Frederik Olsen and I were just, er, talking about the SQ soundtracks ... yeah, that's right, just talking ... and, well, that prompted me to go search for the SQ soundtracks to put on my girlish pink iPod.

 

So of course I went to sierramusiccentral.com and went after Spikey's MT-32 mp3's. And noticed they were deeplinking to old pages on SQN and Jess' site!

 

If you're up for it, Spikey, we should definitely think about adding a "soundtracks" section to the new SQN.

Yow. On the subject, I just went through the soundtracks for SQ1VGA, SQ3 and SQ4 and updated their ID3 tags with appropriate track numbers. I forgot, we didn't believe in ID3 tags in the 90's. ;)

 

I'm thinking, if Spikey allows, I could do new cover art for the MT-32 soundtracks and really beautify their ID3 tags. That way, they play in the right order on iPods and other MP3 players. I'll include any copyright information he wants.

 

Hell, we could even create a BandCamp or SoundCloud profile for SQN and embed the streaming player on the soundtracks page. Pros to the BandCamp profile: People would be able to download the entire soundtrack as one single zip-file (downloading each track individually: another thing that took for-bloody-ever ;) ).

Try copy / pasting the deeplinks in your browser. Before committing, do the following:

 

Let's say the link is www.spacequest.net/sq5/soundtrack/mp3.mp3, change it into www.spacequest.net/archives/sq5/soundtrack/mp3.mp3

The mp3's work with the "archive" in the URL.

 

Before committing, do the following:

I told you, stop hitting on me!

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this the other day, after talking with Frans I think.

 

So yeah, my plan with the new SQ soundtracks I'm announcing ties into this; I'm working on SQ4 and SQ6, SQ5 is done, and then I guess I'll need to tackle SQ1VGA and SQ3. I was wondering about whether SQ2VGA belongs in there as well, or whether it's fan content..

 

But definitely I want the new SQ4 and SQ6, plus, it looks cool when we have new content, rather than reviving my old MP3's from almost 10 years ago..

 

I'm also planning on adding ZIPped soundtracks to my webpage, as well as keeping the indivdual track format I have now, for now anyway.

 

On cover art, I have some art I'm planning on using, I have SQ5 and 6 covered, but for the first 4 games, or other than 2 anyway, I'd love some art.

One thought I wafted around was that we create a "SpaceQuest.net" profile with BandCamp.com and upload your special soundtracks as albums. That way, not only will people be able to stream individual tracks off the site -- AND we can embed the player in the SQN layout -- but they will also be able to download individual tracks or the whole album as a collated ZIP-file.

Bandcamp won't allow you to have music on there for free. I'd suggest something more like SoundCloud, but it doesn't support lossless, I don't think.

Not so, Brandon! BandCamp will totally let you host your music for free! I'm using it for several projects, including http://alchemy.bandcamp.com, http://grafikfejl.bandcamp.com and http://kapitalenklash.bandcamp.com.

 

And I have successfully embedded their player on a number of my websites, including my band site http://www.humanalien.dk and my game site http://www.alifeworthlosing.com.

 

All without ever letting BandCamp get a single whiff of my credit card information. :)

How big are lossless files generally, anyway? We could continue to host the soundtracks on SQN and a PHP script could quickly ZIP up the selected files and let people download not just complete soundtracks but a variety of selections.

There has to be some thread merging going on here, I think. Ref: the BandCamp discussion in another thread.

(Swapped some posts around a bit, carry on.)

 

I'd think keeping SQN as the central repository of all the content would continue to be preferred - that was sort of the idea of merging the SQN/VBC/Omnipedia and something Frans indicated again earlier with looking at bringing in TMD content.

 

I'm not opposed to off-site linking but I've never used or heard of BandCamp, so I'm kind of wary.

I'm all for hosting the files locally, too. That will also circumvent any tedious "copyright issues" that might be leveled at us, however ridiculous that notion may be.

 

That said, we should really offer two options for the soundtrack section:

• The possibility to stream individual music pieces directly off the site.
• The possibility to download entire game soundtracks in one zipped file.

And the mp3 files should, ideally, be ID3-tagged up the wazoo. Again, I offer my services for creating cover art for compilations. Also, as you probably know, ID3 tags support individual track art -- could be fun. ;)

FLAC files are roughly have the size of an uncompressed regular WAV file. Unlike MP3, OGG Vorbis, and other formats, FLAC doesn't compress the audio data itself, but rather sort of "ZIPs" a WAV into a smaller format so no data is lost at all, hence the term "lossless".

 

Hosting locally would be awesome, but having MP3 links for each song for direct download and/or streaming, a complete ZIP of each MP3 soundtrack, plus individual FLAC links AND a complete ZIP of each FLAC soundtrack would take up A LOT of space. And SQN's server space is not infinite, neither is the bandwidth.

Hosting locally would be awesome, but having MP3 links for each song for direct download and/or streaming, a complete ZIP of each MP3 soundtrack, plus individual FLAC links AND a complete ZIP of each FLAC soundtrack would take up A LOT of space. And SQN's server space is not infinite, neither is the bandwidth.

 

The ZIP files could be created on-demand by the site. And yes, that's part of the trade-off between having everything here and not.

I love the idea of on-demand zipping.

 

As for hosting both compressed and lossless files, there is the possibility of using mp3HD. Not the best of formats (officially, it doesn't seem to be compatible with OS X or Linux) and the size is still bigger than an mp3, but at least the majority of the site's users would be able to get the best of both worlds in one single file, so it'd still save some space. Could be a viable solution for now.

