could someone tell me the pros and cons of emulation rip vs official soundtracks

There are many ways to interpret your question, there are many differences and cases which could apply here.

For Example: You can compare Retro City Rampages Soundtrack with it's Ingame Sound because the Sound gets generated as you play with a Tracker. But in Discuss Rayman Origin's the Soundfiles are just on the Disc , not some kind of Tracker or MIDI File.

I'll go with the second option here because tha'ts what I guess what you meant.


Soundquality: Usually the CD has a higher quality because the in-Game music needs to get altered and compressed so it doesn't interfere with other sounds (Jump-noises etc.) and it often is in a lossy format like .ogg or .mp3.

Amount of Music: The Soundtrack CD's usually don't have every little Song, sometimes mixing Songs of one Area together to Medleys, or in bad cases cutting a lot of Songs short just so squeeze more onto one CD. Some Songs you like may not even be on the CD.

I could say that the OST would mean you would to pay some extra 10 $, bet in this Forum I don't think that's really an Argument.

thanks for the reply
I am talking about .spc or .usf or .psf/2 for example. Are the ost's usually better in terms of accuracy/timing/sound quality? Also what about gc/wii rips how do they compare to their respective osts?

thanks for the reply
I am talking about .spc or .usf or .psf/2 for example. Are the ost's usually better in terms of accuracy/timing/sound quality? Also what about gc/wii rips how do they compare to their respective osts?

I would assume as with any CD release that, provided the mastering was done correctly, the sound quality is superior. This isn't always the case though. But take a look at the new Sonic OST that covers 1 & 2 on the Genesis, the sound quality sounds technically the same as the game, in a way, but the mastering, added reverb, etc. make it probably the best soundtrack release I've ever seen.

Sounds about right. So in general I should trust the OST over an emulation rip in terms of accuracy and quality.

yeah, In things like gc/wii Rips you can look at what I have posted previously :)

for things like .spc .usf however

The Sound, in the game, gets created while you play.The files are basically a blueprint, telling the system which samples to use when or when which filter has to be used etc.

OST:
The OSTs are usually, when done right, the way it is intended to be.
They can kinda go around Hardware Limitations (for example, listen to early Mother 3 Rips and compare to the new Rip where they extracted the Samples and MIDI files individually and later put them together again Via Music Programms like LMMS, thusly avoiding the GBA Music-Chip, you can clearly hear the Quality)

Emulated Rips:
The Sound is just like you hear it from the Game
The music Rips can be infected by the Hardware (slow Hardware means that some samples or effects will be deplored to early/too late or similar things)(see the GBA example above).
On the other hand, it could, looking at it with a strictly technical Standpoint, to a better Rip because you could go around the CD Limit of 1141bit/s and 44k mhz , but that the percantage that that will actually happen is extremely low + when contributed digitally, the OST can hit this quality just as well :P AND you wouldn't be able to hear anything better if you go higher than CD Quality anyway)

Well overall I think the ost's or line in recordings are better because there is no decompression involved. This creates a delayed playback. There is no decompression involved in the audio when it is played on its original hardware. You also notice it in flac files even (oh no he didn't)... yea I did. Flac has to be decompressed so it is delayed which causes distortion.

You also notice it in flac files even (oh no he didn't)... yea I did. Flac has to be decompressed so it is delayed which causes distortion.
No it doesn't cause any distortion you're utterly mistaken. (just try and post about that on Hydrogenaudio, your arguments will be slapped in your face)
But if I followed your way of thinking, then only wav or aiff files sound like the original music. Except you don't know that most music in modern games are stored as lossy in the game files (Ragnarok Online uses MP3, Lineage II uses OGG with a modified header, and I'm even talking about the N64/gamecube/wii etc... which have some very lossy music because of the limited media size). And that must be one reason why they release OSTs, to have the best sounding music possible, close to studio quality (for normal non-golden ears it's close enough alright).

About line-in recordings
Well it adds noise which comes from the magnetic fields that induce a current on the line-in plug and the cable used to connect it to the console.
Unless you have an optic plug and cable, but then (I think) only the PS2 and PS3 have optic audio out.

Supposedly a CD or Digital Release would have the best quality... but then again, there are examples of the contrary. The official soundtrack for the GBA games for Aria of Sorrow, Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance sound like garbage. Even Line-In recordings (rips) sound a lot better that what is offered in those CDs. Now, it took Capcom two tries to release a decent compilation of Rockman NES/Famicom music. Compare Capcom Music Generation Famicom Music Complete Works Rockman 1~6 (http://vgmdb.net/album/255) with the newest release, ROCKCAN Sound E Can (Rockman 25th Anniversary) (http://vgmdb.net/album/33749).

