FLHQmusics Remaster (Read description) addon - Freelancer

INFOS :
Original Soundtrack by Visual Music, James Hannigan and Andrew Sega
Released the 18 November 2003
Edited and looped by Artofeel : Moddb.com
Remastered by Freestalker.fr
Kusari Danger relooped by Freestalker.fr
Br01 and Li01 bar musics restored by Freestalker.fr

SUMMARY :
It's a remaster to match ingame music audio quality.

MAKING OF :
I present you the remasterization of FL OST because there was some differences in term of audio quality between the game and the CD OST.
I was looking into the audio spectrum and it gaves me the proof that I was right. So I decided to restore the CD OST to the game OST by using some equalizations.
This choice has been made to have a more accurate representation of what we had when playing the game with the missing information brought back by the audio CD. I took the game OSTs, I resampled them to 44100 Hz and tried to match the the sound volume of the CD ones. I plotted the spectrum of the two files to do so and it allowed me to equalize the CD OST to match the ingame files.
I noticed that Kusari Danger was also too long. In fact in the Suite there is 4 parts : Space, Danger, Ambiant sounds and Battle. The Danger looped by Artofeel contained the third part that wasn't there in the game release.
Planets didn't need to be done. Their spectrum are so close, and perhaps the same, to the game OST that the quality is the same. With the extra information above 10 kHz of cours !
I restored "music_bar_br01" and "music_bar_li01" as they had lower quality than the other files. I used Thimeo Stereo Tool to do an approximation of the informations that was missing. I had to put a silence in the end of the file before processing. The files' phase changed and removed the end of the original file after processing.
I also remastered some campaign musics that needed it.
The Vanilla Victory musics have been remastered avoiding the final mission victory track to be repeated everytime you win a mission. The result is a little bit grainy, it can be the room accoustic that made some Reverb or anything else that came from the original recording. But I think it's not shoking. I used Thimeo Stereo Tool to achieve the desired result. It reduced MPEG compression. It created information with the Absolute Highs feature. It reduced the background noise. And finally I equalized the sound files. I amplified frequencies above 10 kHz with the VST TDR Nova. All of this lead to a less compressed sound and give the feeling that it was saved in a higher quality format. (The files were originaly sampled at 22050 Hz with compression, I upsampled them to 44100 Hz)
I tested it to see if the Music Pack worked. It works very well !

TO INSTALL IT :
Just extract the attached Folder into the "mods" folder of FLMM. You can do it by opening FLMM and go to "Tools > Open mods folder". It can be used with any version of FLMM as there is no XML files and Plugins. It is also compatible with any mod that doesn't contain the music files.

TROUBLESHOOTING :
If you have some problems to load your saves, install the 1.1 patch : Moddb.com It worked for me.

COPYRIGHTS AND RIGHTS :
Us it widely ! If you want to put the musics in your mod, feel free ! :)

CREDITS :
Visual Music, James Hannigan and Andrew Sega to have made the OST of Freelancer of cours !
Artofeel for his looped version as it mainly was my raw material.
Audacity creators to have implemanted their EQ Curve plug in for a while. It allowed me to avoid long approximated graphic and parametric equalization sessions. I used also some normalization when it was needed.
Foobar2000 creators to make me able to use the needed VSTs with the VST Wrapper. Their DSP chain feature allowed me to do the 3 Victory and bars musics.
I do a big thank to Thimeo Audio Technology for their Stereo Tool to enable me to restore the 3 Victory and bars musics.
TOKYO DAWN RECORD for TDR Nova VST. It allowed me to do minimal equalization.

SOURCES :
Artofeel HQ Original Musics
FL Bonus DVD
FL Ingame OST