14 May 4705 - Sounds of Fidelity

The problem is in asking for something other than midi sound.

As it relates to the MegamanX Collection, midi sound is the awesome. Capcom did an excellent job of porting the two SNES MegamanX games, complete with the original soundtracks and everything.

But wait, two?

Yep. MMX3 also came out for the PS1, which Capcom saw as the superior choice for the port, because it would end up taking up a larger chunk of the PS2 dvd they were set to burn the collection on, mostly for the, you guessed it, redone sound.

This wouldn't be bad, except that it was.
They had the choice of the SNES or PS1 version, and they picked wrong. The SNES had midi sound, which is artificial and never degrades because it starts and ends life as compressed as it's ever going to be. If there's static from a midi file, either it's designed to have that or you have bad speakers. It is some of the most crisp sound available (although also the most artificial sounding).
The artificial sounding nature is what keeps people playing mp3s instead of tracking mods. Okay, also they can carry the fidelity of a human voice and yadayada. But what kind of music do we have in Megaman games since the start of them all? Techno.
Now, pardon me for liking my techno to be artificial, or even mechanical sounding. Next time I'll submit to the Boston pops or the London symphony orchestra to do a cover of Freezepop's Super Sprode. Come to think of it, that sounds awesome for different reasons...why was that again? Oh yeah, fidelity of sound.

So here's the depressing part. X3 on the PS1 sounds worlds away worse than it did on the SNES. I was shocked and injured that I could almost recognize the tracks, but something just felt wrong about the whole thing and gave me the sense that I was getting less than the best product, which is a hard feeling to shake when you know you've already had the best.
The PS1 version uses some kind of bizarre orchestral sound made into live audio capture files and compressed using whatever generic PS1 sound compression algorithm SONY uses for it (or Capcom, don't know whom to blame on this one). The result is that all the audio on my PS2 disk for X3 is true to the PS1 release: this washed-out sounding fake remix of the original, which is a crime because I liked that music more than any of the others.

The Blizzard Buffalo stage is some of the most aggressive techno I had ever heard, in an SNES game or anywhere else. The melody is in roughly double time of the beat, which is not you're standard techno beat to begin with. It has roots closer to bebop jazz (with the exception of the general tempo and the fact that it is not a song, but a loop) than to techno. It's wild. It's great.

When I heard the mix on my PS2, I could have died. The Blizzard Buffalo stage played up the beat as if it were the melody, and slowed the track down so it would sound less like a beat, and then obscured the loop's actual melody entirely. This represents a conscious effort to harm good music on the part of the developers, and is an act disgusting in the extreme.

I have to wash with some excellent techno music so I don't get compressed awful versions of my game loops stuck in my head.

Your suggestions will be appreciated.

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