Fist of the North star – Ken`s rage (AT3)

Here I present you my newest streamed rip, this time of PS3 version of the game that had been released under the name of Hokuto musou in Japan in March but has made its way to USA and EU called Fist of the North star – Ken`s rage only by November. I was looking forward to check its rip out since I heard an official release and here it is, even tagged according to an OST tracklist for your convenience plus 2 duplicates are removed as well. Why PS3? A reasonable amount of PS3 games is not even RARed up so that you can just grab 143 MBs of music instead of downloading the whole 15 GBs game (like I did as I was lucky to find such version of this specific game).

But since it`s a streamed rip you should apply a few actions to the downloaded files before you`re able to easily listen to them or export them in any audio format you prefer: get the tool (http://aluigi.altervista.org/papers.htm#quickbms) which you are going to use to apply the script written by Alpha23
idstring RIFF
goto 0x14
get CODEC short
if CODEC == 624
cleanexit
endif
goto 0x3c
get INFO long
FindLoc SIZE string "data" 0 ""
math SIZE += 4
goto SIZE
get SIZE long
savepos DATA
set MEMORY_FILE binary "\x65\x61\x33\x3\x0\x0\x0\x0\x7\x76\x47\x45\x4f\x42 \x00\x00\x01\xc6\x00\x00\x02\x62\x69\x6e\x61\x72\x 79\x00\x00\x00\x00\x4f\x00\x4d\x00\x47\x00\x5f\x00 \x4c\x00\x53\x00\x49\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x40\x00\x dc\x00\x70\x00\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x4b\x45 \x59\x52\x49\x4e\x47"
putVarChr MEMORY_FILE 0x400 0x1334145 long
putVarChr MEMORY_FILE 0x404 0xffff6000 long
putVarChr MEMORY_FILE 0x420 INFO long
get FIRST long
putVarChr MEMORY_FILE 0x460 FIRST long
math DATA += 4
math SIZE -= 4
append
log MEMORY_FILE DATA SIZE
append
get NAME basename
string NAME += ".aa3"
math SIZE += 0x460

log NAME 0 SIZE MEMORY_FILE
to AT3s. Resulting AA3s can be opened in Sony Soundforge and be listened to \ exported in preferred music format of yours.
PS. I don`t really get why sound files are all 6 channel while nearly all of them only use 4 channels for storing sound data but anyways.

MEGAUPLOAD – The leading online storage and file delivery service (http://megaupload.com/?d=JWSFI2N2)
Ken`sOutrage.7z (http://mediafire.com/?0v906k7nn3futc1)

Hm, would be easier for users to have a version that is already converted to playable *.aa3 or just *.ogg -q10. Not everybody wants to download and crack SoundForge Pro just to decode the files.

First off – I guess that you don`t need specifically Pro to decode them (although I didn`t check), I found out that I was applying wrong script in the 1st place (saved AA3 header script under the name of AT3 to AA3 by mistake). Secondly – if you consider AA3s already playable what`s the reason of mentioning SoundForge at all? You process AT3s so that resulting files are AA3s using only QuickBMS which is free and then you may use something different from SoundForge.
Anyways I searched a little and found out that Sony actually offers at least 3 more tools to open AA3 so that I can think about mirroring my rip in AA3 if you really think that obtaining a fully-functional version of ACID (or Vegas) pro would be less difficult. So it`s up to you and anyone else interested as reuploading is not a big deal for me.

It was just a suggestion… The only program I know that plays aa3 files is KMPlayer. And yeah ok, it can’t play all at3 formats. It can record output audio but only in 1x speed. It can’t decode the files. The files you uploaded aren’t playable without the header manipulation and even after you need one of three very specific programs to decode them. Big audio editing programs that normally cost more than $200 each and have hundreds of other functions. So if someone wants to play this rip, he/she has to:
– download the files
– download QuickBMS
– save the script
– apply the script to the files
– download one of three quite big programs and crack it
– batch-decode the header-manipulated files to WAV
That’s a LOT of effort compared to downloading the files, maybe dl a Winamp plugin or codec and just playing them… All in all that’s not my understanding of a streamed rip. No offense, just a personal opinion. Be honest, how many people do you think have the ability to convert and play this upload? In my opinion less than 1% of this whole community. Look at all the questions on how to install a Winamp plugin or how to open a *.rar file! Even my streamed rips, which are mostly playable in Winamp with a single plugin only get about 10-20 downloads. Count off 60% of users accidentially downloading the files, realizing that they have no idea how to play them and deleting them again, that’s 6-12 people who download and know what they are doing. You’re one of these very very few. Of course your efforts are honorable, I just want to put them into a (hopefully realistic) perspective.

