k_bacon

I'm a huge fan of both franchises, and this one looks mighty nice. Keep up the good work!

Okay, just wanna chime in with some preliminary feedback. Because of real life stuff, i've been stuck with CD 1 so far. What I really liked is that now, the lower registers have real prominence. There is a bass presence without distracting from the other registers, giving it a feeling of depth so sorely missed in the '97 SE recordings. Finally, every instrument has its own place in the stereo field. This starts even with the Main Title where I noticed tremolo strings for the first time.

A word about the ESB score in general, with which I want to underline the importance and necessity of this project... I never was too fond of the ANH score. It is a great adventure romp, but beyond this, it never touched a nerve. Therefore, I never bothered too much about any lack of the '97 SE recording quality. ESB, however, has some mature dramatic writing, especially in the finale. Regarding this quality, I'd rank ESB up on par with ROTJ, only second to ROTS. WHile I can live with the ROTJ recording, the ESB recording is seriously crippled in its dramatic impact...but not anymore. ROTJ and ROTS both have decent album representations; if anything, ROTJ doesn't have that flat liveless sound that botched ESB. A complete ESB presentation doing justice to the great writing of the composition was long overdue. Thank you, ABC!

Okay...before I start with the actual set, some words about the book...let (it's really more of a book than just an extensive booklet). The effort behind this is just awe-inspiring. Perhaps you know my TIE Fighter preservation, and I did other non-Star Wars custom game soundtracks in the past, also designing covers for them. Creating a good standard CD cover, inlay etc is time-consuming enough, but this one...wow. I won't comment about the art because there's a separate thread for it, except that I LOVE the Executor cover.

That said, I discovered three little spelling errors in your notes about the AE:

Sheet3a - depht -> depth
Sheet4a - same as above
Sheet4a - unexistant -> nonexistent

Jup, wanna join in the thanks! Real life has calmed down a bit, so I'll let you know what I think of the set soon. I'm out of CD-Rs, so I'll listen to it with my PC speakers...which are actually better than my boom box speakers ;)

Hm, you seem to ignore my previous post. May I ask why? :)

I'm definitely interested. I know my feedback has been less than sufficient last time, and I plan to do better if you give me a chance :) I can't promise you  immediate feedback, because of real life stuff, but you'll get it asap.

This is a no-brainer. OF COURSE, we have great expectations for this one...although Ripplin has a point ;)

...with which I meant that the issue is not that important, not your project. Just to clarify ;)

ABC said:

Thanks K_Bacon, but if you're talking about my work on the "Optimum Edition", it has - almost - nothing to do with the new one.

I found a copy of the OE 2 last week, thinking I didn't keep one for myself. When I listened to the portion you're talking about I was surprised to hear how "SE" it sounded... I mean relatively to the AE of course. The OE 3 is different from the OE 2 but not really "better".

... And for the two tracks you mention, the levels fit so well that you just have to crossfade those tracks for yourself without caring about anything. It's gonna take you 2 min... Isn't it great ?

One should be able to reedit the entire score from the AE besides, without caring about any levels, or almost.

 

Hmm, sorry if I mixed up something here.

About the two tracks thing... Don't get me wrong, I wasn't complaining at all. And I know enough about audio editing to do a crossfade, but why should I? It's your vision of the score, and I see no reason tempering with it. It's just not that important.

Great to hear about the project being complete! I hope I get to listen to it sometime in the future :)

Some belated feedback, or more of a comment. The sound is stellar, of course, but the portion that stuck to me were the tracks 5 to 10 on the second disk. It is among my favourite material in the whole saga, and finally, the improved sound conveys all the menace and the heavily dramatic stuff as it should be.

The only thing, more of a personal gusto, would have been a merging of "Escape from Bespin" and "Hyperspace" because of the build-up, but editing-wise, I can fully understand your point.

As I said, exceptional work.

Hm, can it be that you disabled PMs? Anyways, here we go:

Hi! Of course, a sample would be great :)

I'm all out of CD-Rs to burn Disc 2 of v3, so I cant give feedback on that one just yet. Disc 1 however is on heavy rotation right now ;)

BTW Did you taken a listen to my TIE Fighter soundtrack preservation already? I would love to know what you think of it. Admittedly, it was a long shot to send it to you unasked because not everyone's into MIDI-age game music. I just wanted to give something back to you, but if it's not your cup of tea, I fully understand :)

Ah, one thing that bugged me a little that I forgot. I found the brass in "Mynock Cave" to be somewhat lacking in power and prominence. This might stem from being used to the old SE version where the brass was very prominent, but still...

Okay, I've listened several times to the first disk of both v2 and v3. Both sets are outstanding, just to get this out of the way ;) However, you're right, the 2010 took some time to get used to.  I sometimes had the impression that some instruments had a clearer presence in the v2 set, to name an early example the snare in the first track around 5:10.  However, at this point,  I'd still put my money for the 2010 set as it has the "rounder" sound and a more competent editing altogether.

To be continued....

Ehm, how embarassing...first post edited. Everyone who wants a copy, send a nice PM :)

Well, at first I marvelled at the astonishing amount of fan-created material around here…then I remembered that I actually have some stuff to contribute myself.

My original internet nick is “Top Dollar”, but since somehow my account here got messed up, I created a new account for this forum. Under the name “Top Dollar”, I contributed some stuff to the “gamerip” scene. Gamerips are fan-created soundtracks of video or computer game soundtracks. These come into play when there are only incomplete official soundtracks available for the respective game or worse, none at all. Gamerippers use the original raw music data found on the game disk or do an analogue line-in recording while playing the game.

