMgZq
• Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

 

 

Production side note:

The audio you can hear in the ContreBombarde upload at https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/52536 consists of four individual 7.1 live recordings.
I recorded these inone go while playing to the looped OST; later I cut the whole recording into pieces of the respective OST length and synced them up to the OST recording.

All volume/intensity/registration changes are solely originating from the organ; absolutely no subsequent volume changes/fades have been applied in the audio workstation during post-processing. Also, all registrations were made manually using the stepper, where it was a challenge especially for the final chord to keep a precise timing.

I know comments are extremely rare on my pieces, however I'd be eager to know whether one can distinguish the separate recordings in the final VIDEO cut, as it would give me a hint on my next project(s) in terms of fine-tuning multiple recording layers.

Thanks in advance!

[Master Mi]

Not sure if it's just the source material, your good mixing skills or the recording of your nice room impression.

But with my Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro studio headphones, I can really hear a noticeable difference in clarity and staging between the original stereo mix:

... and your surround mix:

Whatever you really did to the original mix - good job, dude. ))

Edited July 4, 2022 by Master Mi

[Woody mC]

Thanks @Master Mi, much appreciated! This "difference in clarity and staging" -- do you, by coincidence, mean that the stereo mix appears to be somewhat "cleaner"?

Sorry if I didn't quite get it. ?

[Master Mi]

6 minutes ago, Woody mC said:

Thanks @Master Mi, much appreciated! This "difference in clarity and staging" -- do you, by coincidence, mean that the stereo mix appears to be somewhat "cleaner"?

Sorry if I didn't quite get it. ?

Nope, quite the opposite.

Your surround mix (or your surround recording) appears to be better in clarity and staging for some reason.

Or let's say the clarity is almost the same - but the panorama and staging catches my attention much more.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Master Mi

[Woody mC]

Oh, okay. Yeah, perhaps this could be the result of the OST spacial placement (front and back speakers on different levels) while the organ is distributed to all of the channel pairs (Great division = front, Positive division = back, Récit = surround, Pedals = LFE/C with bass split). This configuration may cause some amplification or cancelling effects, which in my case did cooperate and worked to my advantage.

[Woody mC]

20 hours ago, Master Mi said:

Or let's say the clarity is almost the same - but the panorama and staging catches my attention much more.

Ah, now I see what you mean. Thanks for taking the time to clarify that, it's indeed very helpful to me to see the effect and impact my adjustments have on the listener's perception!

Edited July 5, 2022 by Woody mC