Now, using some plugins you could achieve interesting results, as stereo soundtracks of NES/Famicom games compared to original CD releases. AFAIK, Konami has used some stereo effects on the Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania official soundtracks. Prurists may argue that plugins/stereo effects are not how the original hardware handled the audio or that a plugin is not the real hardware, so it's a matter of what do you preffer.

Bottom line: IMHO, if there's no CD release of any given game or if the quality is poor, a rip is a pretty good chance to listen to that music.

Yea thanks for all the info guys it really helps, I really want that CPCA-10264~73 | ROCKCAN Sound E Can (Rockman 25th Anniversary) - VGMdb (http://vgmdb.net/album/33749) for the reason you just mentioned.

Sort of related to the topic; For awhile I've been wanting to rip the boot sounds and background music from the PS & PS2. I have managed to find a 24bit wav file for the PS but it cuts off just a second too early (you can only tell when the file signal is amplified). So I'm thinking my only options here are either a Line In rip or ripping from an emulator (if there are any that can do that). For Line In I guess I'd just be taking the PS2 audio cords and plugging them through the mic jack and recording with audacity...

Anyway...thoughts on which would be the better way to do this and keep the best sound quality? As per my preference I'd really wish there was a way to rip the hardware files for it and convert them but that's not really an option here I don't think. Unless someone is aware of a PSF/PS2F rip of these sounds? I've never heard of one though.

I always enjoyed console menu music and sounds. But yea IMO emulation rips are inferior to line in regardless of magnetic interference. When digital music is being played it has to be decoded on the fly which causes distortion. Even .wav are decoded but the decoding speed is much faster than with a flac or an mp3. My personal favorite encoding for a portable audio player would be wma stereo low delay cbr 128kbps. Its a special wma format that decodes quickly to avoid distortion and it even slightly helps battery life on your portable dap. I know atrac3 or m4a might sound better especially atrac3 but I haven't tested yet. You could even argue higher bit rates like 320kpbs are inferior to lower ones because of the extra decoding involved. And VBR is my last choice because it constantly changes decoding speed for every frame of music so you'll get different levels of delay for each frame which is annoying. The closest thing to lossless format that is not an lp record is 24bit .wav files which are ginormous in size.

This is why I like hardfile rips. It's only a file conversion.

Guessing nobody else wants to input on this?

hardfile rips are conversions but they are meant to be played on their original hardware right? a pc isn't the same as a wii or gamecube because the sound output works differently right?

hardfile rips are conversions but they are meant to be played on their original hardware right? a pc isn't the same as a wii or gamecube because the sound output works differently right?
Well, in the context of the wii ripping tools thread, there's a batch file that converts the ripped audio. You basically pull the audio from the wii Iso in its native brstm file format. The batch file converts from this to wave. It'd be akin to using the XA files from a PS1 game, though PSF's should be the same thing. Sega Genesis' vgm files might not be quite the same though. PSF's are sort of when the audio is forced into the PSF container, VGM files, like those on project2612 are played by the Kega Fusion emulator and encoded as VGM. In that conversion, I think it's encoded like a Midi file, just being instructions on how to play it, and the VGM decoders read it the same way a Genesis sound chip would. The downside to that is that the VGM is made in real time as the emulator plays, which brings in possible artifacts like you mentioned earlier.

Basically, the hardfiles from the game itself require the least amount of fudging. It'd be like you taking the music from a PC game that uses Ogg and converting to Wav.

Which brings me back to my original point, what method of capturing the sounds from the PS & PS2 would have the purest signal? Cause I know you get some static with Line rips. And if I could record them from an emulator, that could induce artifacts. Trying to decide on the less of the 2 evils here. Could you even Line-In rip in 24Bit anyway? I'd assume it's practically pointless since the source isn't encoded that high anyway. Or since it's likely a midi of some sort, would that make the case different?

It's all pretty complicated. But that's how it is with compressed audio. You kinda wish there were a standard format but I can see why their isn't with consoles like the GC/Wii/WiiU all have their unique audio formats to try and get the best audio quality out of their hardware using the limited storage.
Like I said I prefer line in rips over emulator rips mainly because with emulator rips there is timing distortion but with a line in rip it's just a signal distortion I prefer the latter. Not really into 24bit audio file sizes are way too large for my hard-drive.