Unfortunately, nowadays, gamerips are, most of the time, merely filedumps of the music data. This results in nearly unlistenable 5 hour-long soundtracks with 453 music files where most of them are around 10 seconds long. That most games today have a dynamic sound engine (=music that adapts to events in-game), which rely on dozens of snippet files, only makes things worse. Since I think that a good gamerip should be laid out like a “real” official soundtrack, I will use the term “selfmade album” from now on.

Among my favourite projects was a preservation of the “TIE Fighter” soundtrack. This selfmade album contains mp3s of all the music featured in TIE Fighter (this also includes music from the expansion and the CD-ROM Collector’s Edition). The dynamic portions have been compiled into suites to provide a good listening experience. All files are named and tagged, and the .rar also comes with an info file, containing enhanced information about the album, and a checksum file. So without further ado: Enjoy!

SEND A NICE PM FOR THE SET.

SAMPLE: http://rapidshare.com/files/313888979/02_-_Main_Titles___Intro.mp3

Source:         MIDI files from TIE Fighter  floppy version (1994), TIE
                            Fighter CD-ROM Collector’s Edition (1995) and TIE Fighter
                            Collector’s Series (1999, reference only)
        MP3 quality:   VBR, using LAME 3.89
        Tagged with:  ID3 - TagIT 3
        Tools used:    Adobe Audition 1.5, Dark Forces Wedit 3.20, DOSBox 0.71,
                            TIEEDIT v1.28 beta, HxD 1.6.1.0, RenameMaster 2.4.5

– TRACK LIST –

1. Logo and Main Titles:

01 - Logo (unused) (0:07)
02 - Main Titles & Intro (3:59)

2. Pre-Flight Menus:

03 - Pilot Registration (0:52)
04 - Main Menu (1:22)
05 - Training Pod (1:37)
06 - Combat Chamber (1:28)
07 - Combat Chamber Briefing Map (0:57)
08 - Film Room (0:10)
09 - Tech Room (0:54)
10 - Battle Select (1:38)
11 - Briefing Map (1:02)
12 - Secret Order Briefing (1:49)
13 - Fighter Launch (0:28)

3. In-game:

14 - Arrival (1:19)
15 - Approach Phase 1 (1:23)
16 - Approach Phase 2 (1:18)
17 - Approach Phase 3 (1:16)
18 - Approach Phase 4 (1:21)
19 - Intro Suite (6:58)
20 - Wait Suite (2:56)
21 - Confrontation Suite (6:24)
22 - Challenge Suite (10:47)
23 - Dogfight Suite (7:32)
24 - Climatic Suite (1:48)
25 - Rebel Suite (12:12)
28 - Failure Suite (3:34)
26 - Panic Suite (3:50)
27 - Success Suite (4:14)
29 - Imperial Capital Ship Arrives (0:08)
30 - Imperial Capital Ship Lost (0:08)
31 - Imperial Fighter Squadron Arrives (0:05)
32 - Imperial Fighter Lost (0:06)
33 - Rebel Capital Ship Arrives (0:08)
34 - Rebel Fighter Squadron Arrives (0:06)
35 - Neutral Capital Ship Arrives (0:07)
36 - Neutral Fighter Squadron Arrives (0:05)
37 - Enemy Capital Ship Destroyed (0:07)
38 - Objective Passed 1 (0:08)
39 - Objective Failed 1 (0:08)
40 - Objective Passed 2 (0:09)
41 - Objective Failed 2 (0:11)
42 - Objective Passed 3 (0:06)
43 - Win 1 (0:06)
44 - Win 2 (0:04)
45 - Win 3 (0:04)
46 - Win 4 (0:04)

4. After-Fight Menus and Events:

47 - Aftermath (1:12)
48 - Jump To Hyperspace (0:18)
49 - Eject (0:09)
50 - Medical Shuttle Returns (0:18)
51 - Captured By Rebel Forces (0:34)
52 - Funeral (0:18)
53 - Medal Award (0:48)
54 - Right Hand Of The Emperor (1:05)
55 - Debriefing Success (0:47)
56 - Debriefing Failure (1:08)
57 - Secret Order Debriefing Success (1:29)
58 - Secret Order Debriefing Failure (1:55)

5. Cutscenes:

59 - Campaign Cutscene 1 (0:50)
60 - Campaign Cutscene 2 (0:39)
61 - Campaign Cutscene 3 (0:38)
62 - Campaign Cutscene 4 (0:41)
63 - Campaign Cutscene 5 (0:22)
64 - Campaign Cutscene 6 (0:19)
65 - Campaign Cutscene 7 (0:32)
66 - Campaign Cutscene 8 (1:26)
67 - Campaign Cutscene 9 (1:14)
68 - Campaign Cutscene 10 (1:08)
69 - Campaign Cutscene 11 (1:43)
70 - Campaign Cutscene 12 (1:04)
71 - Campaign Cutscene 13 (1:09)

6. End Credits:

72 - End Credits (1:29)

---

Total Time: 1:48:30

Regarding the lack of appreciation, I fully symphathize. I "work" in a different department, namely the preservation of soundtracks for the Nintendo Gamecube and other video game systems. This also covers the occasional Star Wars game soundtrack, and it's a sad fact that only a fraction of the people interested in your project actually give feedback.

Anyways, enough of the ramblings. Just wanted to let you know that you've got another fan out there. Only recently, I lamented the lack of "depth" in the ESB recording when listening to my '97 set I bought back in the days. I eagerly await your release as the increase in quality in the samples is marvelous. Keep it up!