New MP3 Music

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Flubly
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2017 8:29 pm

Re: New MP3 Music

Post by Flubly »

Are you going through a mastering process for these? I like the samples used, but these tracks sound very hot even on the softer pieces. There's not a lot of dynamic range intact. If you're putting compression or a limiter on the master bus, I'd try and mitigate their effect.

With "Snowing", it could also be a velocity thing. I can't speak for what Nikitia is hearing, but to me the original sounds like the harp is being softly played with slight inflections, while this one sounds like it's being hammered out. Since you just imported the midi, I don't know what the factor is that's making it sound so different. In theory the velocity data would be the same. Does the harp sample chosen have a lot of different sub-samples or does velocity just control the volume of a single sample?

Updating the samples has given the tracks a lot of body, though, it's an impressive project!

rbpaiett
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon May 11, 2020 12:51 am

Re: New MP3 Music

Post by rbpaiett »

Quick question: How do I find out from my current setup where daggerfall unity is getting the music files from? The reason being is that there's one (sunny day audio file) still has a very long silence at the end of it and I wanted to remove the silence. How do I go about doing that? (from someone with utterly noob experience dealing with sound files)

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ByteMixer
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Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Re: New MP3 Music

Post by ByteMixer »

With the harp sounding like it's being hammered out, depending on the harp sample used, it simply could be a limitation of the sample itself (i.e. not having enough dynamic/velocity layers recorded by the musician between pp and ff) Some cheap or free samples only have 1 dynamic layer. Some others have 2 to 3 layers and/or use some crossfading tricks in the sample process to create the illusion of having more velocity/dynamic layer recordings per note to allow smooth transition between pp dynamics and ff dynamics.

(e.g. the differences between Spitfire Audio's BBCSO Disovery, Core, and Pro versions, where Discovery has 1 layer with some crossfading, Core has 3 layers, and Pro has up to 9 dynamic layers on some instruments)

It could also be that the midi velocities in the original data are too high, and that's translating to an F dynamic where you'd rather have an mf or mp dynamic, so lowering the velocity data in the midi file for the harp track might be an option, too, to get a more subdued harp sound.

Expensive libraries usually have several dynamic layers recorded per sampled note/instrument as well as multiple Round Robins (multiple recordings of the same note, same articulation at the same dynamic level by the same performer to avoid a repeat note from sounding too repeated) and multiple mic positions/arrangements/mixes (A/B, XY, Deca tree, ORTF, Close, Mid, Far, etc). E.g. Libraries like East West Hollywood Orchestra Gold or Diamond, or Vienna Symphonic Library.

On the seamless looping: It is simple enough to remove the loop at the end of the midi files. It's just an extra unused note at the end of the sequence. (I wonder if they were used to tell the player or game code where the midi's EOF was located in the original Daggerfall) I realize an EOF isn't really needed for something like an OGG file, but I left them alone in my work, and probably won't go back to remove them. Sure, it was a labor of love, but not one I care to repeat anytime soon, haha!

IMO, some of the midi scores sound like they were written without having seamless looping in mind, (particularly those with a well defined beginning/introduction section) and might sound weird looped seamlessly, continuously, so they might still benefit from at least a short pause before looping to let the reverb tail ring.
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

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