Re-mastering of Music Tracks in-game (which I'd like to contribute)

Calskyhalk

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About Audio Mastering:
Audio mastering is the final step in the music production process. It’s the post-production process of optimizing music and preparing it for music distribution.

The mastering stage involves signal processing with equalization, compression, saturation, stereo enhancement, limiting, audio restoration, and other final touches. Mastering engineers must also adhere to specific loudness standards when creating digital masters.

The purpose of mastering is to make your music sound balanced, cohesive, uniform, professional, and ready for commercial release.
Mastering also ensures playback optimization across various speaker systems and media formats.
took the above definition from here if anyone would like to know more.


or to simply put it, Mastering makes music sound really good!
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My Suggestion
I haven't noticed any thread related to the present in-game Music tracks requiring a re-mastering but I would like to contribute to that part!
for example, here Google Drive I've re-mastered and uploaded Walk by Artist Shane with the re-master one.
(the original music from game files and a re-mastered one which I did)


pwo walk soundtrack remastered comparsion.PNG

I would really like to know what you folks think about this suggestion.

I haven't reached out to any staff, dev, admin, or the artist themself regarding this as it's just a suggestion of mine but
If this thread gets positive feedback and the attention of devs consider this suggestion with the permission of respected artists,

I'd like to contribute towards the tracks which are in need of re-mastering and if not, all of them!
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thunderclap

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You'd need the original .wav files to properly remaster PWO's music, if they're available, because editing a mp3 (and re-saving it as mp3) will degrade the quality a lot, making the whole effort pointless. To remaster without original audio (without degrading the quality), we'd need to replace the 141mb of compact .mp3 files with 1.5gb of uncompressed .wav files. The large file size wouldn't be worth it if the remasters are sourced from crappy 128kbit mp3s to start with. If the original audio IS available we should definitely use a better mp3 encoding algorithm though.

From your pics it initially looked like the flat tops (on remastered side) represents clipped peaks (lost audio data). I downloaded myself and this is not the case, so that's good - there's no lost data that I can see. But I'm not sure your version is better either. This is chill ambient background music so dynamic range is a good thing, and quiet parts aren't bad, in my opinion. It doesn't need to be able to slot into a radio hits playlist and be the same volume as "Boom Boom Pow".

Anyway I applaud the initiative and the effort. Don't mean to sound discouraging.
 
Last edited:

Calskyhalk

New Member
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
20
Points
3
You'd need the original .wav files to properly remaster PWO's music, if they're available, because editing a mp3 (and re-saving it as mp3) will degrade the quality a lot, making the whole effort pointless. To remaster without original audio (without degrading the quality), we'd need to replace the 141mb of compact .mp3 files with 1.5gb of uncompressed .wav files. The large file size wouldn't be worth it if the remasters are sourced from crappy 128kbit mp3s to start with. If the original audio IS available we should definitely use a better mp3 encoding algorithm though.

From your pics it initially looked like the flat tops (on remastered side) represents clipped peaks (lost audio data). I downloaded myself and this is not the case, so that's good - there's no lost data that I can see. But I'm not sure your version is better either. This is chill ambient background music so dynamic range is a good thing, and quiet parts aren't bad, in my opinion. It doesn't need to be able to slot into a radio hits playlist and be the same volume as "Boom Boom Pow".

Anyway I applaud the initiative and the effort. Don't mean to sound discouraging.
Indeed! and I agree with most of what you say but the "Boom Boom Pow" one.
Thanks for your thoughtful response!
 
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