News » August 2013 » Retro Game Music Bundle moves on (EDITED)

The Retro Game Music Bundle folks, who earlier this year released the JJ1 through JJ3 soundtracks commercially for the first time ever, have moved on to a new bundle, which suggests to me that they’re never going to fix the issues still present in said still-available soundtracks.

EDIT: soundofjw has shown up in the comments to dispute my misgivings! Awesome! You can follow updates here.

- Violet CLM

Comments

cooba on 13 Aug 2013 at 18:55

Seemed like a very obvious “let’s make it look like we care about their feedback and then never do anything” post to me.

soundofjw on 13 Aug 2013 at 18:56

Violet,

No worries! Remastering and approaching the jazz soundtracks takes time. We are still working on the re-recording of Jazz 1 + 2 – however, they are long, and it takes a bit of time. We definitely want to make sure we get it right this time.

Of course, we will be replacing the Jazz 1&2 soundtrack for everyone who purchased it on Loudr and the Retro Game Music Bundle. (:

Anyone concerned can check our thread here, and subscribe for updates when it is completed:

https://bundledragon.uservoice.com/forums/207924-general/suggestions/3990821-replace-jj1-jj2-soundtracks-

Cheers, and thanks for your patience everyone! Sorry it’s taken so long ):
Josh

[Edited link to be viewable by users. ~Violet]

Jerrythabest on 13 Aug 2013 at 20:42

Wait, what, you are recording the soundtrack? As in, in a studio, playing it yourselves? Or are you just running them through OpenMPT while doing whatever tuning you think is needed to make them sound better?

I hope it’s the former, it would be wicked awesome! The latter I can do myself :p

Violet CLM on 13 Aug 2013 at 21:18

Hi Josh! I’m very glad to hear that. Since things like the names and authorships of some of the songs had not been fixed, which presumably takes far less time than rerecording the files completely, I assumed the process had fallen completely by the wayside.

(Personally I kind of like the soundtracks the way they are, since if I want a 100% accurate emulation, I can easily listen to the originals, but these are interesting because they’re subtly different. I suspect I’m not in the majority, though.)

Are there plans to include the songs that were not included in the last release, or is it only a fixing job?

Stijn on 13 Aug 2013 at 23:31

That’s a rather mystifying response. I’m curious to what “recording” entails in this context, since, not being an audio engineer but knowing a thing or two about tracker music, playing it back in the tracker used to create the songs and recording the output to a lossless file format sounds as accurate as it could get to me.

Anyway, we’ll see.

Jerrythabest on 14 Aug 2013 at 08:45

@Stijn: They said “however, they are long, and it takes a bit of time”, so maybe that’s exactly what they are doing. Waiting until the music finishes can take a while if it’s looping a couple of patterns infinitely!

Odin314 on 14 Aug 2013 at 08:45

OpenMPT can open .j2b? You’re messing with me there’s no way—

Well holy crap.

Slaz on 14 Aug 2013 at 12:06

I’m no audio engineer either, but I assume the ‘recording’ process Josh meant is just playing the original modules while encoding the audio output in a lossless format. However, this time with more selective software that renders the JJ1 songs the right way.

I know that playing JJ1’s .psm files in OpenMPT will make some pitches/shifts sound awfully wrong. Listen to their current recording of Stonar for example. Ouch.

minmay on 16 Aug 2013 at 22:59

Chronos Module Converter does perfect conversion from PSM to S3M, at least on all the songs I’ve tested it on (which includes ALL the JJ1 songs).
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/music/programs/convert/cmc101.zip
As I’ve never actually found an accurate PSM player, this might be the best option.

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