Music patch (Sound Canvas)

[fllthdcrb]

UPDATED 2016-08-24! See bottom for details.
UPDATED 2017-09-12!

So, as many of you are no doubt aware, a lot of the music that's first heard in this arc has sound quality issues, especially really severe clipping. I recently found a link to the composer's web site[k2works.com] (Japanese), which includes all of the original MIDI files[k2works.com]. Since I have a Sound Canvas (albeit an old one), I decided to see if it would produce something better sounding. The results? Pretty good, I think, for the most part. There are a couple of tracks that sound odd. But at least they aren't horribly clipped, right?

I have a playlist, so you can judge for yourself before bothering with downloading. Be aware that you won't necessarily have heard all of the tracks, unless you're already familiar with Higurashi from pre-Steam releases.

And here is a folder with the patch, along with downloads for lossless tracks in FLAC format (for separate listening):

IPFS[ipfs.io]
MEGA[mega.nz]

Apply the patch to any and all of the first four chapters as you see fit. (For whatever reason, MangaGamer is including all of the music from these four chapters in each chapter, whether they get used or not.)

Coincidentally, I found SuperVolcano's guides (Ch.2, Ch.3) about this issue just after doing the recordings and had a little chat. Thanks for the feedback.

Notes:

• This is aimed at the Steam releases. You should be able to use it with the earlier releases as well, though it might not be straightforward, due to different filenames in some cases, or a difference of file formats. AFAIK, Ryukishi07 mostly used the original MIDI filenames with .MP3. The readme.txt should be able to help you out for the most part.
  
• Prior to version 1.1, the patch had 48 kHz audio. However, it turns out that some versions of the engine insist on playing back audio at 44.1 kHz, regardless of its real sample rate. When this happens, the music sounds about 8% slower and lower-pitched than it should. Version 1.1 uses 44.1 kHz sample rate to prevent this problem. I see no reason the lossless version needs to be changed; it will continue to have 48 kHz audio.

[Ohagi-Chan]

Good job on fixing up the quality of those tracks.
Would you mind if I added the link to my list of community mods on my Group page?

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by Ohagi-Chan:

Good job on fixing up the quality of those tracks.
Would you mind if I added the link to my list of community mods on my Group page?

Well, I didn't "fix up" anything (but thanks anyway). Just recorded the MIDIs with my own synth. Not very difficult, really. I just happen to have this particular hardware. I had heard about the MIDIs a while back, and wanted to find them. Eventually, I figured they didn't actually exist online. But then I found a link.

By all means, link this. The more attention it gets, the better.

[fllthdcrb]

Updated: new version with improved sound levels, lossless files split into separate download.

[Melty]

Were the first 16 tracks available for rerecording? Thank you for the work on these, they sound significantly better

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by Athideus:

Were the first 16 tracks available for rerecording?

Nope. Only these are by Koji Kusanagi. It was just lucky that he made them available as MIDI. OTOH, it was because of that they got screwed up in the first place, because (presumably) someone other than the composer recorded them without having any idea what they were doing, or not caring about the results, or something. At least I hope it was someone other than the composer that did that.

[leg guy]

The high pitched sound that starts at 0:57 in msys25 is terrible. It sounds more like a high pitched tone than anything musical. In the default version, it sounds different, a lot better. I don't really know what to compare it to. A rattle, maybe?

[fllthdcrb]

It is quite shrill. I had a look at the MIDI file, and I see there are some extremely high notes there. Plus, it's a cluster of three adjacent chromatic notes—B8, C9, C#9 (where C4 is middle C; C9 is the highest note on a modern piano EDIT: that's actually C8, what was I thinking?)—making it potentially a sharper sound than a single very high-pitched note. The chosen patches (i.e. virtual instruments) are General MIDI 49 and 50, which are String Ensemble 1 and String Ensemble 2.

I don't know what Kusanagi's intention was with that, but from a technical standpoint, I think the Sound Canvas did a much better job of producing very high-pitched "string ensemble" sounds than MG's version, where it's just noise. It is rather unpleasant (though, personally, I find the rapid notes in the loud section before that point to be much more unpleasant). I wasn't trying to interpret anything, though; I basically just played these files directly to the Sound Canvas, recorded the results, and applied some minor filtering for noise reduction and (in the patch version) compressing dynamic range.

[fllthdcrb]

Minor update.

[Iojo]

Thanks for the last mainstay of hope.

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by Iojo:

Thanks for the last mainstay of hope.

Huh?? What's that supposed to mean??

[Iojo]

Originally posted by fllthdcrb:

Originally posted by Iojo:

Thanks for the last mainstay of hope.

Huh?? What's that supposed to mean??

Once there was a guide to the improved music Higurashi, but the references in guide obsoleted and ceased to exist. And then you came to help me.

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by Iojo:

Once there was a guide to the improved music Higurashi, but the references in guide obsoleted and ceased to exist. And then you came to help me.

I see. Well, I'm glad to be of help. :-)

[Shugo]

Thanks so much, it's really annoying to have the clipping music blaring over the voices.