 

I'd still prefer FLAC, but hosting the soundtracks via Bandcamp could quickly turn into a legal mess, unless you're able to get permission from Seibert, Siebenberg, Clarke, Stevens, Grandstaff and Kehler. Local hosting has seemingly never posed any problems for SMC and Quest Studios, but uploading these to the servers of a third party would probably be a different issue altogether. The only soundtracks you'd be able to share right now would the ones Ken did. I realise he hasn't explicitly given his permission, but he seems more than pleased with Alistair's current efforts, so I doubt he would have any problems with it.

There is no best of both worlds. Lossy is lossy. Lossless is lossless. :P

Well, there is quality, and there is convinience. FLAC may be the best lossless codec available, but it doesn't really offer easy playback in its compressed state, in my opinion. mp3HD would offer both.

Without wanting to sound too much like a Philistine...

 

Most people aren't going to care about a bit of audio quality loss. Most people listen to music through playback equipment which isn't the best in the first place. The people who are going to want/need the lossless quality stuff are going to be proper music fans and musicians. In that case, the full fat files could be e-mailed to people on request or held on some sort of external server given the lower demand.

 

I think MP3 at even what a pro might consider a low bitrate would be perfectly serviceable for 90% of the people who might want to download these files. Such as me, for example.

 

Commence flaming.

MP3 is fine, if someone wants to host lossless FLAC they can. The general consensus in the serious audio community (HydrogenAudio, a benchmark for such things) is that most of the time, under normal listening conditions, most people can't hear any difference between a lossless file and a MP3 file encoded at a rate of 192-224 kbps+. I encode SMC's MP3's currently at the highest VBR setting possible, which is an ABR of 224-256 kbps. I could encode at 320 kbps, but according to the guys who know, it's a waste of file space for an unnoticeable difference in quality.

 

I used to drive the Ogg Vorbis bandwagon, as people will remember, but MP3 has gotten so much better since the improvements in LAME circa 2006-onwards. It's also a ton more user friendly.

 

Bottom line- if I'm the one doing the soundtrack, high quality MP3 will be available, if someone wants to host FLAC, I can definitely encode in it, but I don't have the bandwidth/space to host it.

 

I guess the other point is that it's video game music; and although I'm passionate about quality in the recording process and how it sounds, etc., MP3 vs FLAC should not change your listening experience. If it does, you're "doing it wrong".

 

Finally, no way would I use mp3HD. It's bigger than a FLAC file (probably because it has a lossy and lossless file in one)! It sounds very cool in theory but very impractical and space intensive in the real world. It also looks like a dead format that never got adopted.

True, 90% of the people out there won't care. But many of the people who listen and collect game soundtracks do. More than you'd think, and they often request FLAC files specifically.

 

I don't mind what we'd end up using. It would be nice to have FLAC as an option, but we need the space and the bandwidth.

 

I'm a self-admitted audiophile. To this day I will not pay one cent for an MP3 or similar lossy music file. It's asinine. To me, it's like paying to listen to the radio. Ridiculous. With the advancements we've made in technology we should be upping the ante and improving quality, not sacrificing it. It's pretty sad when we've had higher quality music media in the 80s than we do now in the 10s. But that's me. :) I don't really have a point to add with this to the discussion, just off-topic I guess.

I used to drive the Ogg Vorbis bandwagon, as people will remember, but MP3 has gotten so much better since the improvements in LAME circa 2006-onwards. It's also a ton more user friendly.

It's too bad browsers like Firefox don't support MP3 natively - for those people who just want to listen in the browser this poses a challenge to support.

At the end of the day, you guys know the quote. You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. You can't make a soundtrack section that will please every SQ fan or music fan out there.

 

My priority is to make music that people will hopefully enjoy, and put in a commonly used media format that is still (in my opinion) high quality. SMC has always had the option where if you want to pay for a temporary lossless download, or a physical CD of lossless tracks, I'll do that for you. But I've rarely done it for people.

 

I certainly wouldn't wory about people who want to play it in their browser- that's a rare commodity I would have thought. If downloading a MP3 file is too much trouble, in 2012 where internet is fast- that's surely their issue.

 

Anyway, back to SQ4, where I'm now 12% complete.

Firefox does have native support for OGG, as do most modern browsers. The lack of support for MP3 is probably because MP3 is proprietary. Of course people would complain if the files were OGG. A flash MP3 player is probably currently the best solution for embedded audio, in spite of the issues with flash.

Hey - this is good stuff, everyone. Let's not get in a huff about file formats. Let's just look at our options and what we can do at the moment.

 

Okay, I get the sense that hosting the soundtracks off-site with SoundCloud or BandCamp is a no go. So let's forget that for the moment.

 

Having the soundtracks as high-quality MP3's (and collected ZIP-files for easy download) seems the best way to go for the Soundtrack section, as far as I can see.

 

I would really like to be able to stream the tunes off the site directly, though, in the browser. To that end, I suggest the PremiumBeat player -- it's Flash, I know, but it's free and easy to use. I've used it myself on a number of projects, including this one: http://www.theworthybeats.dk/?page_id=6 (That was a paid job. ;) )

 

As for high-quality FLAC/lossless files, maybe they can come at a later date? Maybe someone will step up and offer to host the lossless files. But the way things are now, I think we can move forward at least getting the MP3's up.

Hmm, the PremiumBeat player says its no longer available. I'm using the JWPlayer currently which seems to work pretty well.

Any player will do, I guess. :) If you want, I stil have the files for the PremiumBeat player.