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Firstly. Congrats to GOG for bringing back such a fantastic classic game. One of my all time favourites.

Much of the games music back in the day was crisp clear 44khz uncompressed CD Audio. It sounded absolutely AMAZING.

In the gog release it's compressed into 60kbps .OGG files and It sounds TERRIBLE. Just wait for the music to build up on the main menu screen if you can't hear it at first. It's also missing the first few seconds off the start of the song there too.

Now I collect game soundtracks AND I'm a fan of the OGG format, so I have an 80kbps version of the soundtrack on hand. Swap the files in and it works fine, sounds GREAT.

So what gives? It would have added 3mb to the download for a respectable bitrate. :/

When I first read it was on GOG I expected there to be a high quality MP3 version of the soundtrack for download as an extra too.

Edit: My apologies for the bad spelling of awful and original in the title, my browser's spellcheck didn't work in that field. :P
Post edited October 11, 2011 by FluffyLynx
We have enhanced the music quality in our release of LBA. The size of the installer went up a bit but we think that in this case it is well worth it.

Please download the game one more time and enjoy the CDA-quality music! :)

I apologise for the inconvenience.
Cool stuff. GOG forever! :)
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Paczyk: We have enhanced the music quality in our release of LBA. The size of the installer went up a bit but we think that in this case it is well worth it.

Please download the game one more time and enjoy the CDA-quality music! :)

I apologise for the inconvenience.
Thankyou for the absolutely fantastic fast reply and fix. This is incredibly awesome.

BUT I hate to be a pain, but the audio positioning is still off. Which while not immediately obvious at the title screen, may result in some strangeness later.

A few seconds at the start of the song is missing. If you check out the ogg files from the initial release, and fast forward to 10 seconds before the end of any track, you'll hear the start of the next track.

The song at the main menu is LBA9.OGG. Swapping in an OGG from my own collection works correctly in game. So it's likely something gone wrong with the track start times when extracting cd data/audio.

If I can assist in any way let me know. I could provide some nice 160kbps oggs if need be.
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FluffyLynx: Thankyou for the absolutely fantastic fast reply and fix. This is incredibly awesome.

BUT I hate to be a pain, but the audio positioning is still off. Which while not immediately obvious at the title screen, may result in some strangeness later.

A few seconds at the start of the song is missing. If you check out the ogg files from the initial release, and fast forward to 10 seconds before the end of any track, you'll hear the start of the next track.

The song at the main menu is LBA9.OGG. Swapping in an OGG from my own collection works correctly in game. So it's likely something gone wrong with the track start times when extracting cd data/audio.

If I can assist in any way let me know. I could provide some nice 160kbps oggs if need be.
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derailedition: the newer version of the game he talked about has no ogg files but the full iso with cd audio. so you need to redownload.
The audio position issue appears to be present in both versions, I installed to seperate folders and compared. tripple checked even. though it is passed midnight here. ;)

This issue is not immediately obvious untill you compare to a correct version of the music.
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FluffyLynx: The audio position issue appears to be present in both versions, I installed to seperate folders and compared. tripple checked even. though it is passed midnight here. ;)

This issue is not immediately obvious untill you compare to a correct version of the music.
I had noticed the same issue, perhaps it is a problem with the version of LBA they used for the gog release as this problem doesn't occur in my old UK release.
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FluffyLynx: The audio position issue appears to be present in both versions, I installed to seperate folders and compared. tripple checked even. though it is passed midnight here. ;)

This issue is not immediately obvious untill you compare to a correct version of the music.
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InsincereDave: I had noticed the same issue, perhaps it is a problem with the version of LBA they used for the gog release as this problem doesn't occur in my old UK release.
Glad to hear I'm not halucinating then. =D

We'll see what the GOG wizards come up with, otherwise I can probably craft my own patch if need be.
Oh dear. This seems to be a problem with correct gap detection when ripping. Exact Audio Copy is one of the few programs that does this really thoroughly.

The same thing happened with the Blood audio tracks on the GOG release (was that ever fixed, btw?), so it seems to me that GOG use a really bad audio ripping software. I'd really recommend to GOG team that they use a correctly configured EAC in the future!

If I can find my CDs, I could provide correctly ripped audio files with cue sheet.

BTW: Does DOSBOX support flac compression?
Post edited October 11, 2011 by Lafazar
Hi,
I've still got my old CD of LBA, and I checked, the music tracks play properly, with correct gap detection.

Since GoG (in the new installer) is using a cd image, I figured I could create an image from my cd and replace their image with mine. I'm trying that now and will keep you posted.

However I've thought of a simpler method, i.e. just replacing the music files in their image by the music files from mine. However I can't find the music files. There are the video files alright (.FLA format), but nothing looking like compressed music files on the cd. Anyone know where they are located?

