LRCD-085: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

[Brad Evans II]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

Anyone else find the tracknames kinda weird? Like 'Difficult Fight' is the sub-boss theme and 'Karate Boss Defeated' is the sub-boss defeated theme. Also 'Stage Theme 2-A' and '2-B' are the intense themes for the underwater part of the damn stage while 'Stage Theme 2' is used for inside buildings. This kind of weird labeling also happens in Solid Snake: Metal Gear 2. I'm wondering if this is a case of switching themes around last minute by Konami before the game got released.

I didn't catch that first one (it's been ages since I played the game even though I do have a copy of the Cowabunga collection hanging around) but yeah, that second one is obvious.

[jmr]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

So I screengrabbed the spectrogram here: https://drive.goggle.com/file/d/133742069TB8T-8/view?usp=sharingiscaring Waoh! It takes up the whole window. It doesn't cut off anywhere! I checked a few others and they look the same.

Oh no. Oh no no no. That looks lossy to me. That spectrogram should *not* be black at the top.



That's a tell tale sign of lossy compression.

It looks suspiciously similar to the ogg vorbis (read: lossy) version used in the Cowabunga Collection game itself. For reference, upper spectrogram is the OGG, lower is a trustworthy emulator. I'm only showing the 18kHz - 21.5kHz range here.



If someone could send me a lossless rip of a track from the CD, I'd be able to confirm what source LRG used. I ordered the vinyl release which (a) hasn't shipped yet and (b) makes doing any exact comparisons an order of magnitude harder.

[TerraEpon]

The bigger sign of lossy compression is the "blocks" in the waveform.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Originally Posted by jmr

That looks lossy to me.

Oh no! Major bummer, dude! What's the quality of those OGG files?

I was also hoping for concurrent vinyl/CD releases so we could do comparisons. If the CDs were clearly inferior, I'd cancel the rest of my orders and opt for the record releases instead. Fortunately/unfortunately, Hyperstone Heist still hasn't gone up yet, so there's still time.

[jmr]

I suspect the CDs, vinyl records, and tapes were all sourced from the same audio. There's potentially some different mastering applied but I'd be shocked if they sound significantly different.

The in-game ogg files are 200kbps on average, sample rate of 48000kHz. Not horrible. I'm not hearing any immediately obvious audible flaws in the NES audio - it's a reasonably good emulated source.
With normal listening, I'm hearing some differences when I compare the SNES and Genesis soundtracks with my own emulated versions but that's likely due to the specifics of the emulator used.

If you listen to the difference between stereo channels of the Genesis and SNES tracks (one of my favorite techniques for evaluating lossy audio) you can definitely hear the compression artifacts. The arcade tracks generally fare better.

[GoldfishX]

So basically, I can stick to my 20 year old VBR mp3 rips and not miss anything. Ouch!

Hold that "L", LRG.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Originally Posted by jmr

I suspect the CDs, vinyl records, and tapes were all sourced from the same audio.

Oh! I completely forgot about the cassettes. Did anyone here order them? It'd be funny if those happened to have the best masters.

Originally Posted by jmr

The in-game ogg files are 200kbps on average, sample rate of 48000kHz. Not horrible.

Aren't ogg (vorbis at least) better in terms of compression? Would this be comparable to 256-320 mp3 range? Honestly, if the quality were comparable to 400-500kbps I probably wouldn't care anymore.

[zierts]

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Hold that "L", LRG.

Wait, so the "Limited" in "Limited Run Games" refers to their bit rates?

[suicider]

Whew, that whole Turtles series release by LRG seems to be a bit of a mess But I'm happy we have them released somehow, even if there would have been a lot of room for improvement in the first place.

I've added the catalog numbers on the cassette releases and fixed all the release dates to 2024 where applicable (some where still set for 2025). I guess we won't have a dedicated release date for all of them, just 2024 must be sufficient.

I also noticed some discrepancies with the tracklists given on the tape's J-card to the actual music. Fall of the Foot Clan for instance has a running time of ~19 minutes on Side A, whereas Side B has about ~5 minutes I'll fix the tracklists soon after I doubled checked them with the CD releases.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

LRG will typically credit Konami Kukeiha Club for their compositions and list exceptions for tracks that are essentially the TMNT theme composed by Chuck Lorre/Dennis C. Brown, but LRG conveniently leaves their names out.

This album does not list any exceptions, so I scoured the music and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ3_7XSRxdc

Do you hear that? Play it at 6 seconds.

Is the TMNT theme heard on any other tracks in this game?

[BlazingAbyss]

Are the LRG CDs for older games that previously lacked an official soundtrack release known for having lossy compression? For example, are the LRG soundtracks for BloodRayne 1 and 2 lossy as well?

[GoldfishX]

Originally Posted by Jedi QuestMaster

This album does not list any exceptions, so I scoured the music and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ3_7XSRxdc

Do you hear that? Play it at 6 seconds.

Is the TMNT theme heard on any other tracks in this game?

Ha, that theme is so ubiquitous, I never thought about it when I heard this jingle (and I played the game religiously back in the day). If anyone else grew up on the 1987 series, you know what I mean. You just hear it without thinking about it. Same for Ghostbusters.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Originally Posted by BlazingAbyss

Are the LRG CDs for older games that previously lacked an official soundtrack release known for having lossy compression? For example, are the LRG soundtracks for BloodRayne 1 and 2 lossy as well?

I can't speak for BloodRayne, but can confirm that Shantae is straight up 128kbps mp3 files. Apparently their Pirate's Curse and Risky's Revenge CDs are also lossy. This has me concerned for Maniac Mansion and Jurassic Park.

Another thing to note of these TMNT releases is the inconsistent album titling on the spines. The first four albums just list the title of the game. Every album from Back from the Sewers onward has 'Soundtrack' on the spine.

Every album, except for Fall of the Foot Clan has 'Soundtrack' added somewhere on the CD.