None of the games I own use it. I think Steel Battallion should've, damnit! It even makes sense, sim-wise, that I'd play my tunes from my stereo in the cockpit.
I'd make every game sound like JSRF.
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None of the games I own use it. I think Steel Battallion should've, damnit! It even makes sense, sim-wise, that I'd play my tunes from my stereo in the cockpit.
I'd make every game sound like JSRF.
I don't care how long these so called musicians labored to make the music for a game, if it sucks, i'm turning it off. I can't stand to play Sega GT without my custom soundtrack.
I knew I wasn't the only one..Quote:
Originally posted by Pepsiman
thanks to the custom soundtracks I can pretend that any racing game I play is Initial D. It's not that I think Initial D is the greatest racing of all time; I just love the music for it.
/me whistles 'Killing My Love'
It's the only thing I can do now that I'm 500 miles from a Version 2 machine and I can't stand Version 1 anymore. So I play NFS:HP2 while listening to I:D Selections.
I wouldn't care so much about Custom soundtracks (I don't have an Xbox though) Cause one way it could be done just as well is by the option to turn down the BGM and leave SFX up. But most games now days lack that option, with a few execptions. It's not the same feel without the sound effects in there...
Javon, good to see someone else despise the Sega GT soundtrack. I seriously doubt any musician spend longer than 20 minutes coming up with the endless generic techno in that game.
Actually I changed the music in MvC2 for Dreamcast, and replaced it with some Heavy Metal. Got some chocobo music for the credits, and the Final Fantasy Victory music when you win a battle.
Probably without even knowing what you just hit upon, you struck one of my nerves and now I have been sent into rant mode. Some of you may or may not know this, but my primary hobby is not video games. I am a technical writer durring my 9-5 job, a music recorder/producer/mixer/soundman every waking hour after that (http://www.omnisoul.com [/shameless plug] ), and then play video games when I can (which thankfully is alot :) ). Soooooo.... music and music production is my thing, and this loud album buisness is a BIG problem. It's like this: One man records all of the bands tracks. The record company usually doesn't have his ball in a vice. Another man (sometimes the same man) takes all of those tracks after they have been recorded and mixes them down to sterio or surround sound songs that can be played on home equipment. The record company usually doesn't have that man's balls in a vice either. The third man (and this man is always someone different than the recording and mixing guys) takes the finished mix and finalizes it to be sold. This is called mastering, and unfortunatly the mastering guy has both of his balls firmly stuck in the record company's vice. The goal of mastering is to get the music to sound as good as it possibly can. The mastering engineer has a chance to "double check" the ears of the mixing engineer (that's why he's always a differnt guy). EQ's are balanced to a standard so the consumer doesn't have to go reaching for the bass and trebble settings every time he switches an album, and songs are generally balanced so they flow from one song to another and sound coherent together as an album. However, record companies have recently gotten into a battle with each other. The record execs decided that noone will have a louder album than their lable. The perception is somehow that if your album is quieter than the next guy's you loose. Since they have the mastering guy by the balls, they make him crank the album volume. This KILLS the sound quality.Quote:
Originally posted by GunValkyrie4Life
Another thing that bugs me is since a lot of music is recorded at different levels, I can't really mix songs from different eras. For instance (shows age) Old Sammy Hagar is very quiet when played alongside NEW Sammy which is freakin' blasting, the levels are too radically different to mesh, this is something the Xbox brochure never mentions, but it is annoying.
Digital music can only go up to a fixed number as far as loudness is concerned. We'll call that number 10 for simplicity's sake. Back before all this silliness about loudness started, most of the music hung out around 7, and the really loud stuff topped out at 9. You didn't want to risk hitting 10 since anything even slightly over 10 causes horrible, horrible distortion. Now, everything is at 10 all the time, often going over and distorting. Music has no punch anymore since it's all a wall of noise. Audible digital clipping distortion runs rampant in multi-million dollar albums, and the music is generally fatiguing to listen to, all because of mis-informed record execs who don't know the consequences of their actions and don't understand (or care to understand) a thing about sound quality. They just want to be the loudest.
I could seriously type pages and pages and show charts, graphs, and all that cool stuff, but I'll just throw up links instead.
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/article...256C2E005DAF1C
Here you go. Despite the first paragraph, it is not a review of a Rush album. It is only using that album as an example of this problem. I urge each and every one of you who cares anything at all about music to read that. Truly scary and saddening stuff. Rip Rowan covers it better than I ever could.
And custom sound tracks rock the Xbox.
I love the idea of custom soundtracks for games but I've yet to find one game that has it that I would actually want to buy.
Damn, thanks for all the knowledge, Chibi. I'll check that link out later.
Quote:
Originally posted by Six
Unless the music included in the game is an obvious attempt at a failing industry to capitalize on another market *cough* licensed music *cough* the soundtrack provided with a game was the work of a musician(s).
Those artists that labored countless hours constructing a soundtrack that would not only, a) fit the style of the game b) provide either atmosphere or accompaniment to the gameplay (or both) and that c) would please their trained ears, deserve our respect. I see it as a disservice to yourself and the designers to use a custom soundtrack for a game. Why not use custom models or textures? How about custom lighting and physics? Hell, let's just make our own game using a loose structure of the original work!
A video game is the work of many artists and deserves to be preserved in it's original form as to properly represent the artistic intentions of it's creators.
Being a musician I can safely say that,
Custom Soundtracks = Lame
#6
What? Quantum Redshift is a good example of why it is not. It's an awesome game that was missing a few key things and one was really ace techno music. So, I put in some that seemed fitting (Fear from Rez is so awesome) and there you go.. problem solved. If it's a game like Rez then I can understand the mislike of Custom Soundtracks but not yet has a game that insists on music for atmosphere been provided with a custom soundtrack. Halo didn't have it and JSRF didn't have it (even though I wish it had). By and large, only extreme sports games, racing games and a precious few others (which have no dramatic flair or use music to represent a theme) use the option. I think it's unfortunate that so many do not support the feature personally.
For those who don't like copying your CDs to the Xbox - Mods are your friend but even without that, a good sized library can be held on a default Xbox making it for one very cool music player on your entertainment center which I have only recently became very fond of. If you have as many music CDs as I do picking them from a list is a lot easier than trying to find it in the mass of jewel cases I call a CD shelf.
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