EDIT: simply replacing Gog's image with mine didn't work, as I should have expected. Still, replacing music files alone?
Post edited October 11, 2011 by MasodikTiasma
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MasodikTiasma: Hi,
I've still got my old CD of LBA, and I checked, the music tracks play properly, with correct gap detection.

Since GoG (in the new installer) is using a cd image, I figured I could create an image from my cd and replace their image with mine. I'm trying that now and will keep you posted.

However I've thought of a simpler method, i.e. just replacing the music files in their image by the music files from mine. However I can't find the music files. There are the video files alright (.FLA format), but nothing looking like compressed music files on the cd. Anyone know where they are located?

EDIT: simply replacing Gog's image with mine didn't work, as I should have expected. Still, replacing music files alone?
It's Redbook CD Audio, meaning normal audio CD tracks. To rip those properly I recommend a Software called Exact Audio Copy (the problem is that CD audio has no proper error correction which means no way to detect and correct read errors which happen quite often on old CDs, EAC tries various tricks to improve rip quality).

Note that it's not enough to get the audio tracks to use your rip with DOSBOX. You also need to make something called a cue sheet, basically an ascii file containing the starting times and durations of each track (including the data track). EAC can create these as well. GOG usually rename these files to "game.inst", so just open that file with notepad to see how it should look.
Post edited October 11, 2011 by Lafazar
Thank you for those informations, but my problem isn't with ripping. This time, GoG doesn't use ripped audio files, just a CD image (called LBA.GOG). It's when I open this image with DTools that I can't locate where the music files are, INSIDE the cd... I find it puzzling, there seems to be no file big enough to be those tracks.

P.S I'm of course talking about the updated Gog version, not the original installation with .ogg files
Post edited October 11, 2011 by MasodikTiasma
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MasodikTiasma: Thank you for those informations, but my problem isn't with ripping. This time, GoG doesn't use ripped audio files, just a CD image (called LBA.GOG). It's when I open this image with DTools that I can't locate where the music files are, INSIDE the cd... I find it puzzling, there seems to be no file big enough to be those tracks.

P.S I'm of course talking about the updated Gog version, not the original installation with .ogg files
Ah sorry. I didn't realize that it was a BIN/CUE rip (I didn't redownload the game yet). In that case LBA.DAT is the cue sheet and LBA.GOG is the bin file. You need to select the LBA.DAT (not the LBA.GOG file) in Daemon Tools and you should be able to see the audio tracks in any audio player that supports CD audio.

Since it is a BIN/CUE rip, it should be easily possible to correct the timing issues by simply replacing the CUE sheet (LBA.DAT) with a proper one. If you have the same CD GOG used for their image you could try making your own cue sheet with EAC and replacing the GOG one.

Or we could edit the cue sheet by hand to correct the timing errors. Since it only seems to be off by a few seconds try and error could help...
Post edited October 11, 2011 by Lafazar
I have found indeed I could open LBA.DAT, thanks. I'll try manual correction, and post my corrections here if it works.
EDIT: The first track, "the prophecy" (from the intro cinematic) is actually correct, and then there seems to be an exactly 2 sec delay every time. Should be easy to correct, I'll keep you posted.
Post edited October 11, 2011 by MasodikTiasma
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MasodikTiasma: I have found indeed I could open LBA.DAT, thanks. I'll try manual correction, and post my corrections here if it works.
It should work. Just use an ASCII editor. Be careful that the track length also plays a role, so it's important to check beginning AND ending of each track.

Gaps (time between end of a track and beginning of next track) make the whole thing even more confusing. Audio CDs are just a complete mess, standard-wise...

Edit: Thanks a lot for doing this, btw. :)
Post edited October 11, 2011 by Lafazar
Honestly, I don't know what is an ascii editor and which file to edit with it (LBA.DAT?). I guess I coudl learn but's it getting a little late on our timeline (since we seem to have the same ;-).
So, I made a manual edit, since the delay seemed to be exactly 2 secs each time.

I double checked (by ear), playing LBA.DAT in vlc, and comparing track lengths with the rips from my cd (in foobar2000, then in vlc). Track 6 seems to be one sec shorter on GOG cue, but it's one sec of silence anyway. Also, you can here it's a split second shorter at the beginning of the tracks, but really a splittery-splitty-split...

Anyway, here's my LBA.DAT corrected, feel free to use it, tell me what you think, and if somebody wants to make a more precise job with an ascii editor, please do.

"FILE "LBA.GOG" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 10:47:52
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 14:00:01
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 17:00:19
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 19:32:45
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 22:20:34
TRACK 07 AUDIO
INDEX 01 25:07:32
TRACK 08 AUDIO
INDEX 01 26:45:72
TRACK 09 AUDIO
INDEX 01 30:27:07
TRACK 10 AUDIO
INDEX 01 32:02:62"
Post edited October 11, 2011 by MasodikTiasma