This is a personal project I've been working for a while. I've heard many rips of Aria of Sorrow and pretty much everything is low quality. Worse, the original soundtracks from Konami sound way crapier than the rips. Looking around I found a little tool called gbaMusRiper (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/881/) that "allows to rip music and sound font from games using the �sappy� sound engine, which is extremely common among commercial GBA games."

How this works, you may ask? It rips the music into a MIDI file and a sample bank or soundfont. This means that if you have a player that can play soundfonts, if you play the MIDI file it'll pull the samples from said soundfont. Unfortunately, while you can get a clearer sound from the MIDI files, the samples remain at the same compressed quality. One alternative would be to edit such Soundbank and replace the samples one by one. That is out of the question for me, since my knowledge is limited and the Soundfont contains also the SFX from the game, that is over 300 sounds.

So, to make it short: I took the MIDI and the Soundfont and used a decent player to write the files. I'm presenting a small sample with the track "Ruined Castle Corridor". One is the sound "as it is" from the player, no EQ or anything, looped twice. The other is an "Enhanced" version with some fidling using Izotope Ozone. I'd like people to try both and tell me how would it be best to present the soundtrack or which settings should I fiddle with (Bass, Treble, reverb, etc.) At the end, I'll present both versions to download, tagged and everything.

Without further ado, here is the SAMPLE (http://www.mediafire.com/?zwod2zbt9g1srgz).

Also, for those interested in trying their own approach to the MIDIs and the Soundbank, here is a zip. It's 400 MIDI files and the corresponding Soundbank (Aria.sf2). HERE (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/0A32NT0H/AriaRip.rar).

UPDATE: The first try of Aria of Sorrow Soundtrack, for your consideration. Download: PART 1 (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/07IGOTID/Beta01.part1.rar) / PART 2 (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/0TMWGNMF/Beta01.part2.rar).

Nice to see an Aria of Sorrow project, I really like some tunes from this game. But your mediafire link seems to be broken/blocked or something.

I recommend using Tindeck for hosting, since you can just listen to the track online. I also recommend gba2midi as a possible alternative for extracting midis, since it has a GUI. A bit tricky to use at first, but the same could be said for gbaMusRiper for anyone not used to command line programs. Still, it's awesome to see someone else make use of these programs for something like this. Keep it up!

Thanks for the advice. I'll try to use that program too. I did another upload to offer more mirrors. SAMPLE (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/EUHSOF3U/Aria.rar).

Sounds really good. Great effort !! The original does indeed sound dull in comparison to your version

I also recommend gba2midi as a possible alternative for extracting midis, since it has a GUI. A bit tricky to use at first, but the same could be said for gbaMusRiper for anyone not used to command line programs.

I tried gba2midi and it's pretty good but... It doesn't work quite right. Or probably I don't know how to use it properly, because it rips the same MIDI files and the samples in some formats I don't really understand. I'll try to look into it, but in the meantime I'll check. But thanks!

cant wait, lookin forwerd 2 it

Here's the first test of the complete soundtrack. Download: PART 1 (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/07IGOTID/Beta01.part1.rar) / PART 2 (http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/0TMWGNMF/Beta01.part2.rar).

You guys... I'm not complaining. I've seen at least 10 people donwloaded the files, I would like to have some feedback. :(

It's pretty good. There's some annoying instruments in Ruined Castle Corridor and Forgotten Garden but the rest it's great.
Much better than any existing rip.

Thanks for the input. When you say annoying instruments, you mean something like loud noises/too low/too high/too bright? I'd like to know to check if anything can be done.

For example, in "Forgotten Garden" there's a flute that sounds a bit high pitched and also in "Castle Corridor", especially the first part.
Nonetheless, it still sounds better than GBA hardware.

I tried gba2midi and it's pretty good but... It doesn't work quite right. Or probably I don't know how to use it properly, because it rips the same MIDI files and the samples in some formats I don't really understand. I'll try to look into it, but in the meantime I'll check. But thanks!

Make sure Output Instruments and Extract Sequence Data are checked. You should then have the midi file(which separates each sound channel into its own tracks depending on the editor you use) and a folder containing wav files. Some files would need to be pitch corrected.

Not even sure half of these download links in the mirror site work--all of them are super annoying and the only ones that aren't in comparison (mediafire and depositfile) have removed the .rars for copyright infringement. Maybe get a better hosting solution?

Two of them are fairly simple and unobtrusive: 2shared and Zippyshare. ZS has only a captcha with no waiting time, so I don't understand the complain.

I tried 2shared, it seemed to only have links to adware called "Ilivid" or another one called "freearchiver.exe" so not quite sure what is to be done about those. Zippyshared instead lets you type in the captcha but then the server connection to the download lags out, if you get what I mean--also sorry if the complaint sounded bitchy, just wanted to see how this sounds. :F

Sent you a PM, hope you can get them now.

There is some kind of effect that makes some tracks sound like they're being played in a large room, which is sort of nice--this does seem to at least be missing the noticeable 'hiss' of noise the official ost has, perhaps the official one was made using actual hardware? Not sure. I don't want to call the large room effect 'echo' exactly, but it's some kind of slight reverb, like the tracks have a slight decay to them--which I think adds to it. Didn't notice any issues with the instrumentation but I personally prefer some tracks to be longer--namely the 1 minute long or shorter ones, but I'm just a weirdo who likes even short tracks to be looped a bunch of times.

The Official OST is (excuse me the expression) crap. Not even the actual hardware sound that muffled and has so much hiss. Seems like Konami recorded it with a faulty line-in cable and called it a day. The slight reverb is part of the filter I used. I left it because it doesn't affect much and adds depth to the music, IMHO. Glad you liked it!

I always loved the Chapel song in the soundtrack. But listening to it remastered made me realized what I was missing. Thank you for giving me my favorite AoS song in a new light.

Alo, I just got to this page, haven't listen to it but I bet they sound better than Konami's shitty sound. Anyway, long time ago got some midis then use a program don't remeber which one to listen to midis, then convert to mp3, those are the best ones i have ever listened to for castlevania aria and dissonance. Hope u can send me ur mail so I can share, they are not complete, only few songs, inner, undervoir and dissonance is chapel of diss...and tower I think, not sure, gotta check them, please send me an PM so we can get in touch. Thanks.

If anyone's gonna download this, Filefactory still works.

Hi AFMG,

Here's a gift for you :



best regards,
JacKc.

Anyone that has part 2 ? :/