Music Questions...

[Terrapin2190]

Hoping the legendary Nyerguds or FunkyFr3sh still peruse round these parts lol.

I just had the itch to play the original classics again, building the perfect and most complete versions of TD and RA I can possibly muster. I got everything set up, and got to the point of adding the HQ soundrack compilations and hit a snag.

I compared the .aud files in scores.mix and scores2.mix against the HQ .aud files using Media Player Classic and found that the HQ audio files play in stereo, and in higher quality than when they're played in-game.

I was wondering if there was any way to increase sound quality in-game, as it seems the audio plays in mono and at a lower volume for some reason. As I noticed in MPC-HC there's a noticeable panning effect present and they play at a higher volume.

I have poked around in the conquer.ini file and changed the Channels string to 2, but didn't notice any change with the music...

 

 

And on another note, was wondering if it would be possible to add the remastered audio to the game via a custom .mix file or themes.ini, after extracting the source files and converting them to .aud format that is.

I was even contemplating creating a batch renamer others could use to quickly add the remastered tracks to the original games. If there aren't audio quality limitations that is... A strange idea, I know, since C&C Remastered exists lol. And I've found that the digital versions of CCR apparently contain lossy audio versions of Klepacki's remastered music. So, in order to truly get the best music experience I'd have to get my hands on the physical 25th Anniversary release of CCR. 😂

Edited January 26 by Terrapin2190

[Allen262]

I don't think the OG TD and RA can support stereo sound. IIRC there was stereo sound of some kind added or partly added in 3.03 but was for some planed CD Audio or DVD version of RA1 that never came. XCC Mixer can't make stereo sound .aud file as well.

[Terrapin2190]

I was thinking after I posted this earlier that maybe the game is limited to 22Khz mono sound for the music, since that's how the original .aud tracks in score.mix were encoded.

The original compiler of the HQ music packs did encode the higher quality versions in .aud format, but that was with 3rd party software.

 

 

EDIT:

Well, I found some partial answers and very interesting info pertaining to audio in this thread:

(Sort of got buried with the re-release of the Red Alert HQ Music Pack in a separate thread)

Now I'm just wondering why stereo music isn't playing, as it's mentioned that C&C95 is able to handle stereo in-game. I've even gone so far as to remove the original scores.mix and scores2.mix, leaving only the HQ music in the game folder...

Can you tell I'm passionate about music? lol. On a side note, I love reading all the small details that have gone into Nyerguds and FunkyFr3sh's modern launchers.

Edited January 29 by Terrapin2190
Uncovered ancient tiberium artifacts

[Lightning Hunter]

Hey there, sorry for seeing this so late, but first make sure that you have the correct version 2 of the Red Alert soundtrack:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/6ve9zra49c398t2/RedAlertHQ_OST_V2.ZIP/file

The correct C&C1 soundtrack is this one:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/x4fsxdjzr4kp518/C%26C-TD_HD_Music.zip/file

After that, just make sure you have the patch by Nyerguds for C&C95:
http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cnc95upd/cc95p106/

For Red Alert, get the patch by Funkyfr3sh:

I can't remember if those two patches are actually required or not, but they improve the game substantially on modern operating systems anyway!