NOBUO UEMATSU et al
FINAL FANTASY ORCHESTRAL ALBUM
FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague
Arnold Roth, conductor

http://item.shopping.c.yimg.jp/i/j/dss_sqex-20010

01 Medley 2002 [FINAL FANTASY I~III] (7:44) | 02 Medley 2004 [FINAL FANTASY I~III] (7:30)
03 Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~ [FINAL FANTASY III] (3:03) | 04 The Dreadful Fight [FINAL FANTASY IV] (4:16)
05 Theme of Love [FINAL FANTASY IV] (4:58) | 06 Final Fantasy V Main Theme [FINAL FANTASY V] (3:57)
07 To Dear Friends [FINAL FANTASY V] (5:17) | 08 Opera "Maria and Draco" Full Version [FINAL FANTASY VI] (13:52)
09 The Mystic Forest [FINAL FANTASY VI] (4:13) | 10 F.F.7 Main Theme [FINAL FANTASY VII] (6:31)
11 One-Winged Angel [FINAL FANTASY VII] (4:28) | 12 Aerith's Theme [FINAL FANTASY VII] (5:04)
13 Eyes On Me [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (5:42) | 14 Liberi Fatali [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (3:10)
15 Balamb GARDEN~Ami [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (5:19) | 16 vamo' alla flamenco [FINAL FANTASY IX] (4:17)
17 Unfulfilled Feelings [FINAL FANTASY IX] (5:03) | 18 At Zanarkand [FINAL FANTASY X] (4:27)
19 Suteki da ne -Orchestra Version- [FINAL FANTASY X] (6:23) | 20 Ronfaure [FINAL FANTASY XI] (4:41)
21 The Dalmasca Estersand [FINAL FANTASY XII] (4:02) | 22 Fang's Theme [FINAL FANTASY XIII] (3:35)
23 Battle Medley 2012 [FINAL FANTASY I~XIV] (14:57)

FLAC - 44.1khz 16 bit - Bluray Extraction - Fully tagged in English

MEGA: https://mega.co.nz/#!BxRUjQ5T!aK6ibkZZSBucVn_yBULbzVGCzxI7uoPlnm4l7EW qRtY
Gamefront: http://www.gamefront.com/files/22892402/NU-FFOA-FLAC.rar

Here are the lossless music tracks from the Final Fantasy Orchestral Album, released on Bluray. The BD came with bonus MP3s, which have been posted before - but this is the first time the lossless audio has been ripped from the BD itself. The disc advertises itself as 96000hz recordings at 24-bit resolution - this is a load of crap. The new recordings (about 90 minutes) with the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague were recorded at 48000hz, and the rest of the album comes from older Japanese recordings which were made at 41000hz. The short explanation is we've all been hoodwinked. 96000khz is absolute lunacy (41000hz already exceeds human hearing range by a comfortable margin) - but in this case we have a different issue entirely; this is not a 96000khz recording. Nor is it a 24-bit recording! We've been hoodwinked again. Again, 24-bit is useful for editing and nothing more; it does nothing at all for humans. Dynamic range at 16 bits more than covers the possibilities of a symphony orchestra twice over and that's assuming it has been recorded in a completely natural environment with no compression and no limiting. This recording has lashings of both.

So... why am I telling you all this? Well, I'm trying to stem some of the "WAAH THIS UPLOAD SUCKS WHERE'S 24 BIT 96000hz???" nonsense that's going to come when people realise what they've downloaded. To save space (mine and yours) I have resampled back to 44100hz 16 bit; this gives you nice, sensibly-sized FLACs that are ready for CD, ready for whatever you want to play them on. The audio track at its original falsified resolution is almost 3gb, whereas when taken back to its native resolution clocks in at 600-odd mb.

If you don't believe me when I say you are literally missing nothing and you need to chase after the thing with the bigger number, by all means go and grab the torrent. It's at Nyaa. It's your bandwidth and your hard disc space going down the toilet. I'm sure you'll understand my desire not to upload 2.3gb of effectively empty space for no reason but to satisfy illogical audiophiles who demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of both digital audio and human physiology.

