[FF9]2016 release

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Anyone know how the sound engine works in that release?
Sharon over steam [https://steamcommunity.com/app/377840/discussions/0/133258593389989239/] is working on restoring the better sfx from the PSX version but he's struggling as of right now.

Maybe someone can lend him a helping hand and/or collaborate on it. :)
 
Anyone know how the sound engine works in that release?
Sharon over steam [https://steamcommunity.com/app/377840/discussions/0/133258593389989239/] is working on restoring the better sfx from the PSX version but he's struggling as of right now.

Maybe someone can lend him a helping hand and/or collaborate on it. :)
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Just curious, what is exactly wrong with SFX so that they have to be replaced?
 
It's like the music: They sound way worse than the PSX counterparts and some are entirely missing.
Even with the SDLIB that Xenobrain made they sound way off.
 
This is exactly why I asked.
I haven't checked SFX, but if we are talking about music, aside from SDLIB issue, the music in PC version is as good as it gets. There could be small differences due to the fact that PSX music is sort of "rendered" on-the-fly so I'm not sure if we can say that there is a way to do it 100% right, plus PC version sound is lossy-compressed so mathematically there is a difference. But both of these differences are inaudible for a human listener. I can probably provide samples to prove that, but I'll have to re-create them again cause I deleted em a while ago.

So if SFX is the same, seems like a wasted effort to me.
 
We're not talking about music, but sound effects.
They sound very different ingame opposed to what they sounded like in the PSX Version.

And I could hear the difference in music sample (I play with headphone mostly so I could spot some really ugly spots in some tracks).
 
We're not talking about music, but sound effects.
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In fact we do talk about music. You said:

It's like the music: They sound way worse than the PSX counterparts and some are entirely missing.
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About music, I don't believe difference can be heard. And even if it does, it can not be said which one is more correct. But there is no need to argue. I'll see if I'll have a time to prepare a blind listening test.
 
I only mentioned the music because the music sounds off as of improper down- and upsampling from the engine. That's what the SDLIB is countering.
Maybe it would be good, IF you've time to contact Sharon as he's working on it. I just wanted to cry out for a helping hand.
 
I don't have a reason to contact him. I just wanted to know what problem he is trying to solve. If he wanted to tell that, he would probably mention it in his thread. But after reading his thread it feels like he wants to replace audio with the one that will have 2ce the bitrate but will sound virtually the same and make many non-tech savvy steam users believe that it is actually useful.
 
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Okay, here we go. FFIX Audio Blind test:

Here are 2 files. Anyone who wants can listen to both. Which one you think is from PSX and which one from PC? Please don't try to cheat your way through and actually listen to it. But as I mentioned before, even if the difference is there, it is not possible to tell which one is actually better.

I will tell which one is which at some later point.
After this, source files for the test may be provided upon a request via PM.

Two important notes:

First, as you can hear, both of the files sound like crap. That's how it is. So replacing PC music with alternatives, taken from, lets say, official soundtrack, is not a bad idea.
But in case of sound effects, you won't find those elsewhere. So replacing crap with crap is stupid.

Second, since audio in PSX and PC has a different loudness, samples were normalized to -23 LUFS accordingly to the ITU-R BS.1770-3 standard.  :mrgreen:
 
Did you rip those straight out of the folders?
The assets are the same (from what I know) it's only that the Engine, when you play the game, upsamples and downsamples the music so it sounds off (in game while playing).
 
Did you rip those straight out of the folders?
The assets are the same (from what I know) it's only that the Engine, when you play the game, upsamples and downsamples the music so it sounds off (in game while playing).
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Any comments on how test files were produced (except what I already mentioned) will be made after whatever test is done, or there are not enough votes to make it valid (1-2 votes is not sufficient, given the small audience, I hope for at least 5)
 
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I don't know what point you're trying to prove, Meru?
The music is off in the engine. If you can't hear that, it's fine. I on the other hand can't play it without the fixed lib.
The assets on the other hand are good.

The sound effects are a whole other thing as the assets aren't the same across PSX and PC (and they're even sliced in some manor).
 
I don't know what point you're trying to prove, Meru?
The music is off in the engine. If you can't hear that, it's fine. I on the other hand can't play it without the fixed lib.
The assets on the other hand are good.

The sound effects are a whole other thing as the assets aren't the same across PSX and PC (and they're even sliced in some manor).
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The point is. If you can't tell which of the samples I provided is significantly better than another, there is no point in replacing audio in PC FFIX with the audio from PSX.

In other words, I am saying that what Sharon is trying to do is stupid and no "FIX" is needed. Unless there are other sources to take audio from. Such as original soundtracks. But there won't be sound effects there. Unless I am wrong here?

Edit: and no he is not fixing the _engine_, Xenobrain did that, Sharon is trying to replace the actual audio.
 
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Let's move along, I don't see you helping out at all and just arguing will not help whatsoever.
And no, Sharon don't want to fix the music. Where did you read that...?
 
Let's move along, I don't see you helping out at all and just arguing will not help whatsoever.
And no, Sharon don't want to fix the music. Where did you read that...?
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I never said he is trying to fix music. I said music is the only thing that is worth fixing. Pls learn to read.

Edit: the word "audio" includes "music" but not limited to it. When I say(type?) "audio" you seem to read it as "music", which isn't right.
 
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Anyway, I think there won't be enough results to make the test statistically viable and I don't feel like monitoring this thread, so I'll just tell which is which right now. You can decide for yourself if the difference is big enough.

895218C1 is PC, B6209217 is PSX

They were both ripped from the respective sources. Engine, be it bugged or not, does not play any role here.
Psx sample was additionally encoded with aoTuV encoder with approximately the same bitrate as in-game assets (which vorbis devs described as "CD quality", iirc) and decoded back. This is required because game assets are stored in vorbis so encoding-decoding step will have to happen. Although it is possible to obtain the exact encoder that was used for FFIX-PC audio, it wasn't done on purpose since if encoder in test is capable to produce significantly better quality output, this alone may be a reason to make audio replacement viable.
 
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Thanks for the point, Meru.
That's a huge help to know whether it's the engine or the files that are faulty. And yes, Fraggoso: Sharon wants to replace the files, not the engine (if he doesn't post here, there's no point to argue in his place anyway).
 
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