I agree with alpha23.

Even though i do already transcoded rips so people can play them right off the bat i still get questions on how to play ogg and how to open rar files.

That’s not my understanding of a streamed rip.
Fair deal as you`ve actually been saying that

Every file is left in its original format, only the header is transformed so that it’s decodable/playable.

Even my streamed rips, which are mostly playable in Winamp with a single plugin only get about 10-20 downloads.
Just for curiosity does the same apply to your rips of games which music is originally in OGG or MP3 (IE formats which "can be played right off the bat")? For example has your UFC 2010 rip had more or less than 10-20 downloads after having been posted for 3 months?

I`m also checking out if these AA3s are playable in KMplayer then I`ll decide whether to reupload them in AA3 or OGG or anything else (if someone else posts here asking about his beloved format).

Can someone put an mp3 version? I’m not an audiopphile, and I don’t want to go into all this trouble in order to listen to the soundtrack…

ROFL, see JBTND? He even speaks of "audiophile" although that’s got absolutely nothing to do with this very conversation!
And no, almost none of my streamed sources has more than 10-20 downloads, no matter if the format is MP3 or OGG or whatever. Just the word "streamed" throws people back because they don’t know what it is. At last, I don’t mind.
And just a note: If you upload *.aa3 files and refer to KMPlayer, people will ask where they can "download this program". After all I’ve experienced in this forum, I have pretty much resignated…
Like me, you’re one of the rippers that just deserve a better place in the internet, with users that at least know what "frequency" means… 😉

LMAO!

Ive had one member said to me that he will try to change the mp3 birrate to a higher quality just by doing an autogain on it, i thought he was trolling at first.

Ive had one member said to me that he will try to change the mp3 birrate to a higher quality just by doing an autogain on it, i thought he was trolling at first.
I’ve just tried to comprehend what this person was thinking. At first I thought, well, if you decode an MP3 file to wav, apply an auto-gain to it and re-encode it with automatic VBR (32-320 kbps), you might get a higher bitrate because the auto-gain adds artificial information to the stream… The I realized that this person may be a total N00B *lol*!!!!

But seriously, I think there might really be a method to interpolate frequency information somehow. If you look at an MP3 with let’s say 192kbps CBR, you get the typical 16kHz frequency cut. If you look at the file in lossless with no frequency lost, some frequency peaks look like a logical supplement to the beginning peak till 16kHz. Interpreting those peaks as vectors or merely curves, you might be able to simulate those peaks and thus get back some information. Of course that would be a really memory-excessive process but who knows, maybe it works… You could first "train" the program with a method called neuronal networks and after let’s say one hundred thousand examples (pairs of 16kHz-cut and full-frequency examples of the same stream) you might get listenable results. But who am I talking to… probably myself. 😉

ROFL, see JBTND? He even speaks of "audiophile" although that’s got absolutely nothing to do with this very conversation!
And no, almost none of my streamed sources has more than 10-20 downloads, no matter if the format is MP3 or OGG or whatever. Just the word "streamed" throws people back because they don’t know what it is. At last, I don’t mind.
And just a note: If you upload *.aa3 files and refer to KMPlayer, people will ask where they can "download this program". After all I’ve experienced in this forum, I have pretty much resignated…
Like me, you’re one of the rippers that just deserve a better place in the internet, with users that at least know what "frequency" means…

Guys, there are lots of people (including me), that appreciate your efforts and respect the fact that you put in your time to make these rips. BUT I think that also many people still listen to their mp3s, instead of flac, lossless e.t.c.