To summarise; even when a recording genuinely IS 24-bit 96000hz, there is absolutely no auditory benefit for a human listener - but this recording genuinely isn't so there's even less point. There is nothing but file size bloat to the order of around 500%.

So, what you do have is an utterly immaculate, CD quality album of Final Fantasy music - 90 minutes of brand new recordings (and a handful of new arrangements) and an additional 30-40 minutes of old favourites you've all heard before but which are fantastic and do warrant a re-listen. Enjoy! :)

Links coming up in a few minutes.

OMG Y NO 24 BIT? You are degrading the quality of music available to the general public!

J/K

Thanks for sharing this in a nice down sampled flac.

Lol, "MEGA rocks with Google Chrome." Whatever.

Anyway, let me be the firs...I mean, second to say thanks seeing as there are more likes than replies at the moment.

Thanks.

I guess I will go with GameFront given MEGA is very jerky for me (at the moment).

Hmm, I know... that's a mega pain in the butt at the moment. Apparently there is a way to hack it into working with other browsers but I'm not sure I agree with this... building a website that doesn't work with the market leader browser and saying it's because "your browser sucks" smacks of idiocy... Fix your damn website. They've done a big song and dance about using HTML5 - which isn't really ready for the mainstream yet... well, this seems like shoddy programming to me. Build the thing with technology that is available and reliable. Don't rely on brand new, bleeding-edge, untested, fundamentally broken things that nobody supports and then pester people to change their infrastructure to cope with it.

Anyway... If you have Chrome, Mega seems to work awfully well and stupidly fast. I'd rather upload to Mega given the chance because it's about four times faster than Gamefront.

Sirus: You're very welcome. In all seriousness, this album is full of lies. Have a look at the spectrograph at the bottom of this thread (Thread 124977)...

A dubious upscale all the way. Bringing it back to its native resolution seemed only fair. ;)

Hmm, I know... that's a mega pain in the butt at the moment. Apparently there is a way to hack it into working with other browsers but I'm not sure I agree with this... building a website that doesn't work with the market leader browser and saying it's because "your browser sucks" smacks of idiocy... Fix your damn website. They've done a big song and dance about using HTML5 - which isn't really ready for the mainstream yet... well, this seems like shoddy programming to me. Build the thing with technology that is available and reliable. Don't rely on brand new, bleeding-edge, untested, fundamentally broken things that nobody supports and then pester people to change their infrastructure to cope with it.

I seriously can't agree with you more. I normally don't bash Chrome seeing as anyone is entitled to use whatever browser they like, but I really hate it when websites treat me like the idiot I'm not by telling me their stuff will work "best" if I use X browser. Quite condescending, if you ask me.


Anyway... If you have Chrome, Mega seems to work awfully well and stupidly fast. I'd rather upload to Mega given the chance because it's about four times faster than Gamefront.

Firefox is my browser of choice, and I'm currently 50% done with the download using GameFront, with a few slowdowns here and there, of course.

Same here. I have used Firefox for many years. I'm happy with it. It's fast, it's secure, and it works. Until that isn't the case any more, why on earth would I change? Like you, I haven't got anything against Chrome - it's a great browser... but also like you I don't like some poxy website telling me to change browsers to make it work... when every other website in the whole world doesn't have the blindest bit of trouble... so how on earth is this my fault?

I know this in-browser encryption thing is new and revolutionary... but, well, maybe that's a sign that they should've done things a bit differently. I'd have been more than happy with an app. What is this obsession these days where *everything* has to be done inside a web page? I'd actually *rather* have an app.

Oh, well. Mega is new, blah de blah, give it a chance... :)

If it ain't broken...

But yeah, I agree; MEGA is still in its diapers, so why not cut it some slack. I'm sure with given time it will reclaim its place.

Interesting, so Mega has faster upload and Gamefront has faster download speed. Well Mega seems to have worked for me at least.

Also minor nitpick but wouldn't it be best to say "orchestral concert 2012"? I mean considering this isn't the only such concert that is the best way to differentiate between them.

