ZMCX-101: F-ZERO X Guitar Arrange Edition

[Revoc]

Does someone could upload the scan of the obi? The current scan is very blur and isn't possible to see the musicians.

I'm requesting this because I only found the credits here, but I really suspect that 渡辺正樹 is a misspelling of 渡辺直樹 (Naoki Watanabe).

[kyubihanyou]

Originally Posted by Revoc

I really suspect that 渡辺正樹 is a misspelling of 渡辺直樹 (Naoki Watanabe).

I can tell from the scan of the name at the end of the booklet that the symbol in question has a thin white line across the top with a small vertical segment on top of that and is far more symmetrical and complex in appearance than 正.

渡辺直樹 is correct. That is indeed Naoki Watanabe.

[Revoc]

You're right. 正 is the third kanji of Masahiko Rokukawa's name (六川正彦). Even with the blurry scan it's possible to say that is different from the 直 of the last name of bassists.

ベース
青木智仁 （1,8,9）
六川正彦 （2,3）
松原秀樹 （4,5,10）
渡辺直樹 （6,7）

[Crash]

I had my CDs packed away due to a recent move, but I checked the obi on mine, and it looks like Revoc's transcriptions are correct.

[Revoc]

Thanks for the confirmation, Crash!

[Zethe]

am I the only one thinking that this cd sounds horrible? love the arrangements, but the sound is entirely bullshit.

[Daveit]

Am I the only one who noticed James McCloud's mugshot is Pico?

Check:

[Cainf]

Originally Posted by Zethe

am I the only one thinking that this cd sounds horrible? love the arrangements, but the sound is entirely bullshit.

Which rip are you listening to? There's a HORRIBLE MP3 rip floating around. 128 kbps is just the start of faults with the rip. It sounds very muddy, tracks clip quite often, and some of the tracks have some HORRIBLE deafening distortion peaks.

Now that I've just recently gotten ahold of a lossless rip, the quality is fantastic. Not only is it listenable, but I'm actually really enjoying it.

[TerraEpon]

(I own the CD FWIW, so basing comments off that)
I don't think it's horrible, but it's not that good. It's pretty "scrunched" as it were, that is, it has a very small sound stage. Still a lot better than the OST which really is horrible.

[Zethe]

Originally Posted by Cainf

Which rip are you listening to?

Lossless; with decent equipment.

I wouldn't criticize it if my only experience were bad encodes; or with bad gear.

[Cainf]

Originally Posted by TerraEpon

(I own the CD FWIW, so basing comments off that)
I don't think it's horrible, but it's not that good. It's pretty "scrunched" as it were, that is, it has a very small sound stage.

Ahh. On that note, I agree.

Still a lot better than the OST which really is horrible.

On that note, I completely disagree. The OST is one of my favourite soundtracks of all time.

[Hellacia]

Besides the couple of Japanese characters in the noticeable "main" titles in white text that Medina added into a Japanese tracklist some years after this entry's creation, there are smaller characters under them in gold text that correspond to the English words. These titles also appear in the other places names are present throughout the booklet, so I've replaced the English in the Japanese tracklist with them.

[XISMZERO]

I can vouch for the muddy sound production of this album. What I love about it is its organic, live sound design but, yes, it's often garbled -- and I have a high-quality VBR rip. Furthermore, it's amazing what a bunch of mostly jazz-rock players can pull off such a badass rock album.

[GoldfishX]

I can third the muddy sound of it. The leads/main melodies are fine, but the lower mids blur together. If you try and add bass boost, it distorts horribly.

That said, still an amazing album.

[_if]

I don't know why this one gets singled out for sound quality issues more than most of the many VGM metal things that have bad sound quality. I prefer the sound of this to, for example, the Bushido Blade 2 OST (the music in-game sounds much nicer aside from the static-like distortion inherent in XA format audio). I wouldn't really say this is abnormally or unusually bad. Comparing it to Dracula Battle, both are less than perfect but I'd say I prefer the somewhat muddy low end of F-Zero X Guitar Arrange to Dracula's relative thinness. The bass guitar is also surprisingly audible for metal.

You may well already know but when you EQ the best practice is to do it subtractively, lowering everything but the stuff you want louder, to avoid the chance of distortion.

[GoldfishX]

I wouldn't say "singled out", I just would prefer a little more air between the instruments. I don't think EQing would really help that (the bass boost is a general example, usually poorly recorded rock/metal responds poorly to bass boost...I always EQ downward and never use bass boost for regular listening).

[Falk]

Wow, what a necro.

This was one of the first heavy rock VGM albums I got into. And even back then the mix and production sounded pretty terrible.

It's also a little difficult to compare the sound quality of an arranged album, which is purely about the music by itself, to a game's soundtrack which is ultimately meant to be listened to in context. Not to say a game's soundtrack can have a really good mix/master, but it doesn't have to stand on its own under the microscope.

[suicider]

Perhaps I'm easy to please but I think the sound quality is far away from horrible or terrible That said I think the music on here is just great, really love it!