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SMW's restored (uncompressed) soundtrack

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Recently, the uncompressed restored soundtrack has slowly surfaced around the internet. Here's a playlist with some. Not all the songs have resurfaced, but there are most of them here, at least the main ones.

I think a lot of them have that PC Engine CD/Sega CD kinda of vibe, like an early CD game. Some songs sound pretty fine, but some feel weird because they just have that MIDI sound. It's definitely interesting, but overall, I prefer the regular songs. However, there are definitely a lot of solid ones too. Maybe I'm just too used to the SNES sounds, but anyway, what your opinions on these?
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
It's definitely very interesting and sounds far better than the original awful soundset that SMW uses.

However it's not something very big, as the music is fairly synth sounding (unlike DKC or even Super Mario RPG) and due to those small wave samples, it's a departure. As it's is, its very out of place when used in actual SMW.

Most instruments are taken from Roland synths which is also responsible for MIDI sounds.
For some reason I really like the uncompressed version of that meme version of the Athletic theme. Weird because i'm normally not much of a meme person.

Some remind me of the editing mode tunes in Mario Maker, weirdly.
These all sound pretty nice. Ultimately, I think I prefer the original versions, but I guess that could just be out of nostalgia. It's definitely cool to have these alternative, high-quality versions for some variety.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
Is this exactly what Koji Kondo was working with when he composed the soundtrack (i.e. a "genuine piece of history" for lack of a better word), or just someone finding the original samples and recreating the songs to the best of their ability? The "project" in the title makes it sound like it's a re-imagining.


 
The descriptions on the videos read "restored using the original samples", indicating it's the latter. Should also become quite apparent by the fact that some of the songs in that playlist are actual meme songs (such as "Athletic (PAL)").
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
Yeah, it's just the uncompressed samples. But I still find it interesting.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
I took a look at some of them. I do feel some are quite an upgrade over the original (see also: Forest of Illusion) while others (like Donut Plains) feel... a bit weird. An interesting take over the original, I've got to say.

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STELLA!
Personally, I also like exploring the channel's non-SMW restorations. There's some more quite impressive ones there. The A Link to the Past Kakariko restorations, for example.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
I honestly hated the uncompressed soundtrack, after having listened to it for a while. I found the samples to be rough and jarring. Some songs sounded all right, but these samples don't fit the SMW soundtrack in my opinion.

It is entirely possible I have "nostalgia blinders" and may or may not have a love affair with the original SMW soundtrack because I used to compose using it. I think that the original SMW samples get somewhat of a bad rap due to them being "low-quality," but I think that they have a softer, more chipset-esque feel to them (similar to the reason why many people like the sound of 8-bit samples). Some of the SMW samples, like @7 (the steel drum) and @14 (the stringy bass heard in Valley of Bowser and other tracks) are actually pretty high-quality for the time.

Again, I totally admit that I cannot listen to these samples without some kind of bias, and this is definitely an interesting find. I would be open to someone making a sample set from these - I could totally compose with them.
I think it's totally valid to feel like the uncompressed samples sound weird, since the SNES versions were made with limitations in mind and built around that, while the higher quality of the samples makes it feel strange often, due to the tone of the compositions changing, since they weren't made with this quality in mind. It also makes some instruments drown in the mix, since the volume in-game is different for each sample.
All that can make certain parts of songs (and often even entire songs) feel empty and atonal. Not to mention, the regular samples having that keyboard MIDI sound that doesn't sound great in an age where we have way better samples and stuff to work with.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Ah yes, all those restored SMW songs never looked sooo good! I listened to it, and it sounds more like an MSU-1 version of the OG songs. Hoo boy!

And btdubs, ever noticed that the Yoshi sound source is actually the same as LEGO Island's brass stab?
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this sucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQPQV40e6j0
this one even has one of the marimbas an octave too low.

the only one that stood out to me was vanilla dome

and the bowser fight is missing. i guess they couldn't find the sample
That sounds pretty amazing, I am going to listen to this.
Originally posted by Torchkas
this sucks


I concur.

To me, these restored songs are a tad disrespectful to Koji Kondo; if he had higher-quality samples to work with I'm sure he would have made something different. Kondo had to use what he could, and therefore SMW's soundtrack doesn't really work in any other form than its vanilla state. Restoring something that wasn't created with restoration in mind doesn't work particularly well in my eyes, and again, is a tad disrespectful to the composer.
I disagree there. Quite the opposite, I think "restoring" these tracks, if anything, is paying tribute to Koji Kondo. It's not about disrespecting the original tracks, it's just about presenting them in a different way. Maybe "restoration" isn't the right word and "remaster" would fit better, but the point still stands.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
I don't care what Koji Kondo thinks. Apart from a few exceptions, all these "restored" versions sound worse than the originals. I don't even think it's the fault of the samples. The only songs that work well are ones with fewer than 3 instruments because nothing is mixed properly. The original soundtrack is already much warmer sounding because of the SNES's filter, but for some of these tracks some of the instruments sound completely out of place.

Not to mention that there are errors here and there and if you know the soundtrack like I do it really sticks out. The articulation could have done with more work too. The subtleties of the different volume and length differences Kondo used are far less pronounced.

I'm not going to write an entire review just yet, but I have many reasons to dislike this beyond disrespecting the author.
I think a lot of times people tend to forget in this "restore" craze is that all of these songs were composed with being compressed for the SNES chip in mind, what we hear in game is the way it's meant to be heard... almost.

I say almost because most of us, if not all of us in this era, do not have access to the old televisions it was meant to be played on, specifically the speakers those TV's had. On our high quality speakers and headphones, we're still not hearing the way these songs were meant to be listened to. Kind of mind blowing when you think of it that way.
I think that's already way overthinking it. It doesn't matter what intent the original songs had. These "restorations" are made just for fun and nothing more. No harm in that.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
I'm more in the middle here, though I'm leaning towards RPG Hacker's side. I totally get what Torchkas and Skewer are saying about the restored tracks not being how the music was originally "intended" to be heard, and it's a valid point (if you took my favorite soundtracks and did nothing to them other than change the instrumentation, like with FF6 or something, I would probably still prefer the original's sound) - but I see nothing objectionable about the act of creating these rearrangements either.

The point of the restorations, as far as I can tell, is simply to show off how the songs sound with higher-quality instruments. To say that these are outright "disrespectful" to Koji Kondo is going way too far, in my opinion.
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