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Sonic CD getting the vinyl treatment

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by minichapman, Jun 7, 2019.

  1. Mecha Sally

    Mecha Sally

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    Yeesh, finally mustered the courage to pre-order... $61 after shipping. I think I may skip out on this one for now. =/
     
  2. VectorCNC

    VectorCNC

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    Mine came out to $80 or $90, being a Canadian. Although it is expensive, and although I do not even own a record player, Sonic CD was always my favorite soundtracks. In fact, this may be what compels me to buy a record player. I am of the opinion that, when paired with great speakers records sound amazing. But I have no idea if this applies to records based on digital creations. Any audiophiles have an answer to this?

    A little interesting story, I used to have this very wealthy friend, but ditched him when I figured out he was a psychopath (he then tried to sue me...), and he had the best of everything. Of course he also had a very nice record player, and his housecleaner accidently broke the phonocartidge one day, which he claimed to be worth $2,500. The housekeeper offered to work for free until it was paid off, and he graciously accepted her offer... My opinion was that if you can afford things this expensive, then you can afford to have them broken too. Poor women. He was also screwing her son. You can see how the pieces started to come together that he was a power hungry psychopath.
     
  3. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    Anything that's digitally mastered isn't gonna give you that BETTER THAN CD audio quality that dorks love to freak out about, so that'd be most modern records. Still nice to have as a novelty item though, records are lots of fun and they will sound "warmer" even if they don't sound better necessarily. Reminds me, I've gotta get a new player too.

    I'm not sure about Sonic CD's soundtrack though, I'm gonna strongly suspect it was digitally mastered, but, we weren't in the "digital era" completely at that point. Maybe someone else here knows specifically.
     
  4. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    This is just a fallacy, you know. It's really expensive to buy good gear to get playback at CD quality from vinyls, I won't even mention how expensive gear is to make vinyls sound better than CD's. And even then, there are releases that aren't well pressed at all so... I'll buy this but keep it sealed and enjoy my lossless audio.

    The problem with digital mastering usually lies on the audio engineer desire to compress the hell out of everything lol.
     
  5. I work in audio at 96k 32bit, and working at that sample rate & bit depth sounds amazing.

    But to the average Joe it sounds the same as 16bit (CD) :v:/> but you can hear the difference if you train your ears to hear the difference.

    Better can be subjective. Every medium has it's uses, I listen to Minidisc allot because I love it's warm (!) digital distortion and the way it subtly compresses and degrades the music. And it still sounds more appealing and characterful than listening through a phone. We've definitely lost the art and enjoyment of personal audio due to the advent of phones.

    I like the imperfect nature in records and that's why it has it's appeal.

    EDIT: is also interesting how when I was growing up in the 90s most of my friends had half decent hifi set ups with big CD collections. Now it's lossy streaming and bluetooth speakers. We need to up the game again
     
  6. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    Well I never said it was cheap lmao

    I agree with this sentiment so much. The decent into streaming happened so gradually I didn't even notice how much perceived joy I was losing out on after a few years. Throwing EVERY ALBUM EVER into one big soup to boil in, nothing stands out, there's no personal story to make between you and the album as an object of fascination, it's just yet another app to deal with.

    Even just going back to managing my own MP3 rip collection and listening to albums on an iPod nano has been more fun. Now I've just gotta get back into one of those private music trackers. :')
     
  7. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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  8. Bummer. I hate it when a remaster is just MAKE IT LOUDER. Nothing wrong with the originals

    EDIT: just listened, yep all the snap and punchy dynamics is gone.
     
  9. Sir_mihael

    Sir_mihael

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    I still haven't found a source for this outside of TVTropes, but even then I kinda hope that never becomes a thing.

    Shame we're moving out the era where the hardware and medium was a big deal. Best we get these days is the occasional [HARDWARE Edition] subtitle, or a "<X> VR" at times.

    At least Sonic Advance has stayed true to it's roots so far, not counting any Virtual Console releases it might have got.
     
  10. Twimfy

    Twimfy

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    I still listen to Minidisc for the very same reason. In the late 90's to early 00's I lived and breathed MD's and some of my favourite albums are only my favourites on that format as I don't get the same sound/feeling on CD or Vinyl.

