#1
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From what I can tell...
-Most of the games represented here are re-prints of the previous, most complete soundtrack. -Symphony of the Night is from GFCA-195~213, but with track 2 from KICA-7760 plus tracks 23 and 24 from LC-1609~10 added back in. Additionally, track 1 on disc 2 (Saturn exclusive tracks) is exclusive to this release. -Aria of Sorrow's tracklist is similar to LC-1453~4, but with tracks 25 and 26 split into separate tracks. -Curse of Darkness' tracklist is GFCA-34~5, with "True To Your Dreams" removed and track 4 of KMJ-00050 added. -Order of Ecclesia disc 12, tracks 19-27 are exclusive to this release. No Castlevania: The Medal, nor Lords of Shadow trilogy. Especially sad for the latter, since the complete version of 1 and 2 still remain impossible to buy. |
#2
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Quote:
As for Castlevania: The Medal, it's a slot machine game, right? They didn't include all the Pachislot soundtracks either, so maybe that's why. |
#3
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Weren't the Medel tracks all just jingles anyway? That's all I recall there being on the previous CD Box at least.
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#4
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Can anyone tell me if there is value/differences in getting either of these set (red/black) if I already own the Akumajo Dracula Best Music Collections BOX from 2010?
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#5
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So, from a first listen I'm glad to report that Disc 1, 2 and 5 sound better than their original releases. Especially Aria of Sorrow's soundtrack now sounds like a true soundtrack (or gamerip) compared to that awful, monotonous recording from the 2006 soundtrack release, they even got rid of the static noise. Symphony of the Night and Bloodline's soundtracks apparently did receive a nice treatment of added volume and sound cleaner than before. At least to my ears. Couldn't detect any differences in the remaining discs tho, the rest seems like straight reprints of their former releases (altho they always did sound fine!)
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#7
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#8
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Well, there is not too much difference, however I can tell that at least the volume has been increased a bit. I'm no professional and I compared this new release with my 1993 Akumajo Dracula X soundtrack. I think they used the same recording from the 2010 Best Music Collection. SotN's disc however sounds even different than the Best Music Collection's tracks. More...polished. But my ears could play tricks on me lol. Maybe someone could do a comparison in an suitable audio program.
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#9
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Please delete the first HQ image. Too overexposed. I uploaded a better version.
Please delete the second HQ one too. Why Alucard has to be so pale? Last edited by SgtPepperman; Jan 9, 2022 at 02:51 PM. Reason: A third version |
#10
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Surprised noone has bothered with en english tracklist yet, is anyone up to it? I don't know the series nearly enough to try myself (i may do the album credits when i find time)
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#11
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I'll add my tracklist later if no one else wants to. But it takes some time with this beast box ...
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#12
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Does anyone know what track 35 of disc 1 is supposed to be?
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#13
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An unused track from SOTN, which originally was only found in the game's disc until it was released in the first boxset.
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#14
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Just got my copy. I know this is about the music, but just looking at the ugly back of the box, I can see how little love they put into the project. Those are screenshots from emulators or google images - just look at bloodlines where you can see the pixels, and then the ds screenshots which have a heavy blur/filter. looks like an old altavista website patchwork.
i guess it's still nice to have most of the music on hand inside a neat cardboard box. Has anybody checked the booklet? does it have anything we haven't seen or read before? Bonus question: why does 悪魔城ドラキュラ have no (R) after it? all game covers have it, at least I checked Curse of Darkness which still had it, but then Lords of Shadow 2 didn't - just realised it now. Last edited by LuxKiller65; Jan 27, 2022 at 12:19 AM. |
#15
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdNq...el=ThatOneRock
Someone, who purchased both boxes, made a short video about the booklet, and how unsatisfied he was as there is no further composer breakdown or additional information available. Konami, you really missed a chance here! |
#16
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thanks for the link
yeah what a letdown, but it was to be expected with konami holdings corporation |
#17
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Konami Holding Back Composer Breakdowns Corp.
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#18
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I've been listening to both the Kuro and Aka boxsets a lot recently and while the music is quite good something hasn't sounded right to me. I've had to continually turn the volume up and down as my ears were getting fatigued pretty quickly, even with SotN (music I've been familiar with for over 20 years). After long listening sessions I found myself feeling agitated by normal noises and other music and have had to take time off to decompress. I thought this was just me trying to stuff a ton of CV music into my brain at once but it's more than just that.
I put two ripped audio files into Logic to compare loudness and, good god, these boxsets are mastered terribly. I used track 13 from SotN (Festival of Servants I think it's called, the heavy metal boss music) both from the original KICA release (top) and the recent boxset (bottom). You can see there is almost no headroom on the boxset/remaster compared to the original because of how its volume has been cranked and its dynamics destroyed. Sound file image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iPT...ew?usp=sharing I also ran both of these through Youlean Loudness meter and the original came through at -12.5 integrated LUFS and +0.1db true peak, while the Aka version comes in at -8.5 integrated LUFS and a true peak of +0.3, which means frequent clipping. Whoever mastered these boxsets clearly valued perceived loudness over audio quality, which is a huge disappointment. I am not a master audio engineer by any means, but even to my amateur ears something didn't feel right about the actual sound of these albums. What a damn shame. KICA loudness: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MRa...ew?usp=sharing AKA loudness: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kmp...ew?usp=sharing *** EDIT: looking at the AKA loudness picture, you can see that almost the entire song is clipping (the big red line up at the top of the image). Dang! Last edited by Zane; Feb 2, 2022 at 06:22 AM. |
#19
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I don't see any images in the above post.
