Looks like we got a US release after all. Digital only, mind you, but it's still an option. http://blogs.sega.com/2013/12/02/sonic-lost-world-original-soundtrack-without-boundaries-available-now/?0=1
Or I can continue to do what I'm doing because I'd like to think that by not giving the lossless people what they want, they'll be tempted to go buy the album themselves and do it.
It's largely why Retro stopped putting up the soundtracks Ashram releases. It's become easier to get the highest quality the music comes in now since the albums are being released digitally. That means the excuse of "WELL, SEGA DOESN'T RELEASE THE ALBUMS HERE" is bunk. Although, I do wish they'd branch out from iTunes.
I'd kill for limited edition releases of the soundtracks. They have the Sonic Merchandise stores in North America and Europe. Surely they could just import a few of Japanese copies and sell them. That's exactly what they did with the Nendoroid afterall.
They DID have the ability to order from Jun Senoue directly when it came to the Generations Soundtrack. It'd be nice if they did something similar to that again.
Good news: The OST is indeed available on Amazon (just checked on .co.uk), so thanks Sega for that. Not all of us care to fund Apple's business practises. Bad news: It's 3 seperate OSTs, one for each of the CDs in the set. Couldn't have this been a single £15 OST rather than three £8 ones?
Amazon-purchased songs are V0 variable-bitrate MP3, averaging 256kbps. iTunes-purchased songs are 256kbps constant-bitrate AAC, roughly equivalent in quality to 320kbps CBR MP3. The more you know.
No one's being the choosing beggar. I'm just trying to correct you that CBR 320 isn't the best MP3 setting as you thought, since you already cared enough to insist on it over VBR V0 anyway. You could at least compress your files to reduce your very own and everyone else's bandwidth usage. 10% saving from a CBR 320 album is quite something.
I what It doesn't magically give you original quality out of CBR; think of it as data compression to further optimize the filesize. Your output VBR is still as lossy as the source CBR - you just don't incur additional lossiness.
I'd just like to say that I thought ashram's rip quality was just fine. Like how can you tell the difference after a certain point?
I thought so too, most normal people wouldn't care. its only the diehard audio fanatics that really want that raw, space eating format. although .flac is cool for the fact that you can convert it into any format you want without hassle.
Both of you are missing the point brought up on this page. What Vrantheo brought up doesn't increase the quality over 320kbps. It makes it smaller at the same quality since a lot of the time, 320kbps pads a lot of information just to bring it up to 320kbps even if the audio information doesn't call for it. A -lot- smaller in some cases. Judging from the responses, regardless if the suggestion is better quality vs smaller filesize, you're absolutely right though, normal people don't care. :P (Assuming you two are normal. If you aren't, disregard this post)
^^ Oh it was a file size discussion, now I get ya. I don't know about you guys but I really really hated that cover art for the soundtrack (Like, wtf is that? Sonic Lost World: Attack of the Clones)? So I went ahead and whipped this up: Spoiler The main purpose was so I could replace the album art that pops up when I play a song on my iphone. If you guys want to use it for the same purpose, go crazy.
Yoink, thanks for the better looking album cover, I didn't like the official one either. The fact it wasn't stylised and just looked really cheap kinda bothered me.
Good job! The original cover actually has a nice special effect coating which is rare to see on game OSTs and doesn't look bad either. The back is unreadable, though. Also, on your cover -- a suggestion. Change from the crappy 'Sonic logo font' you used for 'Original Soundtrack' and 'Without Boundaries' to Futura Bold and Futura Black respectively, which are the ones they used on the official one. That Sonic font has already too much personality and ends up removing the focus on the Sonic logotype and isn't very well made either.
That sparkly effect actually looks quite nice on the front cover, almost makes me not hate it (but you're right that back cover is unreadable). Thank you for the names of the fonts btw, I wanted to do that but my knowledge of typography is currently very limited, so I hadn't the slightest what to look for. So I went for the ol Sonic font there and you're right, it does kind of overload the box with too much of the same font. Interesting thing about the actual game at least, I believe it's the first Sonic game to ever use the Sonic logo font for anything beyond the logo, only they added lower case letters which previously never existed. Anyways, I will make that change as well as fix some other minor things (Clean up the Sonic Team logo a bit and Zavok horn has some masking errors that cause minor parts of the background to show up) in the morning.