I feel like I'm among giants (chaps who know what they're talking about).....

I'm here to say THANKS, for your awesome share!

Thansk a lot!

Heh.



to satisfy illogical audiophiles who demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of both digital audio and human physiology


Tango, dont waste your time. At least i know that some people still wont realize that if they can hear the slightly difference above that 41m-48m is because the "placebo effect". Is the same issue with the "new" SACD releases in the music scene...

"Oh god, this sounds so fucking good! 100000 better than that CRAP CD releases, hail the SACD format because is 80000 better sounding than the crappy CD albums"

And the true is the SOURCE is not the same. Is a completely different one, hence, thats why it sounds better. But ei, if they want to waste 10x of spacem fine by me and good for them (i suppose).

Anyways thanks for the upload, i already have the MP3 (which sounds awesome for me) but im gonna grab this too and this way i'll test the new "Mega" service... Seems to be reliable for uploaders.

Tango, dont waste your time. At least i know that some people still wont realize that if they can hear the slightly difference above that 41m-48m is because the "placebo effect". Is the same issue with the "new" SACD releases in the music scene...

Funny that you mention that, because, even though I like and don't mind downloading stuff in lossless format(s), I often think I'm just a victim of a placebo effect. If only I had dog ears maybe I'd notice the difference.

Well they say it is harder to tell the difference between lossy and lossless over headphones, which is how I did my latest test. I found I couldn't tell the difference between them. Others told me that over good speakers the difference is more noticeable - because the music has to be played louder to hear it at the same level (speakers are not right next to or in your ears).

Still, in this case, you could say it is worth having lossless so you can make a v0 encoding of the same music for yourself instead of keeping the 320kbps version they released officially.

I do prefer headphones over speakers, so I guess that makes sense. Now, my speakers aren't from an expensive brand, but they're not cheap either, but even still, I don't think I will be bothering with a lossy vs. lossless comparison anytime soon. And precisely because of the possibility of having a v0 encode is why I am very often partial to lossless format whenever available; there was a time where 320kpbs was all the rage for me, but after filling up an external HD rather quickly due to the monstrous file sizes, I couldn't ignore v0 anymore.

Boy, I don't want to derail this thread anymore, so I guess I'll stop while I can.

Thanks! :)

also I was wondering, does the Opera track, no 8, come without narration?

Is the BDrip 5.1 or 2.0? Can it be removed in the original?

the BD is listed itself as 5.1 mix

there is no opera track without narration.

the bd is 2.0 linear pcm stereo only.

Man I love this site.

So much great music.

Thanks for this man! I love the music of this series. Such a pity that it all went downhill (mostly) after Uematsu left.

Thankz!

Thanks !

Thank you.

Man I love this site.

So much great music.

Thanks for this man! I love the music of this series. Such a pity that it all went downhill (mostly) after Uematsu left.

Huh? Final Fantasy XII was fantastic and FF13 had some really great orchestral music. Though after that, yeah it was downhill.

Thanks a lot!


And just to be that guy, what did you use for sample rate conversion? I suppose it's possible to do SRC with an algorithm bad enough to cause enough rolloff, aliasing, and/or ringing to cause audible problems, but that really shouldn't be happening.

Huh? Final Fantasy XII was fantastic and FF13 had some really great orchestral music. Though after that, yeah it was downhill.

Sorry but IMO FFXIII mostly was terrible.

FFXII was good, but not as good as Uematsu's work.

by any chance has this been uploaded to Lossy? FLAC is too big for me at this time lol. If anyone has a link hit me up thanks!

Well, since it was requested, I don't see now why not...

Here you go: 01-12 (http://adf.ly/IDCaB) / 13-23 (http://adf.ly/IDCiK)

And just to be that guy, what did you use for sample rate conversion? I suppose it's possible to do SRC with an algorithm bad enough to cause enough rolloff, aliasing, and/or ringing to cause audible problems, but that really shouldn't be happening.

