Tonic Trouble Soundtrack

[deton24]

Je ne parle pas francais. Excuse-moi

[Harpic fraîcheur]

No problem.
What language do you speak?

[deton24]

I'm from Poland. Pozdrawiam wszystkich rodaków. Let's don't mess in topic.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

Yeah sry. I do not want to become an Illuminati.

[deton24]

My fault, I haven't filled location. Good.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

No problem. I have to go, bye.
And I can try to register the musics of the game in 44kHz ^^

[deton24]

If you hear difference.. Greetings

[Harpic fraîcheur]

I don't hear any difference.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

#Bump
I just want to say the soundtrack is here : http://raytunes.raymanpc.com/#ttn64
(It is my rip ^^)

[deton24]

I made a new v2 version of my amateur remaster of Tonic Trouble PC.
It's enchanced version by more bass and polished high a little.
Possible issues - exaggerated bass, and little dirtier high.
Yes it's everything logic, because tracks are sounds better in overall now, in my very subjective opinion.
HI is still unsatisfactory enough, because I hadn't my previous source files, and unfortunately I had to recompress previous files.
So we still waiting for TC Beta rip with 44kHz from Droolie.
edit. Droolie says that he found out that beta files are not 44khz.
Meanwhile, say some opinions about that:
Enjoy

Download:
https://yadi.sk/d/YEE0OXSorQniU

[Harpic fraîcheur]

It seems good. I'm downloading it, I will comment it after that!

[deton24]

Hah, allright! Say something about quality. Especially in compare to my old version. I know that it's not perfect, but maybe it's better.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

It's of crouse better!

[deton24]

Than my previous enhanced version? Ok. If you notice some issues during listining, let me know.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

I didn't. And I will probably not later. But if I notice anything I will say that here ^^'

[deton24]

Update! Droolie has extracted and arranged files directly from the game.
So there is no line-in distortions and loss, and it is in FLAC.
It is much better source for any audio processing in future.

Tonic Trouble PC soundtrack came from: it's my own rip of the (non-special edition) PC version of Tonic Trouble. It is arranged as full songs like that. Someone had already ripped it here but I re-ripped it with some minor differences.
Sadly, one or two segments were missing in this version so where necessary I carefully added the missing segments in from the only recording available of the special edition. The credits track is also from here. I really wanted to get a better quality version of this, but sadly the special edition's music proved waaaaaaaay too hard to rip.

http://raytunes.raymanpc.com/ (mp3)
http://hosting.raymanpc.com/raytunes/music/TT-FLAC.zip (FLAC)

[AniCator]

Awesome, that's great news.

[kooz]

Update! Droolie extracted and arranged files directly from the game.
So there is no line-in distortions and loss, and it is in FLAC.
It is much better source for any audio processing in future.

Droolie, how did you end up getting this decoded? Last I remember, it seemed there was nobody interested in helping out over at Xentax or HCS64.

I'm intrigued, because it sounds like there's something wrong with the interpolation. It sounds too harsh - like low bit depth aliasing. I dug out an old rip I made long, long ago. It was made using the same method I used for my original Rayman 2 DC rip - line-out from one computer (playing the game), into the line-in of the recording PC. Track ordering was (again, like my Ray2 DC rip) chronological, in the order in which they appeared in-game, and split into discs with the original intention of having it burned to audio CDs.

I encoded it at 192kbps CBR for PC storage way back then. I don't think VBR MP3s encoders even existed at that point. But it should be good enough for a comparison. I uploaded it to mega if you want to have a listen.

https://mega.nz/#!8IEBQRgD

[Droolie]

Droolie, how did you end up getting this decoded? Last I remember, it seemed there was nobody interested in helping out over at Xentax or HCS64.

I'm intrigued, because it sounds like there's something wrong with the interpolation. It sounds too harsh - like low bit depth aliasing. I dug out an old rip I made long, long ago. It was made using the same method I used for my original Rayman 2 DC rip - line-out from one computer (playing the game), into the line-in of the recording PC. Track ordering was (again, like my Ray2 DC rip) chronological, in the order in which they appeared in-game, and split into discs with the original intention of having it burned to audio CDs.

I encoded it at 192kbps CBR for PC storage way back then. I don't think VBR MP3s encoders even existed at that point. But it should be good enough for a comparison. I uploaded it to mega if you want to have a listen.

https://mega.nz/#!8IEBQRgD

Hi kooz! The rip on RayTunes is mostly from the final version of the game (with the exception of the credits track, which was taken from here), which uses 22050Hz tracks in APM format just like the PC version of Rayman 2. The APM format - or the decoder - causes that "harsh" sound, I think - it was also present in rips of the PC version of Rayman 2.
The "special edition" (beta version) is the one that we had so much trouble with, and in the end, I gave up on decoding those tracks. The special edition tracks should be slightly higher quality, so I'd like to listen to your line-in rip for comparison... but you forgot to post the decryption key for the MEGA link.

[kooz]

Oh, whoops! I should've tested that first. This should work:
[192kbps CBR MP3] https://mega.nz/#!8IEBQRgD!0nUxeYo251ab ... 3yRdOyNOMw
[Monkey's Audio (High)] https://mega.nz/#!wZlylTBQ!KQoyG5pFgJzZ ... VgBaw7p1mY


Thanks for the explanation about the codec. It's really weird that they'd change up their audio format sometime mid-development. The thought had never crossed my mind.

What program was used to decode the APMs? Has anyone confirmed that the APM music actually exhibits this same aliasing/harshness in-game? I'm wondering if we just need a different ADPCM decoder. I'll look into it


edit: Well, I went ahead and got the GOG version of R2 installed. Using the intro to The Fairy Glade, I recorded game audio with the SFX turned all the way down, using the "stereo mix" source option. I then directly compared that to the APM > WAV result of ray2get (FF01, FF02, FF03). The aliasing is definitely present (and to my ear, identical) in both. So ray2get's implementation of ADPCM seems to be working well an accurate stand in for the in-game "reference" decoder. Having said that, I still have a feeling there are different interpolation options that could lessen the aliasing.

If not, then I guess we're back to square one again... We really need some experienced help in getting TT's beta/special edition 44kHz sample-rate MPEG-based codec decoded.

To be honest, they both have some pretty awful quality downsides. If you listen to my rip, you can definitely hear some low-bitrate MPEG stereo swishiness-type of artifacting. That's not a result of the 192kbps MP3 transcode. It is there at the source.


edit #2: Is anyone familiar on what it would take to get the APMs converted into a common ADPCM standard (no conversion, just making it compliant with compatible players like FFMPEG)? I'd like to see what can be done with some other decoders while it's still in its native format. The track ordering is also clearly correct in the APM rip, which is a plus. It's up in the air on whether the MPX version is also stored that way outside of the game.

Again, on the other hand, the MPX version definitely has a higher frequency range. Spectrum analysis shows it cutting off somewhere around 16.5kHz... seems pretty appropriate for an early day MP2/MP3 encoder running at lower bitrates. I'm going to guess 112kbps or 128kbps CBR. Obviously that's not quite up in the 20+kHz range we'd like it to be, but a far step above the 11kHz that the APMs yield.

If it comes down to a consensus that the beta/SE/MPX version is the better sounding, and we still can't work out a decoding solution, I'd be willing to set up a retro built PC with an SPDIF output equipped card for another run at it the old fashioned way.


edit #3: I just got done digging through some storage bins in my basement and came across a CD-R labeled "Tonic Trouble OST". Looks like I had the foresight to archive a copy after all. Link added to top of post. Enjoy, in all of its dawn-of-the-millennium Monkey's Audio lossless glory!