Super Mario History 1985-2010 - remastered? by CapComMDb at 8:32 PM EDT on October 12, 2011
Was doing comparison of the Mario & Luigi soundtrack with vio2sf and plugged in New SMB as a counter-reference. The Mario & Luigi soundtrack is pretty close to vio2sf with no audio filter. However, the Super Mario History 1985-2010 album track for New SMB sounds completely different. Is this from the Wii version? Doesn't sound like the DS hardware.
Anyway, I'm doing official soundtrack CD comparisons as I wanted to ensure that the audio I was using was as accurate to what was coming out of Nintendo as possible given current sound emulation.
It's the DS version, but remastered, or to be more exact, as starerik, rather than the DS version being remastered, think of it as this being the original version, and the "DS" version (i.e. the version on the DS itself) as just being a compressed lower quality downsampling. In otherwords, imagine this is the original audio, and the DS is a compress 128 kbps MP3. As I said, technically this is the original audio, and the DS is compressed, rather than the DS being original and this being remastered.
They should have released the entire soundtrack like this :(
Also, vio2sf is no where near accurate. There's some crackly sounds. I reckon when the guy who's developing it decides to update it to a later version that's not from January 2010 *sigh*, it might get a bit of improvement. Based on the latest version number being 0.23, you can tell it's far from complete. When will we see the full complete version i.e. version 1.0? I dunno, probably after the 3DS's successor has had it's successor announced.
·Vio2sf does the job quite well. To say "its no way near accurate" then, with all due respect, you're nuts. Take the Mario & Luigi RPG example from the original post, vio2sf sounds 98% accurate to the CD Soundtrack. How is vio2sf "nowhere near accurate"?
Isn't vio2sf the same as DeSmuME? I can't imagine the sound core has changed much since the last vio2sf update. This is sample playback. It's not like FM synthesis, where one change to an operator can drastically affect all instruments.
Neo_chip, is there really an audible 2% difference, or are you assuming there is?
Thanks for the info, starerik. I thought it might have been from the original source files, so the 128kbps MP3 is a valid comparison. Pretty sure this is the same thing they did with the Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin soundtrack where they have the 'Original Version' and 'DS Version' in the album.
I am not much an audiophile, but I was able to tell some differences between vio2sf's 'none' filter and the CD, but the differences are not huge. I'd say at that point, the comparison is probably closer to 90% than 98%. I don't think a casual listener could tell the difference. The waveform is also quite different when you compare the M&L CD with the vio2sf output, but we don't know how the recording was done.
I have also done line-in recording comparisons, and it's pretty much the same story. But I don't like the GBA or DS sound systems anyway, mainly because they never sound quite right.
I guess I will put the DS rips a little farther back in case there is another update between now and when I get to them.
Put it this way, neo chip, ever listened to the Underwater theme of New Super Mario Bros? It has a lot of annoying crackly popping sound, and the castle stages from the same game have an annoying pop at the end of EVERY one of the note of the first instrument that plays.