Not at all. :)

Both were done with SoX. There are some crappy algorithms out there, for sure... but whereas once they were the rule, today they're the exception. :)

The process in this case was really just to remove padding - particularly in the bit depth reduction, since the BD audio was nothing more than an upsample to start with. It's regrettable that it's been "through the mill" so to speak... but I guess it's no less than what your average CD audio has to sustain during the production process; record at high sample rate, edit, mix, process, downsample, dither, etc, etc.

About FFIII... Hamauzu and Uematsu are very different composers. FFXIII's orchestral music was excellent, but really only because it was significantly written by a competent composer (Yoshihisa Hirano) essentially based on themes by Hamauzu. The rest was surprisingly decent... but in the end, Hamauzu's best against Uematsu's best? No competition - not for me, anyway. What Uematsu lacks in technical flair he makes up in spades with his flawless sense of melody. His scores were about themes. Hamauzu's are really about textures.

Final Fantasy hasn't really had a big tune since Uematsu... and I think it's poorer because of that.

All that said, I don't know what Uematsu was smoking when he scored XIV... What the hell was THAT?! :(

Thank you very much. I hope people don't start using MEGA so much, because it is one of the worst filehosts I've ever used.

Keen to know why... it's fast, so far it's reliable, and the free service is good.

Keen to know why... it's fast, so far it's reliable, and the free service is good.

When you have internet that cuts out at any point in time, or slows down too much it fails. Usually I can work around these problems with a program that supports resumable downloading, but MEGA doesn't even give you a link. On top of that, I cannot download to my external HDD, or anywhere I want to, because no "save as" dialog opens.

You have my sympathy as regards the internet connection problem... but MEGA is still in beta and due to the encryption feature, it has to download everything and then decrypt... which is impossible if the browser doesn't have the file in cache.

Additionally, you can download to your external HDD... you just copy what you've downloaded there after you're done. ;)

I know it's an extra step... but it's one you can work around and I don't think it justifies writing off a fast and free host as "the worst you've ever used" - particularly when it's only going to get better... :)

Yeah, Chrome crashes on me every few minutes, too. Where's it going to put the file?

Thank you

Thanks for the upload. I have a question regarding track 8, "Opera". At the 8:35 into the piece there is a melody that starts playing that I cannot find in any of the other "Opera" recordings out there (such as the Distant Worlds recording). Is this another theme from the game just with lyrics added?

I've never played any of the FF games and this collection is my introduction into FF's music. If anyone can answer I'd appreciate it. Thanks

Thank you! It is certainly one of the best orchestrated compilations out there.

I think the rise of 'audiophile' recordings is in tandem with the death of creativity or quality in original music. Can't handle the fact that the music industry is dead? Well here's some of the same old crap but in huge file sizes with special edition packaging! Sort of like what they're doing with 'HD remakes' of lots of games...

On the issue of Hamauzu, I think the soundtrack to FF XIII can rightly be renamed : "Unlimited Saga: Lite." It just feels like a watered down, derivative version of that OST.

.

Something's up with the links. Mega stops downloading at 91% and the other one is removed. :(

I just tried the MEGA link and could download it completely. Game Front doesn't work in Ecuador.

Thanks for upload, its awesome. Is there posiblity to get this album in 24 bit?

Mega worked fine for me. Downloaded it without any trouble with chrome.

It's at Nyaa.

Brilliant! Ta muchly for the share :)

Can't believe I just found out that this was released earlier this year. -_-

Anyways, big thanks for uploading this!

About FFIII... Hamauzu and Uematsu are very different composers. FFXIII's orchestral music was excellent, but really only because it was significantly written by a competent composer (Yoshihisa Hirano) essentially based on themes by Hamauzu. The rest was surprisingly decent... but in the end, Hamauzu's best against Uematsu's best? No competition - not for me, anyway. What Uematsu lacks in technical flair he makes up in spades with his flawless sense of melody. His scores were about themes. Hamauzu's are really about textures.

Final Fantasy hasn't really had a big tune since Uematsu... and I think it's poorer because of that.

