Anybody experienced in sound-recording? War2 music quality question

[iL]

Maybe your file is a GENERAL MIDI, not MIDI,  almost the same but a little bit different.

Hm, so, there are 2 different midi formats exist? I didn't know that.

Can you send me that file i will told you exactly what it is.

It's a war2 soundtracks archive attached to this message: http://forum.war2.ru/index.php/topic,366.msg4351.html#msg4351

[Nox]

That's right, i just listen  * midi.zip 194.26 kB!

And that's General Midi file.

I want you to Listen closely ** W2_H1 ** the first file of your ** midi.zip 194.26 kB** and after i want you to listen this!

As you can see thats the same song, same melody, same tempo, but in reality, every instruments of your midi file are replace for the General Midi one, thats not the same instruments of the original sound of youtube, instruments are different, it sound more robotic then the original one.

Maybe it's look too sound better, but in reality if you find the real wave version of youtube, it will sound better then the youtube one.

Now i need to know where you find this file? Is that an official release from blizzard or someone made this midi file himself? Because if it's an official release from blizzard, it probably mean war2 support general midi..

And in that case you probably not even need a converter wave... Maybe your midi file is suppose to link up directly with the game at this point.

[iL]

And that's General Midi file.

I want you to Listen closely ** W2_H1 ** the first file of your ** midi.zip 194.26 kB** and after i want you to listen this!

I see, i'll listen it when i be at home and try to hear the difference...

As you can see thats the same song, same melody, same tempo, but in reality, every instruments of your midi file are replace for the General Midi one, thats the not same instruments of the original sound of youtube, instruments are different, it sound more robotic then the original one.

I see, looks like not proper conversion, just almost similar. So using this midi is not perfect for our purposes...

Now i need to know where you find this file?

Not sure, that's a question to Teron-Gorefiend, but here's the readme file inside archive:

Ripped by Keyszer Soze using 4 combined methods.

At least that's not an official midi from blizzard...
There is no midi inside war2bne archives, i'll check that again, but looks like it doesn't support it. Of course that would be the easiest solution.
I'll also try to extract "proper" midi from old war2td version to see what is that...

[Nox]

Tell me more about mpq, how work the link between sound and action? Is that waves in a folder and the game link up with every title sound file.

Exemple:

HumanSword.wav
OrcSword.wav
Gryphon.wav
Dragons.wav

etc, etc.

[Nox]

I see, looks like not proper conversion, just almost similar. So using this midi is not perfect for our purposes...

I just understand what you mean Lol.....

But no, you can use that if you want, but the fact is you made a thread about answer and ill give you, these General midi files are cool and OK... But not much compare the original one in the games... Your midi files sound like a karaoke or something, the original one sound GREATFUL and something else.

You can use that midi files if you want... But i dont see why your always crying about size in 2015....

[iL]

Tell me more about mpq, how work the link between sound and action? Is that waves in a folder and the game link up with every title sound file.

Yes, each wav-file is attached to it's action in game.
So each action is a single wav-file inside mpq.
Each soundtrack in war2bne is also a single wav-file inside mpq.

I just understand what you mean Lol.....

But no, you can use that if you want, but the fact is you made a thread about answer and ill give you, these General midi files are cool and OK... But not much compare the original one in the games... Your midi files sound like a karaoke or something, the original one sound GREATFUL and something else.

Sure, i can use it, but i don't like to get music different from original... The idea of combat is to keep the original war2 atmosphere. Maybe i never hear a difference in original and this midi music, but others can.
Of course i can just use that midi, but i'd prefer to use something closer to original...

You can use that midi files if you want... But i dont see why your always crying about size in 2015....

Partly that's just a habit i think. I spent much time and forces to make it as small as possible...
Partly that's a problem to store big files on my hosting. It's total capacity is just 8Gb and it's 90% full. It's not easy to put yet another 500Mb file there... It's a big difference between 50 and 250 Mb for me then.

[Nox]

I understand for your hosting ok.

If you take a new wav rename it as the same one of any one in the mpq file and replace it... Did your new sound will play for this linked action instead the old one.

[iL]

If you take a new wav rename it as the same one of any one in the mpq file and replace it... Did your new sound will play for this linked action instead the old one.

Sure, that is how it worked before for combat. Several useless wavs have been replaced to "empty" wav with 0 length and no sound.
If you just delete wav and the game try to play it - it will crash.
You can also change any wavs to anything you want: localized sounds, sounds for another game, etc. Just make sure your new wav has supported bitrate or w/e. War2 supports just several options...

[Nox]

Maybe if you take all these wav is possible to make them lower size, but it will lose small quality, nothing important, gonna be literally new waves, same sound, but a little bit lower quality, dont even think we can made a difference.

was is the supported bitrate?

And what is that actual bitrate?

[iL]

Maybe if you take all these wav is possible to make them lower size, but it will lose small quality, nothing important, gonna be literally new waves, same sound, but a little bit lower quality, dont even think we can made a difference.

Sure, and it already works so: MPQ format supports lossy compression for wav-files with manually selected ratio from 0 to 9.
Original blizzard MPQs already distributed with some compress ratio, otherwise the whole sound data would be about 2x (or probably 5x) bigger.
I used some compromise values to keep sound good and to reduce the total size of archive.
That's why war2 is being already distributed by blizzard with some kind of lossy wavs, so original midi music could be better in case of using perfect sound card...

And what is that actual bitrate?

I don't remember, something like 16 or 32 kbps, at least i'd wonder if something like 196 or 256 will work...

[Lambchops]

Just noticed this old thread. Here's some info if anyone is still interested.

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was basically developed as a way for (piano type) digital keyboards to interface with computers. MIDI files are not sound files.

The best analogy for MIDI files is sheet music. They contain a list of what note to play on what instruments when and for how long. The sounds are generated by whatever sound hardware you are playing them on (as SmurfKing pointed out above).

So if you record a wav file from a MIDI file on very good hardware, you will get a better sound replaying that wav file on a lower quality sound hardware than playing the original MIDI file on the low quality hardware.

Of course the wav file contains much more information than the MIDI file and will be considerably larger.

Compression such as MP3 is a seperate subject, and is only relevent for the wav file, which contains actual audio, whereas the MIDI file does not. Audio compression is just a size/quality trade off. Mild compression is a good thing and provides exellent audio quality, however if you try to squeeze it too much it will sound aweful.

Just a thought .... but back in 1996 everything was 8-bit audio. IIRC the first 16-bit soundblaster cards came out a little while after this. It may be that someone with a modern VHQ audio setup might be able to produce really good audio recordings from an original MIDI source that sound better than anything they could produce back in 1996.

... and of course there is that awesome live orchestral version on youtube somewhere.