Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Gamerip Remastered

This is a personal project I’ve been pursuing for a while. The Castlevania GBA games have received no respect from Konami regarding a proper soundtrack. Every release sounds like crap, and they’ve done that twice. I’ve seen gamerips before, but althought the sound is better is still far from perfect.

Using gbaMusRipper, I’ve extracted the music from the ROM, looped and cleaned the results with a little tweaking here and there. It’s encoded in LAME MP3/VBR/Extreme setting. If anyone request FLAC or WAV I can provide too. Also, for those who want to do their own adjustments/loops/extended version, I can provide the raw audio. I hope this is good for someone. Enjoy!

MP3 V0: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!VxoxHBDZ!lLaDFjuUNxOKnbbgeDV4B6d8DdEmo0aZM-EkLJuzv7U)

FLAC: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!08AQnSpZ!d6aAynjupwg7WKDy_A2OibKBLXXZUGsYVU8Kowl QHO0)

UNTOUCHED WAV: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!x4hmySAa!TXy9HeQLauS_4QgYFpNBXD3Zy4mDmssgcuzVK58 gqkA)

RAW Extracted WAVs: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!V5Y30RbY!j6izWMk3eLKUGkBc8kgLEAjCwr3_PSpWDdHqO71 rU1U)

MIDI files with SF2 Soundfont (Normal):DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!th5xyBRS!sd_6NWYRjxVG5YCgduXmAfQ2UF07ymp3m8_VYOR aupc)

MIDI files with SF2 Soundfont (RAW):DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!Jo5SVbzQ!g4dOzwyCkV9LX9eUOOUrapoB8hVoPpmFbqWv01r 94fc)

Had a quick listen and seems a much better version from the bad quality official one, so major thanks. But I just can’t enjoy Ruined Castle Corridor with that weird drone sound. It’s super distracting and, in my opinion, ruins the best track of the game. Was it a necessary addition?

Thanks for the awesome rip!! Cheers!

This is quite nice, it’s probably the only version I heard that doesn’t have that echo/noise throughout all tracks.
Any chance you could give Circle of the Moon the same treatment? Not interested in Harmony of Dissonance as that is a terrible game in every single way, gameplay, graphics and audio.

Thanks a lot!

Had a quick listen and seems a much better version from the bad quality official one, so major thanks. But I just can’t enjoy Ruined Castle Corridor with that weird drone sound. It’s super distracting and, in my opinion, ruins the best track of the game. Was it a necessary addition?

Sorry, I don’t understand what do you mean with "drone" sound. I can tell you it’s not perfect and probably it’ll never be (I’ll explain below), but one thing I can fix is if the filters I applied may have distorted the sound. I would have to check, since it sounds right on my end, but I’m aware they might be a distortion (track Epilogue, for example, has that on my book, but left it as it is so people can tell me exactly what to fix). As I said before, I can upload the sound I extracted untouched if anyone wants to try their own approach. I even encourage anyone to try, because they might have a better way to do it. I’m far for being an audiophile or an expert in this.

Unless someone at Konami digs the sample files used in the making of the game (one thing I reeaaaaaally doubt, since they pretty much don’t care as seen in the soundtracks and compilations), there’s no way to make it sound better. Or it may be, but would take a lot of effort. Why? This pretty much works as a midi file.

gbaMusRip takes the info of the tracks and dumps them into midi files. The process gave me near 400 of them and a soundfont. Pretty much the rest of the files are sound effects and such. With the appropiate player, you take the midi file and the soundfont, which has the samples inside compressed and then does a pretty good job of playing almost exactly the same as it sounds ingame.

But you’re limited because those samples are low quality, made to fit in the cartridge. You can edit the soundfont and replace those samples with better instruments (hopefully), but there are a lot of instruments, you have to find out where is the address in the soundfont to each one (Have you seen a hex editor? Looks pretty much the same). I just checked and the program has been updated, but doesn’t seem to change the instruments. Gonna play again with it to see what else I can do. I can’t remember right know the details, but maybe a differents set can be used to enrich the sound, who knows.

And yes, I already have the files to work on Circle of the Moon. 😀

Please, keep giving me feedback to make it better! Enjoy!

First of all, awesome that you’re giving CotM the same treatment, I think we all appreciate your hard work.

As for the drone sound: I’m refering to the high pitch main melody "instrument". I’ve compared both tracks and it seems it’s also present in the original, albeit much less noticable. I guess some of the filters you’ve used exacerbated this particular frequency? I’m by no means an audio expert nor do I have the know how to do the technical work and analysis you do, so this is all by ear. It’s enough for me to feel that it overpowers the rest of the music, but since this is kind of subjective, I don’t really know how to explain it better, so take this with a grain of salt.

Heard amazing thanks for sharing

First of all, awesome that you’re giving CotM the same treatment, I think we all appreciate your hard work.

As for the drone sound: I’m refering to the high pitch main melody "instrument". I’ve compared both tracks and it seems it’s also present in the original, albeit much less noticable. I guess some of the filters you’ve used exacerbated this particular frequency? I’m by no means an audio expert nor do I have the know how to do the technical work and analysis you do, so this is all by ear. It’s enough for me to feel that it overpowers the rest of the music, but since this is kind of subjective, I don’t really know how to explain it better, so take this with a grain of salt.

No problem, I think I get you. First, I’ll try to check it tonight. Second, I’ll try the updated version of the application to see what else I can do. Third, I’ll upload a FLAC version and the untouched too in a few hours. Keep enjoying!

