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RMN Music Pack (free)
XP MUSIC PACK
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Snowy_Fox
550
Snowy_Fox
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CloseEnterbrain are promoting the new XP Music Pack by Kain Vinosec. Having listened and re-listened to the previews, I'm making this the first music pack they've released since VX Ace that I won't be buying. Quoting from the post I made on the official forum:
I haven't been in the RMN community long, but I've been here throughout the RMN Music Pack project, and I know the RPG Maker community at large is capable of better than this. Guided by Happy, we released a music pack with much higher mixing and mastering standards than this for free.
Before the RMN Music Pack project was announced, I had actually just started work on my own vision for an XP music pack. Rather than haphazardly converting the original MIDIs, I was recomposing my favourite tracks from scratch, and trying to improve on them to bring them up to a similar feel and sound to RPG Maker 3's gorgeous music, while retaining their brilliant melodies and the "gamey" orchestral sound they had. A tall order, but I love XP's music enough that I aimed for it.
Now, I'm not a petty fox, but I can't help but feel a little bit cheated that, in the midst of me working on this project, someone else has taken the music I love and charged twenty Dollars apiece for doing very little work to it.
I guess I'm just ranting here. But, in the wake of the RMN Music Pack, I refuse to believe that nobody else is going to listen to the XP Music Pack and notice its mixing and mastering issues.
Opinions, plox.
EDIT
Kain Vinosec did not do the conversions. From here on in, I will direct my frustrations towards Enterbrain themselves. *Shakes fist in the general direction of Japan*
In my opinion, RPG Maker XP had the best music of the series. I've heard the original tracks until they've been burned into my very brainage... and I'm sorry, but this pack just doesn't do it justice.
Kain's MIDI to audio conversions sound unpolished, unfinished even. The mixing is haphazard - all of the supporting instruments and phrases seem to be taking the centre stage, while the melodies and rhythms sink back and are lost in the mix, helped down by too much reverb.
He also seems to have misunderstood some of the original composer's clever MIDI tricks. The flute in Field 1, for example, was originally split over two tracks. The first plays the melody, panned to the left, while the second plays it again after a short delay, panned to the right and at half the volume. The result is a pleasant and subtle echo effect. Kain has missed this point totally, and left the volume the same for both tracks in his DAW. The result is two loud flutes playing the same melody and sounding like they're just competing for the listener's attention.
Since the release of VX Ace, this is the first music pack Enterbrain have promoted that I won't be buying. Without some serious additional mixing and mastering work, this is not worth $20.00.
I haven't been in the RMN community long, but I've been here throughout the RMN Music Pack project, and I know the RPG Maker community at large is capable of better than this. Guided by Happy, we released a music pack with much higher mixing and mastering standards than this for free.
Before the RMN Music Pack project was announced, I had actually just started work on my own vision for an XP music pack. Rather than haphazardly converting the original MIDIs, I was recomposing my favourite tracks from scratch, and trying to improve on them to bring them up to a similar feel and sound to RPG Maker 3's gorgeous music, while retaining their brilliant melodies and the "gamey" orchestral sound they had. A tall order, but I love XP's music enough that I aimed for it.
Now, I'm not a petty fox, but I can't help but feel a little bit cheated that, in the midst of me working on this project, someone else has taken the music I love and charged twenty Dollars apiece for doing very little work to it.
I guess I'm just ranting here. But, in the wake of the RMN Music Pack, I refuse to believe that nobody else is going to listen to the XP Music Pack and notice its mixing and mastering issues.
Opinions, plox.
EDIT
Kain Vinosec did not do the conversions. From here on in, I will direct my frustrations towards Enterbrain themselves. *Shakes fist in the general direction of Japan*
Holy shit that Town6 
I really like the XP music, I used it and my favorites from 2k+3 in one of my own projects and they appeared in one of my favorite RM games too. All the sample tracks sound worse than the original MIDI; Battle3 being the exception of sounding just as grating as the original. A shame too, I'd probably buy a remastered XP RTP just for listening to, that's what I do with the SNES RPG Maker ones I got via preorder. I'd rather listen to the originals.
I really like the XP music, I used it and my favorites from 2k+3 in one of my own projects and they appeared in one of my favorite RM games too. All the sample tracks sound worse than the original MIDI; Battle3 being the exception of sounding just as grating as the original. A shame too, I'd probably buy a remastered XP RTP just for listening to, that's what I do with the SNES RPG Maker ones I got via preorder. I'd rather listen to the originals.
Yep. The originals here sound vastly superior to this "remastered" pack. Since you can still import midis to RMVXAce (I think) my games won't suffer without it. Totally giving this a pass.
Why not approach the official forum mods and ask them if they'd be interested in a remastering of quality. I think half the issue is that they don't have many musicians willing to create tracks for them. You'd get paid for your work if it's of good quality and there's enough to release a pack.
(You could probably contact Nessy or Lunarea on the official forums about this - might need to add some examples to catch their attention though, but I imagine that quality work will definitely get them to notice you.)
(You could probably contact Nessy or Lunarea on the official forums about this - might need to add some examples to catch their attention though, but I imagine that quality work will definitely get them to notice you.)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Ratty524
Yep. The originals here sound vastly superior to this "remastered" pack.
Depends on how well your sound card renders midis. A lot of modern ones, uh, don't. I know mine is actually missing an instrument or two, so there are certain tracks of some midis that just don't even play.
That's the problem with midi music - every computer plays it differently.
Pretty sure all they did was run the originals through a midi to mp3 converter, heh. If you have the same set of instruments as the converter, it presumably sounds identical.
On my desktop computer:
- Field 1 sounds good both ways. It's more stacatto in the midi (like all midis). That's actually very fitting for this song, giving it a regal castle feel, but the remastered one sounds very nice also, more like a overworld tune. I'd use the two versions for different types of areas, but neither is bad.