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#20
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Just reformatted them to be links instead of images. Can you see them now?
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#21
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Yeah, both this release and GFCA-512~24 are indeed victims of the loudness war. Symphony of the Night does indeed sound louder and more compressed here vs KICA-7760, whereas the Selection album on streaming sites sounds about the same as the 1997 album.
From the non-Yamane set, I've only compared Rondo of Blood and Castlevania 64 with their respective 90s releases, and I'm pretty disappointed with both (Divine Bloodlines, Beginning, Slash and Den in particular all sound much more flatter and squashed). In fact, part of why I bought both boxsets was not only to have "everything" at once, but also because this is the first time Legacy of Darkness got an album release, and yet that also turned out to be a real letdown to me. Missing music, the soundtrack is completely out of chronological order, a bunch of tracks have missing elements/instrumentals, and the overall mastering is even more intrusive than that of CV64's. (On top of the soundtrack being lower quality overall, but I was already aware of that.) Given that the PS2/DS discs and Castlevania Judgment sound about the same as the original albums, and how Mournful Serenade sounds just as painful as it did in LC-1609~10, my guess is that they mastered the older tracks in both sets louder in order to better match the newer albums, whereas the 21st century soundtracks are pure reprints. I have no idea about the 2010 box. The new Aria of Sorrow recording does sound better than whatever LC-1453~4 had, but still not all that great to me. (Doesn't help that AoS has the weakest soundtrack out of the GBA trilogy and sounds just boring for the most part.) At least the Symphony of the Night MIDI disc was (mostly) spared! Last edited by 《J》; Feb 3, 2022 at 02:18 PM. |
#22
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So, what are we learning with this - don't set your hopes too high with releases like this (especially not from Konami, I'm done with this company! They just suck and don't care about anything they once sold!). Fan service? Almost zero! Money making with old crap, they don't even polish? Yeah, sure.
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#23
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Is it really that hard to get the sound right? Seems like all these boxsets have music that's not recorded/mastered properly. I am no audio expert but I value all opinions, especially around here.
What about Legacy of Darkness missing instruments/pieces? Would you share more on this? If true, it would be really crazy. |
#24
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Last edited by zierts; Feb 4, 2022 at 05:16 AM. |
#25
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You've got to be kidding me, all they had to do was the bare minimum and just use reprints for the CD boxes and I would've been content. Despite some of the old releases having issues at least this scenario would have still been more cost-efficient than trying to hunt down each of those individual soundtracks. However, if they've gone and botched up the mastering on the older releases then it looks like I'll have to still go looking for some of them now anyway. It's a really good thing that I didn't sell any of the ones that I already owned yet since I want to be sure that I'm not replacing any of them with an inferior version.
I'll definitely be keeping my copy of the Symphony of the Night OST now that's for certain, do the Saturn-exclusive tracks also have bad mastering? It's no surprise that Rondo of Blood sounds flatter than the original release since it's likely the same as the one featured on the DXC soundtrack which most of us seem to agree is the inferior sounding release. I'm not sure how the CD Box release of Bloodlines compares to the original, but I'm not quite as worried about that one since it's already included on the Rondo of Blood soundtrack which I was planning to track down anyway due to it sounding better than the DXC release. It's still good to know that this release of Aria of Sorrow's soundtrack is better than the original, but I suppose that isn't saying much when you consider just how bad the original one sounded. Also, in regards to the SotN MIDI disc being "mostly spared," does that mean that some of the tracks featured on it were still given the same treatment? I figured it was just a reprint of Midi Power Pro 6 and the SotN tracks from the Akumajo Dracula MIDI collection. Regardless, this news has gotten me a bit paranoid about the actual audio quality of these CD boxes. Would it be possible for us to do a breakdown of how each game's soundtrack on the CD boxes compares to that of the previous releases? I own all three of the CD boxes as well as a handful of the individual releases, but they're all still unopened and since I was planning to sell off the ones that I didn't need I'm hesitant over the idea of opening them up to look into it myself. However, I would be willing to purchase a couple of tracks from each albulm that was released digitally in order to provide them as samples that could be used to compare with the CD boxes. I'm aware that the digital releases aren't lossless like the CDs, but they should be enough to determine whether or not the CD boxes use the same masters or not, right? I think the only entries which are exclusive to the Kuro Box and Music Collections Box are Legends, The Arcade, Kid Dracula (GB) and the Saturn exclusive tracks from SotN. I'm also curious if Haunted Castle's soundtrack is the same on both boxes or not since the only other full release it had was on the Legend of Game Music 2 Platinum Box. |
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#27
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Last edited by Mac_Tear; Feb 4, 2022 at 01:50 AM. |
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For what it's worth I'm pretty sure most if not everything featured on those Legend of Game Music boxes were new recordings done independently by Scitron that likely didn't appear elsewhere. Even ones like Vapor Trail which were originally Scitron releases to begin with sound very different.
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#29
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They are louder too, though not as bad as the Rondo of Blood examples I listed or Festival of Servants. In my opinion, the mastering gets particularly bad in rock/orchestral pieces with very intense peaks and/or busy sections. It's better on average than, say, Castlevania Judgment and Harmony of Despair, and about equiparable to the PS2 Castlevanias.
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Last edited by 《J》; Feb 5, 2022 at 04:59 PM. |
#30
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I had just assumed they would use the DXC disc since the original doesn't have the PSG tracks.
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