Zophar Music Section MP3s now?

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dashrem

New member
This is new, like as in today or late last night - that or my browser just wasn't getting it.

I've been converting the game music (SPCs, PSFs etc) to MP3s for awhile now, so I surprised when I went to get Diddy's Kong Quest SPCs and saw MP3s there.

If anyone from Zophar see's this, please don't remove the original game files and only use MP3s. They are kinda low quality and would be hard to work with. I don't just do a pure conversion. I tune them up, change EQ, and add some mild reverb. Here is Smiles and Tears from EarthBound for example:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/8a99he1nh5coav7/179_Smiles_and_Tears.mp3
 
Well, the SPCs are still there and will always be available. No worries. Just click "Download original music files".

The point of the new section is to give people more options, either get the original format files, or listen to the music in the browser, or download MP3s so you don't have to rip them yourself.

It also gives me more options for the future. For example, I'll be able to add features such as playlists and adding individual files to playlists, and sharing your playlists with others.

If you want to publish better quality MP3s on here I can replace the ones on the site with yours, that way you can share your edits with the wider world. Just email a link to the files to webmaster@zophar.net or message me here and I'll put them up.
 
You mean you get rid of the sound effects? That is ok. I would think most people are interested in songs.

Or do you mean you only keep a few songs you like?
 
I mean I get rid of sound effects or really short musical blips. Generally anything under 30 seconds, though there are exceptions if it's part of a bigger sequence.
 
That's OK then, I would say most people are interested in the actual songs, and if they want the sound effects, they can always get them from the original SPC, NSF, etc file.
 
Not yet! I want to make a popular downloads list sometime later on. I just got this section out and its been months of work already :) It really doesn't matter what you start with :)
 
Hey cool, just what I was looking for!

So... I have tons of SNES, NES, Gameboy, and other game music files. A lot of them I converted ages ago with Winamp to play on my mp3 player. Lately I've been thinking of how many I can still only listen to on my computer, and I fired up Winamp again. Well, suffice to say I currently have 9GB of unedited wav files on my hard drive, and that barely even got partway through my list. I'd be editing these things for the rest of my life!

So, where do the mp3 files you have now originate from? Are you collecting them, or converting them yourself? I had some other site I used a long time ago for good mp3s of some games, but have long since lost it.

My download finger is going to get tired ;)

At some point I will check what I have for mp3s I've converted myself, and if they are better quality than what you have for those particular games I will gladly share them somehow. Any I've done myself were (most likely?) exported with Winamp into 44kHz wav files then converted to mp3s using LAME if I remember correctly (looks like most of my SNES are 128 kbps, and some random newer games are 320 kbps VBR). It's definitely been a while, but I also tagged them with albums, titles, publishers, and years. If I didn't just download them to begin with... :p
 
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The MP3s on the site are converted much the same way you do it, except using foobar2000. I try to do 320kbps, I think maybe only the NSF section is at a lower bitrate, but it doesn't matter much in that case.

If you have MP3s that sound better, I'd definitely replace the ones on the site. The SNES section seems to have the biggest issues, with the pitch being a bit too high.

The only problem is determining WHAT is better, because somebody did send me some replacement MP3s, and then other people complain about those MP3s not being better after all, yada yada yada.
 
Interesting. I'll download a few that I already have and compare and see what's what.

The plugin I have for SNES is SNESAmp (I think it uses sneapu.dll), and I *think* the pitch is correct, but again, will have to check. I really thought I did mine in 320 VBR, but it must have been eons ago where I didn't think about it, so sadly most are 128 fixed rate. Also for SNES games, it does make a difference if you use NTSC vs PAL for the conversions. I have both version for Space Megaforce. NTSC is higher pitched/slightly faster, which I like, but PAL is a little slower, lower pitched, which is better if I happen to put it on while taking a nap or something. (Yes, I do often throw on some game music if I can't fall asleep :p Tenchu is a good one for that.)
 
Oh, wow, yeah, that's totally off. I could tell just by listening to the very beginning of the first track.

Sounds like maybe it's not doing the frequency conversion correctly. The SNES audio runs at 38kHz (?) I think, so it sounds like instead of re-sampling the original audio to change to 44kHz, it only changed the playback rate to 44kHz, which would give you that high pitch. There may be an option in there that you can set to make it output correctly.

If you have somewhere I could upload at least my SNES mp3s, I'll gladly do it and then you can decide what to keep/replace.
 
Anywho, I just dug out my old software. Apparently I must have used Cool Edit to convert my wav files in to mp3s. So... I think maybe I'll redo all my SNES mp3s to be higher quality. Seems SNESAmp / WinAmp plays them at a default 48kHz, which should make for some nice mp3s if done correctly.

Some of my SNES sets are all timed correctly, some sets will use a default value for track length (typically 2:30 plus a 10 second fade)

Away I goooo! I'll let you know if I make progress or get bored and give up ;)
 
Here's what I decided to do:

I downloaded timed copies of all my SNES music from snesmusic.org (finally found where I used to download a lot of it).

I re-exported all files in to 48KHz, 16 bit .wav files.

I am currently in the process of converting them all to 320 Kbps 48KHz stereo mp3s.

When that's done, I have a program to tag and rename files, and will do those things.

When all is said and done I will have 54 games worth of freshly improved SNES mp3s for your (an my!) listening pleasure.
 
I just converted that album again using foobar2000, and yes, it does sound different. Pitch is lower, volume is lower. I will go ahead and change it.
 
Was it a setting?

I just now realized they made an mp3 output plugin for winamp. THAT would have saved me some time... whoops!
 
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