So, made a couple of interesting discoveries:

There’s an option in the rip program to create RAW music files. This means it takes the reverb and chorus from the info. It sounds different (You have to check both if interested). I’ll already uploaded the remastered version in FLAC, the untouched wavs after converting them from MIDI and I’ll upload in short the RAW version in wav. This is only for those who want to come with their own mix. Also, I’ll be posting the files obtained from the extraction in case anyone has more ideas. Good night.

Thank You

I appreciate the effort. I look forward to giving it a listen!

I decided I’ll do a second try at a mix with less loudness and call it a day. If anyone feels to play around with what I posted, feel free to add your own spin. Thanks for the support!

I think you know but just to make sure, the "high pitch" instrument Roz is referring to begins just before 0:02 of that track. I believe making the pitch less pronounce will make the listening experience much better.

Oh and thanks for remastering the soundtrack. :]

You guys are aware that the main "remastering" involves a combination of ripping the instrument samples, into a soundfont file, ripping the sequenced audio files as MIDI, and playing these MIDIs with the soundfont created from the instrument samples, right?
And yes, this can be done with other games, but not all games — and not all of them are perfect. Infact, of those that work with gbaMusRiper, there can be many faults, such as missing samples, and sometimes MIDIs will contain special pitch-bend commands which are not playable with BASSMIDI (with foobar2000), which is most likely what people will use for different soundfonts.

That being said, some of the games which are supported (including those with faults) are:
Sonic Advance
Sonic Advance 2
Sonic Advance 3
Sonic Battle
Mother 3
Mother 1 & 2
The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (EU and US)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Four Swords
Fire Emblem (US)
Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones
Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi
Wario Land 4
Mega Man & Bass
Super Mario Advance
Yoshi’s Tilt and Tumble
Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (JP)
Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland
Kirby’s Amazing Mirror
Advance Wars
Advance Wars 2
Game & Watch Gallery 4
Mega Man Zero
Mega Man Zero 2
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Dragon Ball: Advance Adventure
Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors
Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon
Fullmetal Alchemist
F-Zero Maximum Velocity
Gyakuten Saiban 1
Gyakuten Saiban 2
Gyakuten Saiban 3
Mega Man Battle Network

One possible advantage about them being MIDI files, is that if you know how to, you can actually edit the tunes, which may sound pointless, but an example of how this can be useful is, if there’s a non-looping song (e.g credits), which doesn’t have any obvious places for looping, you can add a bit at the end, to create a loop (like what Sonic CD did).

I’ve been using xmplay and the midi plugin. Does a different player with a different plugin can make a difference? I tried only a couple, so I didn’t notice. If you would like to give some advice it would be very welcome.

So, Circle of the Moon when?

Gee xD. As soon as I don’t fall sleep at nights. Last night it was impossible for me to keep awake and wife was using the PC so no dice. Hope tonight can do something. I want to try different players that use SF2 soundbanks to check for differences.

I know I’m not inventing the wheel over here. I just wanted to share something. Thanks everyone.

So when is this second mix of Ruined Castle Corridor going to be released? It sounds flawless, but that loud beep that happens is really distracting and kind of ear grating.

So when is this second mix of Ruined Castle Corridor going to be released? It sounds flawless, but that loud beep that happens is really distracting and kind of ear grating.

I wonder, can’t he just…remove it from the soundfont?

Oh god I’m gonna try that.

Nice work. 😀

Thanks a lot.

It’s been a while since I checked this and LOTS of things have happened. I might check it again to see what else I can accomplish if someone is interested.

Thanks 🙂

So when is this second mix of Ruined Castle Corridor going to be released? It sounds flawless, but that loud beep that happens is really distracting and kind of ear grating.

I could give it a go but I have no knowledge of this game so you’re going to have to tell me which .midi file this song is.

This is a personal project I’ve been pursuing for a while. The Castlevania GBA games have received no respect from Konami regarding a proper soundtrack. Every release sounds like crap, and they’ve done that twice. I’ve seen gamerips before, but althought the sound is better is still far from perfect.

Using gbaMusRipper, I’ve extracted the music from the ROM, looped and cleaned the results with a little tweaking here and there. It’s encoded in LAME MP3/VBR/Extreme setting. If anyone request FLAC or WAV I can provide too. Also, for those who want to do their own adjustments/loops/extended version, I can provide the raw audio. I hope this is good for someone. Enjoy!

MP3 V0: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!VxoxHBDZ!lLaDFjuUNxOKnbbgeDV4B6d8DdEmo0aZM-EkLJuzv7U)

FLAC: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!08AQnSpZ!d6aAynjupwg7WKDy_A2OibKBLXXZUGsYVU8Kowl QHO0)

UNTOUCHED WAV: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!x4hmySAa!TXy9HeQLauS_4QgYFpNBXD3Zy4mDmssgcuzVK58 gqkA)

RAW Extracted WAVs: DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!V5Y30RbY!j6izWMk3eLKUGkBc8kgLEAjCwr3_PSpWDdHqO71 rU1U)

MIDI files with SF2 Soundfont (Normal):DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!th5xyBRS!sd_6NWYRjxVG5YCgduXmAfQ2UF07ymp3m8_VYOR aupc)

MIDI files with SF2 Soundfont (RAW):DOWNLOAD (https://mega.co.nz/#!Jo5SVbzQ!g4dOzwyCkV9LX9eUOOUrapoB8hVoPpmFbqWv01r 94fc)

How to convert the music in FLAC format ? Sounds pretty good.

I could give it a go but I have no knowledge of this game so you’re going to have to tell me which .midi file this song is.

I need to check everything again, but pretty sure the first 20 MIDIs or so are the songs, the rest is SFX and such.

AFMG. How do you convert midi to wav/flac ?
Why I converted wav/flac sounds not so good as yours ?

;