Does anyone know why the sounds were re-recorded in the gog.com version of Privateer? The game has many alterations from the original version...some good, some bad. The new voice actors are just plain bad a lot of times, and it really breaks immersion for me. All of the midi music has been altered from the original version as well. Bartenders/Guild Masters now have their own voice files rather than just text that was in the original.

The one good change that I can see is that the data pad uses the Righteous Fire version, where it shows the kill breakdown and what the various factions dispositions are toward you.

I still have the original version of Privateer, Righteous Fire, and the Speech Pack (woo 3.5" floppy disks!) that I use with dosbox...so I know the files are different. I just happened to try to play the gog.com version this time through because I picked it up when they had the Wing Commander bundle on sale. It's not a big deal I guess...I was just wondering if anyone could shed any light on why the game was altered.

Well, GOG has the CD version of Privateer. Though I can't say I'm familiar with the differences.

MIDI music plays slower when a controller is not connected; perhaps that's what you're noticing? The Wing Commander: Privateer spaceflight music speed fix corrects this issue.

Ahh, that could be it...I'm not sure what they changed between the disk version and the CD version, but the CD version was some time later, and I do seem to recall that it was "Privateer Gold" or something like that, and not just "Privateer".

I owned the diskette version of Privateer and been thinking about buying the CD release back then. But had no money as a kid.

The main differences to the original diskette releases were a) the additional missions/story from the Righteous Fire expansion already there and b) extended speech, beyond the Speech Pack diskette release. Basically, all on one CD plus extras.

Hope this helps solving the confusion.

Usually the diskette speech packs only added in-flight talk and a few lines (e.g. in Wing Commander II intro), the CD medium offered more space so all text lines were done by voice actors.
If I recall correctly the re-recording was done because the original voice actors from the diskette release weren't available. It would've been odd for the voices to change in the game, so all dialogue/text lines were re-recorded.

Indeed, compared by today's standard the sound quality is low, but was pretty good for 1993+.