Banjo-Tooie USF issues by MusicMantis at 7:42 AM EDT on October 21, 2021
Hi,
I was listening to the Banjo-Tooie USF set and noticed that many of the tracks cut off the beginning. The best example is "hag 1" as the intro begins with triplets and the entire first note of the first triplet is missing.
If you convert this to WAV and examine it in an editor you'll see that the very last tiny portion of this note is present, but for whatever reason the first 750ms are muted. After this, the song plays like normal with no other issues.
This seems to be present in every track as far as I can tell. It's most noticable in the boss themes as they usually start much louder and more forceful than other tracks, but it's present in others too.
Is there a way to alter the plugin or the miniusf to unmute this small section of the USF files? I really love the Banjo-Tooie soundtrack and with no (complete) soundtrack commercially available this is the only way to listen to it outside of game recordings.
Unfortunately this has already been mentioned plenty of times here before and the same problems plague the DK64 USFs as well. So far it has yet to be re-ripped as the process for doing so is a very lengthy and proprietary one which only Josh W seems to know how to do.
Thank you for getting back to me so fast. I do remember years ago that DK64 had the same issues (along with a sample rate / speed issue, I think) but when I downloaded that set recently I didn't hear any problems and assumed it was maturity of the player and not related to the USF set itself.
If one person has been doing all of this hard work themselves then I both completely understand and oh boy do I owe them some thanks. I guess I'll just have to wait and hope, but in the meantime - on the chance Josh W ever stumbles into this thread - thank you so much for all your hard work.
It seems like there may have been a fixed set at some point as discussed here.
Perhaps someone has a copy?
edited 9:31 PM EDT October 24, 2021
by MusicMantis at 10:53 PM EDT on October 24, 2021
The Mediafire link on the first post of that page is still active!
Interestingly, the set is different. The cut off is still present though not nearly as bad (and in some cases, not noticeable or present at all). Instead there's a slight fade in from that cut point, though it's not nearly as jarring to hear. If they're both Josh W's rip, I wonder what the technical difference is.
Yes that link is still active but going from the 8th post on that page, that was an incomplete copy.
If someone is looking to listen to B-T, The Ultimate Koopa did a FLAC conversion a few years ago, which I believe was from the full set. I might've missed it, but I haven't noticed the cut-off issue.
Thank you for uploading that! It's really interesting that there are so many different versions of the same rip.
It looks to me like that set sits somewhere between the two USF sets explored earlier. The cut off is the same as the second USF set (not present or when it is, not nearly as bad) but the first moment of each track fades is a little stronger than with that same set.
You can observe this during the start of the Hag 1 track, as the fade visibly alters the volume of the first note. It's a really minor problem, but it is set-wide.
Yeah. IIRC there was emulator issues in the older players preventing the tracks from playing from the start. And there was other code injected to correctly mask out channels and to set the speed.
by MusicMantis at 11:46 AM EST on December 5, 2021
I woke up today to this and still can't believe it. It completely caught me off guard and I cannot shake how happy I am right now. Thank you so much for all your work Josh W!
@Josh W: Glad to see an update after all these years, but I do notice that one track still has issues. Beginning at the 1:16 mark, the main Mayahem Temple theme loses some notes as opposed to what you hear during gameplay.