Doom 64 – Ultra Soundtrack (digital FLAC)

Background:

So this is a project I had been working on over the years of trying to get the best possible rip of the Doom 64 soundtrack. First I tried emulators, but found they just didn’t emulate the notes and frequency range as accurately as I hoped. Then I tried straight analog stereo ripping, but found I was highly annoyed by background noise and low quality from the D/A converter. Then a couple years ago, Aubrey Hodges released his official OST for the game. I paid for it and listened closely to each of the stage tracks. Much to my disappointment, his tracks were also ripped from analog audio, and even worse is his stage tracks were riddled with horrible AC coupling noise. The best I could do was isolate the A/C coupling noise in silent parts of the music tracks, and then subtract them as a noise filter from the rest of the music. This was just a bandaid approach though.

Enter the UltraHDMI mod!

While the UltraHDMI mod is simply amazing for video with its 1080p scaling and deblur features, it also has the benefit of pulling the sound directly from the digital audio processing of the N64. It completely bypasses the clunky D/A conversion circuitry of the N64, and outputs audio in pure digital format at 48Khz. This was exactly what I needed to finally make a definitive rip of the Doom 64 soundtrack! It has the best of both worlds being pure digital AND from real hardware! The fidelity and clarity of these new recordings blow away any and all previous soundtrack rips, including Aubrey’s own release (which he has since released a new 20th anniversary edition that overlays new sound effects on all the tracks).

So if you want a definitive soundtrack rip of Doom 64, look no further! The files have been tagged and assigned cover art, and as usual are encoded in lossless FLAC format. Enjoy!

Doom 64 UltraHDMI Perfect Rip CST (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dVBWs37qXm4qZV962bGqb_9zL30I2Eva)

-FBX

Hands down! Many, many thanks for THIS!

Wow. Great work. Thank you very much for this. 🙂
Can do this also for "James Bond 007: The World is not enough"? There is no soundtrack for that game avaible and the USF-Rip has a constant noise in the background. It also has not so many music in it, so it would be not that hard i think.

Many thanks, FirebrandX! +1 rep added :).

Thanks!

Would you say this rip is better than Aubrey Hodges’ own official soundtrack?

This is fantastic. Thanks!

Would you say this rip is better than Aubrey Hodges’ own official soundtrack?

Yes it is infinitely better. His OST was ripped via analog output, and you can actually hear AC coupling ‘buzz’ in the audio lines during softer moments of the stage tracks. My tracks are ‘bit-perfect’ pulls from the digital audio processing chip, so there’s is zero background noise, and no D/A distortion.

Yes it is infinitely better. His OST was ripped via analog output, and you can actually hear AC coupling ‘buzz’ in the audio lines during softer moments of the stage tracks. My tracks are ‘bit-perfect’ pulls from the digital audio processing chip, so there’s is zero background noise, and no D/A distortion.

That seems strange, Aubrey Hodges made the music himself, why would he rip his own music from the game to sell it and not use his own recordings used in the game? 0o

———- Post added at 06:34 AM ———- Previous post was at 06:33 AM ———-

That seems strange, Aubrey Hodges made the music himself, why would he rip his own music from the game to sell it and not use his own recordings used in the game? 0o

I’ve actually had email conversations about this with Aubrey in the past. In the case of the Playstation, he had a dev kit with digital out and superior reverb over even the very first consumer grade Playstations. When I sent him track rips from consumer Playstation hardware, he thought they sounded very flat compared to his dev kit versions. So when it comes to the Playstation, his OST tracks are the best. The N64 on the other hand is a completely different story. The equipment he had for transferring the titles didn’t have digital audio output, and the result is very clear coupling interference (‘buzz’) during the stage tracks. I even went so far as to write an article about this on my web site, which shows actual wave form amplification images of the noise and how to ‘subtract’ it from the files using Goldwave:

http://www.firebrandx.com/d64humremoval.html

Now of course this is made obsolete with these new direct-digital rips using the UltraHDMI mod. However, I did not include Aubrey’s bonus tracks, because I believe people should still buy those as they are not from the game. Anyone can do a game rip if they are so inclined, which is why I have no problem posting my own effort. Those bonus tracks on the other hand, step over a line I’m not willing to cross.

If you’re asking why Aubrey didn’t just ‘use his personal recordings’, you have to remember how many years have passed. Any sort of reference tracks are likely long gone, and he’s had to record them manually. Clear evidence of this is the track "Bleep Spawn", where Aubrey let it record for over 12 minutes. The actual end of the track is at 6:30, but he didn’t realize this because the music that follows is looped with sound effects missing. It’s literally a coding glitch, but he had forgotten this was even the case. I let my rip of this track go the same length just to include the glitch like he did. Now had this been an original recording, his track would have ended at 6:30.

Fantastic work! Big thanks for a flawless version!

Thanks.

Will you also be doing this for the N64 ports of Quake 1 and 2? Thank you btw.

SWEEEEEEET!

Kudos friend!

thank you, sounds pristine!

I got sent a PM from someone that ran a program called ‘fakin the funk’ https://fakinthefunk.net/en/ and it falsely flagged three of the tracks. I want to point out that you can’t use those programs to reliably detect bit rate when it comes to midi-based tracks like those used in Doom 64. The digital rip is absolutely genuine on ALL of these tracks, because they were all ripped using the UltraHDMI mod. I’d have absolutely NO reason to ‘fake’ just 3 random tracks.

Cover art:

Many thanks! Love seeing these High-Fidelity-or-Bust quests get completed! Cheers

Oh my god, you are awesome, I don�t know how can you do this, but thank you so much

The Filetrip server shut down for good due to lack of funding. I’ve updated the OP with a new working link. Sorry about this. I was not notified by filetrip they were shutting down (even though they claimed they sent notifications).