Personally I maintain a rather large collection of VGM, and I prefer mp3 due to it’s filesize, and let’s face it, it is still amongt the most commonly used sound file formats.

And you also might forget, that not everyone has the audio equipment in order to properly enjoy the more advanced sound file formats. That for my "audiophile" comment.

And yeah, probably I don’t know all the stuff you do about frequencies, wavelengths e.t.c, but isn’t it a bit snobbish of you to speak of better places in the net along with better users? I mean no disrespect, but so should you. You can’t expect from people to know this stuff the way you do.

I was already going to encode in MP3 but realised that it`ll downmix 6 channels to just 2 and result will sound quite bad when compared to source (I checked it out myself when was figuring out what to do with that single 6ch AC2 track and figured out that it should better be left as it is). After that I decided to use oggenc2 to preserve all 6 channels. If you so desire MP3s you can get OST from here (http://anonym.to/?http://rapidshare.com/files/386859923/hokmu_st.rar) or GameMP3s as they behaved quite honestly this time filling an OST with as much tracks as there actually is in the game (well, my rip has 41 while OST contains 40 but it doesn`t hurt much, don`t you think?).
So my 2nd and most likely last mirror is over here on MU (http://megaupload.com/?d=ELWNK707) and MF (http://www.mediafire.com/?1kn923au77w2zkk).

Thanks for the effort mate!

Thanks dude!

Glad you ran for OGG! =)
Sorry if I sounded disrespectful. Providing source files is not about audiophile, totally to be exact. It’s about providing the original files without any stream changes. Background is that the original files are normally a lot smaller than even MP3. And, not changing the stream of course provides better quality, only that much about "audiophile".

Yeah ogg doesnt really go well with my MP3 player

Background is that the original files are normally a lot smaller than even MP3.
This! Surely some old games use CD-audio as well as a few modern ones (for example let`s take game of 2007 Kawasaki quad bikes which music is in 48KHz WAV and takes about 2/3 of the game size) but they`re in the minority.
And secondly: that would possibly decrease an amount of rips like this one (forums.ffshrine.org/f72/undead-knights-game-rip-70220) of a PSP game when source AT3s (and PSP variation of AT3 is the lowest quality one) get not only transcoded but in 320 CBR! Should I say that there`s no sign of such quality in original AT3 file? I think that people who actually know a bit about specific formats would download streamed rips and edit / convert them for others on the forum. While Samaska has possibly ripped a single game in his life and was generous to share it here he obviously didn`t know that much about given codec to not let unnecessary upconvert happen.

This! Surely some old games use CD-audio as well as a few modern ones (for example let`s take game of 2007 Kawasaki quad bikes which music is in 48KHz WAV and takes about 2/3 of the game size) but they`re in the minority.
And secondly: that would possibly decrease an amount of rips like this one (forums.ffshrine.org/f72/undead-knights-game-rip-70220) of a PSP game when source AT3s (and PSP variation of AT3 is the lowest quality one) get not only transcoded but in 320 CBR! Should I say that there`s no sign of such quality in original AT3 file? I think that people who actually know a bit about specific formats would download streamed rips and edit / convert them for others on the forum. While Samaska has possibly ripped a single game in his life and was generous to share it here he obviously didn`t know that much about given codec to not let unnecessary upconvert happen.
Hm, I’ve seen PSP games with better quality than some PS3 games… Anyway, AT3 is a special case for me because the format is strictly ‘secret’ and more than closed source. I don’t want people to have to download big editors only to decode AT3, so I provide OGG -q10 streamed sources to get to the original as best as possible without having to provide a lossless version (which would definitely make no sense here). Last but not least: transcoding will always change the stream itself and thus decrease the quality – but if users need to go through a hazzle to play the files, I provide OGG -q10 versions.
What you could do: upload a working version of Souny SoundForge Pro 10.0a, provide the *.aa3 files and the *.smpl areas for the decoded wave files later on (just link to my smpl extractor and injector).

Thank you JBTND. Just downloading the OST now.

there is official soundtrack in this games:
KECH-1547~8 | Hokuto Musou Original Sound Track – VGMdb (http://vgmdb.net/album/17846)

this is real nice soundtrack i have it and that soundtrack rocks =)