On Gamerips: Suites or Lots of Individual Tracks?

So, I was going through slippyToad’s cyclopian rip (Thread 101401) of Skyward Sword and a curious thought went through my head: so many files! The nearly 11 hours are divided into 369 .mp3’s. It’s hard to distinguish one file from the next. All of the letters merge together, making it hard to casually select a cue.

However, it is complete. Every theme, every motif, and every variation of them are all here. If you heard it in the game, you can find it here. It is, by every definition of the word, the complete soundtrack of the game.

Let’s compare it to the other camp of gameripping, the "listening experience" that I subscribe to. We don’t put every single variation, and we certainly don’t put in every single stinger. We consolidate the .mp3s to as low as possible. We don’t have every single variation – we usually just do the "full" theme and chuck out the rest. It may not be complete, regardless of the actual length, but it is certainly a good deal more listenable.

The way I deal with this is that I pretty much merge all of the variations into a single track. That way, you have all of the music, but the actual number of files are consolidated. However, that does bring up the problem of if someone just wants to listen variation C, he won’t have that option unless he loads up an audio editing program and risk reducing the quality of sound by saving an .mp3 as an .mp3.

Before I open this up to discussion, let me say one thing: neither approach is wrong. They are simply just different philosophies on the same thing: bringing game music to the greater public. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages, and even following the middle road as I do has it’s quirks.

So, gentlemen and fair ladies of FFShrine: what is your take on this? If you had a choice in the matter, which side would you prefer?

I much prefer a smooth listen, especially if its obvious the tracks were written to be strung together. I understand why others would like all of the material, but I prefer to sit back, relax, and be taken on a well-integrated experience that allows me to actually enjoy the music I’m hearing rather than tick off a list in the back of my head that, yes, it has that obscure variation heard only behind the waterfall in the third area. On the other hand, nothing is more annoying than discovering that the one piece you were really hoping would be included is missing.

I subscribe more to the philosophy of the former, but the latter allows each individual to tailor their own listening experience — everything from the whole shebang to their own rendition of a smooth listen. The latter is preferable from a release standpoint, but I would always trim to my own preferences.

I can’t imagine going through 11 hours of Zelda music though. That’s nearly at "Der Ring des Nibelungen" lengths. Yikes. 🙂

I Prefer to Include all tracks, then organize my rips like main themes first, then main score tracks then stingers last.

For me there are several elements, which I prefer to treat separately.
First, if you’re going to rip a game, you might as well rip all of it. You can never be sure what people are going to like, and it’s easier to delete tracks than add them. (On a side note, I love stingers and have a large number of them on my playlist.)
Next, the key problem for both a ripper and a listener is documentation. To simply use internal file names make for a maddeningly experience for those who may be looking for specific bits of music. Better is to organize them according to what they correspond with. (For instance, all my Ratchet and Clank music says what level they come from.)
It is important to put some polish on this. If I get a game rip that has tracks that just cut off (instead of ending, or at least fading out after it repeats,) I’ll usually delete it as unlistenable.
All this said, I understand and respect why people want ‘suites.’ Not everybody wants to wade through 11 hours of music to find the gems they want, so picking and choosing the very best is great for those who want an entry level experience to the music. In such cases, I think it would be best to put out both versions, and let people decide which they want to download.
As a tangent, let me add my own peeve about game rips: games that use existing score music (like Lego Star Wars or a number of Gundam games,) which have no new music. It’s never going to sound as good as the original material, it usually has awkward edits, and it is rarely as complete as an actual score album. I suppose there are cases where there is music in the game that’s never been released otherwise, but I’ve never come across it…

Mindless blathering over now,
JonC

individual tracks.

sometimes people put them together (even if they were MEANT to be together) and i have to edit the track back to its original form.