    I'm big into cassettes again now too due to my new interest in retro synth wave. If there's a format that classic Sonic OST's need to come to then it's definitely cassettes. But....home taping will kill the profits :P
     
  11. Powpuck

    Powpuck

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    :v:
     
  12. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    This port isn't even called Sonic Advance. Why bring that up?

    Some more info on the vinyls from Data-Discs twitter.

    "Hataya-san wrote a new commentary (liner notes) for this release. The audio side was overseen by Jun Senoue, who supplied the files and also helped with the translation of Hataya-san's notes (which were received in Japanese of course)"
     
  13. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    At least now we know exactly who to pin the blame on. :v:
     
  14. Chibisteven

    Chibisteven

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    The 2011 CD release was mastered by Shigeharu Isoda at Wave Master Studio, Tokyo, Japan. Don't give Jun Senoue all the blame for it even though he is the producer of that compilation and probably played some kind of role in it.

    Then there is the supervisor "Takashi Iizuka" as well.

    Anyone, even the original composers could have said something.

    It's a case of not just awful compression but also bad equalization as well.

    Goes to show Vinyls get bad remasters as well.

    My opinion is everyone that worked on the remaster is to blame for it. Data-Disks is simply taking whatever SEGA gives them.

    ALSO: When Video Game CD-ROMs have better audio quality than their official soundtrack releases.
     
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  15. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    So I've sent an email to Data Discs


    And got my response today:


    So, they had to use the tracks Sega had sent to them and those happened to be the bad remasters from 2011 and nothing can be done about it.

    A real shame but at least we can see they did their best.
     
  16. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    It's cool that they were nice about it at least, a shame SEGA doesn't care about making sure that probably the best video game soundtrack ever is properly represented.
     
  17. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    There's absolutely no proof of this, would be nice if misinformation about those brief clips (which have the same format and naming as the Past music and might have just been placeholders while the music was composed) would be kept from spreading.
     
  18. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    1- The CDDA tracks predate the PCM files -- all of them. Sonic CD 510 uses the Present CDDA tracks on Past zones. They couldn't be placeholders.

    2 - Sonic CD 2011 already implemented them this way.

    3 - It can be really difficult to sync the ending of a CDDA track with the start of a PCM clip. A gap of just a tenth of a second can sound jarring -- a fadeout and restart is less ambitious but much more clean than loop with an LQ clip playing slightly out of sync. It would be a good reason not to implement them at all on the Sega CD.

    Even if you don't agree me, this is unrelated to the problems I mentioned earlier (bad mastering, badly edited loops etc).
     
  19. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    It's related to the email you sent them, so it is on-topic.


    Well, the remake also has a Hidden Palace which doesn't have anything to do with the original plans for it. It's quite irrelevant how the music looped there.


    How do you know those weren't made earlier and just weren't (re)added until later?

    What I think could have happened:
    -SNCBNK placeholder files with a brief clip were used for all time zones, while the final music was composed. -> Before Prototype 510
    -Once the CD audio was done, those tracks replaced the SNCBNK files. Past music isn't done yet. -> Prototype 510
    -Past tracks are finished, so SNCBNK files are readded. -> Prototype 712
    -Unused SNCBNK files are removed. -> Late prototypes and final


    It's also a good reason to not even think that they were ever considered for that purpose.


    I mean, there's no evidence at all that they were ever used for that, it all originated from a post with a crazy and groundbreaking... idea. Just that.
     
  20. Mastered Realm

    Mastered Realm

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    I've mentioned those because people are literally bringing them up on their soundcloud. If you read my email again, you'll see I understand it's advisable to ditch them as they're really LQ. So it doesn't matter much if they were loops or not. It's better to just edit the tracks themselves and leave them out.

    Nope. Sonic CD 510 uses a different PCM implementation for the SFX, with a PCM000.bin file. Why would they implement the SNCBNK, change the implementation to another setup, and THEN go back?

    If you listen closely, you'll agree they fit the music bars on the CDDA tracks perfectly and it doesn't make sense to use this, this, this or even this as a placeholder loop.