[Bloodshot]

I just wanted to ask, is there any high quality version of the Duke 64 theme?



I know Brandon Blume's Grabbag is pretty similar to the Duke 64/Zero hour themes, but I'm thinking more along the lines of a version that sounds exactly the same as the 64 theme, just remastered in a higher bitrate.

I absolutely love the way the guitars and, pretty much everything, about how the 64 theme sounds.

[NUKEMDAVE]

I was wondering the same thing. If we knew who made it, we might be able to get a higher quality version.

[Hendricks266]

I do know that the highest quality of the N64 song itself can be found by using the USF rip (source), which I used to make my Duke 64 music pack for EDuke32.

It is a possibility that the ROM contains higher quality wave data than the N64 hardware could output without downgrading, but I don't know the first thing about digging into it.

The credits list Neil Baldwin and Steve Duckworth under "Audio".

[Bloodshot]

I played around with audacity a bit and got it to sound a little higher quality by messing with the equalization, and removing some of the background static.

It's not amazing quality or anything, but I think it sounds noticeably better for such a simple change.



Here's the download
http://www.mediafire...tzs7btzcyjgbwy8

Old version for quality comparison

[Mark]

I'm guessing that most people are using small, low to mid quality computer speakers. It sounds like you cut back on some of the mid bass to clean up the "muddy" sounding low end. Normally a good thing. But in the case of small speakers that can't reproduce low bass, they need a little more of that mid bass back in to balance out the boost in the high end you applied. Of course its going to sound different to everyone because of their different sound setups.

[Martin]

Nice work, Bloodshot. I'm hearing it through shitty £10 speakers, and it did sound way better up until the melody came in on the F#5 chord. I can imagine it really just wants either;

1) Finding a much higher-quality source. I think it's unlikely that the ROM itself contains anything at higher quality than what you hear. The reason it sounds so low-bitrate and muffled is probably because that's all that would fit on the cartridge. I think it's only an 8MB cart? Looking around for higher bitrate samples within the cart is probably just wishful-thinking.

2) Recording a good cover of it. I'm an advanced guitar player myself, next time I'm at the studio, I'll see if the guy who runs the place will turn a blind eye for a minute or two. It's a big if. We're not supposed to dick around there doing random stuff. If not, I'll see if my cousin would be up for letting me put it through his soundcard into his lappy. Wouldn't be as good, but way better-sounding than the ROM source. I won't bother farting about putting drums in and that, I'll just do the guitars at the correct BPM. Maybe. It's not a very hard piece at all, I'm sure many of you know loads of guitarists who can play it.

The important thing would be getting the tone as similar as possible, and most-importantly.. getting all those N64-exclusive fills down to a T.

Edit: I too always loved how the N64 theme sounded. More 'meaty', if you like. It's probably because it was the first time I heard it not being shitty MIDI, but whatever. It stuck with me as the best. Even though the Saturn version of the game is my favourite, the theme in that version is way too reverberant. On N64 it sounds meaty and punchy, just very low quality unfortunately due to the cartridge format (and using the most puny cartridge available on N64).

[Hendricks266]

Bloodshot, on 22 November 2012 - 12:00 AM, said:

I played around with audacity a bit and got it to sound a little higher quality by messing with the equalization, and removing some of the background static.

It's not amazing quality or anything, but I think it sounds noticeably better for such a simple change.

Here's the download
http://www.mediafire...tzs7btzcyjgbwy8

> Claims improved quality
> Posts an MP3

If you want to justify a claim of improved quality you need to work with lossless files from start to finish. Use the FLAC from my pack.

Martin, on 22 November 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

1) Finding a much higher-quality source. I think it's unlikely that the ROM itself contains anything at higher quality than what you hear. The reason it sounds so low-bitrate and muffled is probably because that's all that would fit on the cartridge. I think it's only an 8MB cart? Looking around for higher bitrate samples within the cart is probably just wishful-thinking.

It's not wishful thinking, just an unlikely hypothesis that needs testing. For example, many GBA games contain audio that is ruined by what's called PWM filtering, but you can reconstruct the music from the ROM and get something that sounds much better.

[Martin]

Hendricks266, on 22 November 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:

It's not wishful thinking, just an unlikely hypothesis that needs testing. For example, many GBA games contain audio that is ruined by what's called PWM filtering, but you can reconstruct the music from the ROM and get something that sounds much better.

Fair enough, I'll shut my trap! It's just that I know my Duke3d.grp weighs in at 42.3MB, and given that Duke Nukem 64 is stored on a meagre 8MB cartridge, there's probably no higher-quality version of the theme nestled in there.

[Hendricks266]

Breakdown of v1.5 DUKE3D.GRP:

(file type - size in bytes)
art - 20,349,623
anm - 10,432,292
voc - 6,940,231
map - 4,982,218
mid - 1,254,176
con - 232,664
dat - 101,404
dmo - 36,782
bin - 4,000
tmb - 3,328

The biggest use of space are the ART files, which makes sense considering they are uncompressed binary blobs. The Duke 64 ROM uses compression on the art assets so they are not so huge. An uncompressed rip of the Duke 64 sounds to WAV takes 15 MB, so sounds must be compressed too.

[Bloodshot]

It isn't really better enough quality that having it as an MP3 would degrade the quality that much, especially since the source file is pretty muddy anyway. If I were to tweak it more I would start over with the FLAC

[NUKEMDAVE]

Here's my attempt. I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD to tweak them.

[Jimmy]

You can't take something that's low quality and make it higher quality. CSI shit doesn't work.

[NUKEMDAVE]

Derp. I was just trying to make it more comfortable to listen to as far as my version goes.

I'll try looking up the two guys Hendricks posted about and see what I can find out.

[Hendricks266]

Captain Awesome, on 23 November 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:

You can't take something that's low quality and make it higher quality. CSI shit doesn't work.

Well...

http://www.wisdom.we...gleImageSR.html

http://users.soe.ucs...g/kernelreg.htm

That being said, normally the only thing someone equipped with a home audio editor can do is add a little reverb, etc.--i.e., nothing.

[Jimmy]

That's not adding detail though, that's just filters.

[MusicallyInspired]

Captain Awesome, on 24 November 2012 - 07:34 PM, said:

That's not adding detail though, that's just filters.

This.