Jump to content

OCRA-0009 - Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream


zircon
 Share

Recommended Posts

As for C.S., I disagree with you there as well. I think the concept was good but the execution was lacking in that there were a lot of inexperienced remixers, so the general remix quality was often inconsistent (and poor). If people like Jeremy Robson, Steffan Andrews, Russell Cox, and Vampire Hunter Dan had been on board, it would have been stronger. Not to say the final result was bad; it wasn't, but it wasn't without flaws.

Thank you for saying what I'd been thinking :) I'd have killed to work on CT material.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Forgot to ask.

Owing to certain slowdowns on the part of a certain mixer, there are (to my knowledge) no chiptune soundfonts available for use in software synthesizers.

So how the hell did they manage to get the One Winged Chiptune into the mix, and even lay some low strings under it?

slowdowns? no chiptune soundfonts? whaaaa?

there's lots of chiptune soundfonts out there. most of them are actually pretty awful, but that's not to say they don't exist. the way I did it however, was through usage of VSTi. ymVST to be precise (which I no longer use since the creation of my own nintendo chip synth). then it was just a matter of crunching some mono drum samples. it's really not even a very accurate chiptune (there's too much polyphony for one thing). once you render it, it can be used however the hell you want. like how spekko wrote the intro of black wing metamorphosis around it.

that's just one method; there's tons of different ways to do it. you can use soundfonts, you can recycle old compo packs, or you could even sequence actual NSFs etc with famitracker and convert them to WAV. if you know synthesizers at all, you can create pretty decent approximations with just about any softsynth as well. whatever works best for you, man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just read the Judges' dicisions on "Collision". It's too bad that this awesome track hasn't been accepted after the re-vote. I can understand where they're coming from regarding usage of other source material. Still though, I can't imagine this track sounding vastly different from what it is now. I'm glad Darangen was able to easily combine his inspiration to the track itself. Plus, now I'm interested about David Crowder Band...

BTW, glad you liked the reviews, Dhsu. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How lucky I am.

I would have probably missed this release, if not I saw this announcement on a site I just checked some "things" from the anime FF Unlimited. It was a wounderful FF site btw, named: Final Fantasy Compendium. So I thought I would just check its "home"-page before I would terminate the window. And saw this release in the news section. Talk about tomato in the face: :tomatoface:

I am (preferably) the biggest FF fan here, so a thing like this really blows me away. I know, I know, I should not say "the biggest", but we talk something rare here.

Anyways, one thing that makes me extra glad is the wav files included. I just cannot understand all those who says "why and why include mega huge WAV files?".

It is all about quality!!

And wav is original raw material, so to speak. Lossless real PCM quality !!! And like one said earlier (I think it was zircon): "for those who want to record top notch quality to cd's we have included wav files & mp3 is nice to have tagged and all to include in a mp3 player for example". [~]

So it is nice to have *.wav for cd recording and *.mp3 for computer and mp3 player listening. I'm happy for both of the formats... and seeded the whole package for at least 1:1 ratio. (I have a pretty slow PC).

And with a modern BT client you can choose to what download (I say it again!), so no biggy! Besaids, if the 2 formats had been splitted into 2 torrents, most would download the mp3 version and the wav version would have terrible seed. So it was the right decision. :!:

Why not FLAC then?

hmmm... flac is lossless too. But somehow it feels like wav gives a slighty better quality. With constant kbps ... what is it 1400kbps I think. Just feels better than ~800kbps that FLAC have.

So about the songs?

Well, I have not been able to listen to any of the songs yet. So I have no idea how they sound. In the beginning of this thread, like all say it is a fantastic album. Then in the middle one or two criticizement start to show up (they always do sooner or later), and at the end it is more like 50/50. So I DO wounder how good this really is.

I have good faith. So I want to hear it first when I have burned all 4 cd's on the critical CD Media: MAM-A 24k Gold Audio-CD. With grinded edge for even better sound and burning preformance. Start sounding as a quality freak: yes I am!

I will do this later today I think.

Then I will listen to it with my Sennheiser HD650 headphones; connected with SAA Equinox cable; powered with MF X-Can V3 headphone amplifier = BiG True Sound!

Hifi geek? Yupp!

That's why I want to listen first with this system. I believe first impression is very important in terms of both audio and video. Better quality at those times are proportional to the impression, I believe [partly].

SO I will hear it with best possible quality I can with my trade-mark 3-step::

1. Burn with *.wav files with Nero 8 and a Plextor burner powered with clean power from special filters and cables.

2. Use grind edged Top Notch special 24k gold audio cd's especially designed for audio recordings. Less jitter during recording and trueer sound during playback.