- Town 6 sounds unbelievably better than the midi despite the fact that the melody is weirdly quieter than it should be, because the midi instruments used in parts of it just go so poorly with the mood of song.
- Slow 6 uses an instrument that is utterly intolerable in both versions. Destroy it with fire. The fact that this was chosen to be included in the preview is a bad sign.
- Battle 3 and Dungeon 2 are reasonably better quality than the midis in the "remastered" kind of way they were presumably going for, i.e. having natural-sounding instruments instead of screechy midi bleeps.
Snowy_Fox
550
author=Liberty
Why not approach the official forum mods and ask them if they'd be interested in a remastering of quality?
I'm actually very tempted to. I believe someone else on the official forum was looking down the same road, so I may have some competition.
author=LockeZ
Depends on how well your sound card renders midis. A lot of modern ones, uh, don't. I know mine is actually missing an instrument or two, so there are certain tracks of some midis that just don't even play.
That's the problem with midi music - every computer plays it differently.
Really? Even in-engine? I'm pretty sure they had DirectX handle the MIDI processing in the RMXP engine, with a built-in soundfont based on the default Windows one of the time, with an addition of soft reverb to make it sound less... well, shit. The results spoke for themselves, of course.
I haven't tried putting MIDI music into VX Ace, so I'm not sure if it still works the same way.
I am very tempted by the idea of poking Enterbrain about doing my own version, though. I could certainly use the motivation to get back on the music-making horse.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Snowy_Foxauthor=LockeZReally? Even in-engine? I'm pretty sure they had DirectX handle the MIDI processing in the RMXP engine, with a built-in soundfont based on the default Windows one of the time, with an addition of soft reverb to make it sound less... well, shit. The results spoke for themselves, of course.
Depends on how well your sound card renders midis. A lot of modern ones, uh, don't. I know mine is actually missing an instrument or two, so there are certain tracks of some midis that just don't even play.
That's the problem with midi music - every computer plays it differently.
I haven't tried putting MIDI music into VX Ace, so I'm not sure if it still works the same way.
Huh, interesting, the songs do sound different in RPG Maker XP than when using my sound card's synthesizer, as RPG Maker 2003 and Media Player Classic do. RMXP uses its own synthesizer, I guess.
It's far worse, though! Not better! It's missing even more tracks than my sound card is.
Of the midi songs in my RM2K3 game, only one is missing an instrument when played through my sound card. Meanwhile, that song is completely silent when played in RPG Maker XP, and of the first four other songs I tried, one was missing several instruments, causing it to just be silent for about half of the song.
RPG Maker VX Ace plays midis the same way as RPG Maker XP. Same sound, same errors.
For reference, here are the midis I have that don't play correctly:
Coronation march from FF8 - Supposed to start playing the melody starting at 00:09, as you can hear if you play it through your web browser's quicktime plugin. On my sound card in RPG Maker 2003 (or in Media Player Classic), it only plays the drums. In RPG Maker XP/VX, it is completely silent.
Some battle song - Is supposed to have percussion in the background and start getting louder at 00:15 as the church bells give way to several other instruments, as you can hear if you play it through your web browser's quicktime plugin. On my sound card in RPG Maker 2003, it plays correctly. In RPG Maker XP/VX, the percussion does not play at the beginning, and at 00:15 it goes silent for eleven seconds until the keyboard kicks in at 00:26.
Snowy_Fox
550
@LockeZ: I haven't worked with raw MIDI files in several years, and I don't have a program anymore to look at the actual MIDI information in a list, but it sounds to me like the files either don't contain voice change information, or somehow contain it incorrectly. Did you make them yourself? If so, what program do you use?
@The rest of the Internet: RPGMakerWeb staff have said they're working on fixing it. I'll sit on my paws for now and leave them to it. I've got other music projects to be finishing anyway.
@The rest of the Internet: RPGMakerWeb staff have said they're working on fixing it. I'll sit on my paws for now and leave them to it. I've got other music projects to be finishing anyway.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
No, I don't even know how to make midis. I don't know what voice change information means, and I don't know the difference between tracks and instruments, and I can barely hum a scale.
They were downloaded off the internet over a decade ago, back when MIDI music was the norm and MP3s were still exotic. They're used in my old RPG Maker 2003 game, which is why I have them lying around. I'm not surprised if they're made poorly, but the inability to play them seems to be a problem exclusive to RPG Maker XP/VX.
They were downloaded off the internet over a decade ago, back when MIDI music was the norm and MP3s were still exotic. They're used in my old RPG Maker 2003 game, which is why I have them lying around. I'm not surprised if they're made poorly, but the inability to play them seems to be a problem exclusive to RPG Maker XP/VX.
author=kentona
Someone should remake the soundtrack in Mario Paint. I'd buy that for a dollar!
THISSSSS!
Snowy_Fox
550
Funny you should say that, Kentona... I actually did an RPGXP track in LittleSoundDJ last year. ;P
I'm tempted to download a Mario Paint ROM just to do an RPGXP track in that, now. XD
And LockeZ, yeah, it sounds to me like the MIDIs' composers just left the voice changes out. It's just a piece of info that's supposed to be put at the start of each track to tell the sound card what instrument to play that track in. Without it, usually it just defaults to a piano. But I guess RPG Maker just leaves it silent.
I'm tempted to download a Mario Paint ROM just to do an RPGXP track in that, now. XD
And LockeZ, yeah, it sounds to me like the MIDIs' composers just left the voice changes out. It's just a piece of info that's supposed to be put at the start of each track to tell the sound card what instrument to play that track in. Without it, usually it just defaults to a piano. But I guess RPG Maker just leaves it silent.
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