All that said, I don't know what Uematsu was smoking when he scored XIV... What the hell was THAT?! :(

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you Tango about Uematsu's FFXIV score - sure, a number of the battle themes were sub-standard (Underneath Bloody Banners, Nail of the Heavens, Bathed in Woodsin) and the Ul'dah zone BGM theme was famously ear-splittingly grating (The Twin Faces of Fate ~ The Theme of Ul'dah), but there was a lot of shinning gems amongst the plastic costume jewellery of FFXIV 1.0 original soundtrack - Answers, Primal Judgement, Navigator's Glory ~ The Theme of Limsa Lominsa, Twilight over Thanalan, On Windy Meadows, Holy Consult, The Forest's Pulse, the unnamed Path Companion track (my personal favourite), the instanced boss battle theme, the instanced dungeon battle theme, Tears for Mor Dhona, Tempest, to name some of my favourite tracks which are far better than how the soundtrack is made out to be.

Unfortunately, Uematsu was left out of the loop when it came to composing FFXIV 1.0's original soundtrack - due to the secrecy that surrounded the development of the original game he was literally given a brief background on where the track was planned for the game and that was it. No screenshots, no in-game footage. Nothing. He literally was blind when composing it. So he did what any other composer in his situation would have done - took what he did know about the setting for the soundtrack and added cues from his previous work - it's why so many tracks in the soundtrack have obvious cues to tracks from the FFVII and VIII OSTs. It's a shame, as despite some letdowns which I mentioned, on the whole, FFXIV's OST was very good all things considered. But I guess I've gone off topic.

Anyway, thanks so much for uploading this Tango. :D Incidentally it should go without saying that despite the title of the last track (Battle Medley 2012), it doesn't actually feature any track from FFXIV, instead the track features a slow version of the Prelude, which naturally appears in all FF games and not just XIV. A pity, as I think Primal Judgement or Tempest especially would have made an excellent representative for FFXIV. Ah well. It's an excellent track on an excellent album none-the-less. :)

FINAL FANTASY Orchestral Album (2012) Soundtrack Score


Link 320kbps: FFOrchestral.zip (303,50 MB) - uploaded.net (http://uploaded.net/file/ej1wd3pl)

Tracklist:
01. Medley 2002 [FINAL FANTASY I~III] (07:46)
02. Medley 2004 [FINAL FANTASY I~III] (07:29)
03. Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~ [FINAL FANTASY III] (03:02)
04. The Dreadful Fight [FINAL FANTASY IV] (04:16)
05. Theme of Love [FINAL FANTASY IV] (04:57)
06. Final Fantasy V Main Theme [FINAL FANTASY V] (03:57)
07. To Dear Friends [FINAL FANTASY V] (05:17)
08. Opera 'Maria and Draco' Full Version [FINAL FANTASY VI] (13:52)
09. The Mystic Forest [FINAL FANTASY VI] (04:12)
10. F.F.7 Main Theme [FINAL FANTASY VII] (06:31)
11. One-Winged Angel [FINAL FANTASY VII] (04:28)
12. Aerith's Theme [FINAL FANTASY VII] (05:03)
13. Eyes On Me [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (05:41)
14. Liberi Fatali [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (03:10)
15. Balamb GARDEN~Ami [FINAL FANTASY VIII] (05:18)
16. vamo' alla flamenco [FINAL FANTASY IX] (04:16)
17. Unfulfilled Feelings [FINAL FANTASY IX] (05:02)
18. At Zanarkand [FINAL FANTASY X] (04:26)
19. Suteki da ne -Orchestra Version- [FINAL FANTASY X] (06:23)
20. Ronfaure [FINAL FANTASY XI] (04:40)
21. The Dalmasca Estersand [FINAL FANTASY XII] (04:01)
22. Fang's Theme [FINAL FANTASY XIII] (03:34)
23. Battle Medley 2012 [FINAL FANTASY I~XIV] (15:00)

Thank you

Thanks.

Thanks... but, for my mp3 player (yes, I'm still using one), may I have a version in mp3, pleaaaase ToT?

Thanks to all guys! :cryingbatman:

Thanks :)

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks.

thanks

Nice! Thanks!