3. Hear it with my best audio equipment I own. In this case with my headphones. First impression can begin..

I will let you all know what I thought of the album when I have heard all four cd's. I am quite excited ... maybe I will play FF7 before I hear, haha! 8O:razz:

oh btw, TX A LOT for this release!!! Means a lot for us few truly TRUE fans!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hmmm... flac is lossless too. But somehow it feels like wav gives a slighty better quality. With constant kbps ... what is it 1400kbps I think. Just feels better than ~800kbps that FLAC have.

Welcome to the fray :) Last I checked, lossless is lossless. It does not remove any information, it just compresses the file size so as to occupy less disk space. The "compressed" bitrate has absolutely nothing to do with audio quality. It decompresses on the fly as you play it, bit for bit a mirror copy of the wave file. Much like if you ZIP a file, the unzipped version won't be "slightly better quality." With mp3 or other lossy codecs, it actually alters the data reducing its quality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a related note, one of the things I said at the beginning of VotL was that I wanted every song to be OCR-quality in both production and arrangement. I think at worst we may have a couple songs that would be borderline votes, but the vast majority would be YES or direct post. I feel that this is one of the best aspects of the project, and a standard that I hope future project leaders will try to follow.

Out of curiosity, then, why haven't more of the songs been posted? I saw the thing with Collision and the ripped ("borrowed") intro, but there are many tracks on the album which have yet to find their way onto OCR. To me, it always seems dissonant to have songs on an OCR-affiliated album which the site itself doesn't approve. And that of course goes for songs on all the other album projects as well.

Last I checked, lossless is lossless.

Monkey's Audio FTW. Its compression is slightly better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Out of curiosity, then, why haven't more of the songs been posted? I saw the thing with Collision and the ripped ("borrowed") intro, but there are many tracks on the album which have yet to find their way onto OCR. To me, it always seems dissonant to have songs on an OCR-affiliated album which the site itself doesn't approve. And that of course goes for songs on all the other album projects as well.

We don't post songs that don't get submitted ;) Many people didn't submit their music. We have several more things in the queue from the project that have been YESed, and a few more that are about to be YESed.

Darangen's "Collision" is another story. He didn't tell me or anyone else that he had been inspired by the David Crowder band, had I known I might have been more concerned... I only found out after the release of the project itself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also I wanted to drop in and tell Bladiator how awesome his track is. Particularly how awesome it is that he covered "Lifestream." Awesome.

Oh, how I so agree. I was disappointed to see no evidence of a Lifestream rendition (oh so ironic considering the project name) since it has always struck me as having such potential to be used in a serenely emotive little rearrangement. And I was even *thinking* piano! Fortunately Bladiator AWESOMELY came to the rescue, hiding that calm evocative melody within his "Various Themes". I only wish that the theme went on for longer. But this pianist knows how to make his medleys go down smooth, so I really cannot complain. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have no friggin Idea whats going on but I cant do a thing about this track, I can neither open it with an application or edit it (copy,paste,cut,rename,delete) or open it in notepad or look at its properties. I have also tried to scan it with my virus scanner and it says it can no access the file. I have tried to restart my computer, restart my external hardisc which the whole album is at. The other files I can open just fine and I have killed all other third party processes that are running in the background. I've heard of such thing as DRM, but never had such mp3 file. and if it had drm protection it wouldn't be this picky would it now and why would you guys have it in your album and on this track specifically?

Screenshot:

wtf.JPG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The filename is too (goddamn) long. I had a similar problem. Go into your command prompt (Start>Run>"cmd"), navigate to the directory, and use the ren command to rename the file to something shorter.

For future projects, we should refrain from putting artists in the filenames, especially if there are approximately one million artists for a specific track. Track Number and Track Title only, please. :(

Edit: contributing to this problem is the fact that it's located deep inside a directory structure with long folder names. I had a similar problem; this is the fault of ourselves, obsessive-compulsive as we are about organization of music files.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The filename is too (goddamn) long. I had a similar problem. Go into your command prompt (Start>Run>"cmd"), navigate to the directory, and use the ren command to rename the file to something shorter.

For future projects, we should refrain from putting artists in the filenames, especially if there are approximately one million artists for a specific track. Track Number and Track Title only, please. :(

Edit: contributing to this problem is the fact that it's located deep inside a directory structure with long folder names. I had a similar problem; this is the fault of ourselves, obsessive-compulsive as we are about organization of music files.

I think it's important to have the artist names though - otherwise it just comes out as OCREMIX MADE THIS, and nobody gets credit where credit is due (except in ID3s). I think there ought to be some other way around it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's important to have the artist names though - otherwise it just comes out as OCREMIX MADE THIS, and nobody gets credit where credit is due (except in ID3s). I think there ought to be some other way around it.

MOST releases of albums in MP3 format (like game music and stuff) follows the track number - track name convention. I'm not saying it's a standard--it's a convention, and I think it's a good one.

I think ID3 tags are enough. Practically any MP3 playing software and hardware supports tags. People saying "OCREMIX MADE THIS" will be ignorant regardless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...