Starmen.Net

Using GBAmusRiper, forumgoer Tanks on Sonic Retro extracted the complete sound and music data from the MOTHER 3 ROM as MIDI files and a soundfont of all the game’s instruments. This results in better audio quality than playing the music through original game, via console, emulator, or GSF. I put together a package taking his rip (in which files were named the internal sound IDs), then sorted and named them using the information from Talec Arashi’s Tag+Time v0.9 GSF set.

Quote from: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=29892

So I’ve been messing around with GBAmusRiper, (no that’s not a typo), a semi-annoying tool with some very neat functions. (You kinda have to go out of your way to get it to work, but once you get the hang of it, its a breeze.) It does what most Sappy tools do, rips the midi and high quality samples that get butt-raped by the GBA’s audio handler. The main difference with this one, however, is that it automatically compiles the samples into a soundfont and adjusts the midis to correspond with its appropriate, in-game, sample. As a result, you end up with a nearly identical song with a sound quality that is unimaginably superior to the original.

Here’s a few dare to compare for you.

Now obviously with Sappy → Midi conversions there’s going to be a few quirks. Samples can be off just a bit from their originals possibly because they may not have been intended to be heard in such good quality. Pitch bending gets screwed a bit on the conversion, but that can be fixed with right knowledge of midis and a good ear, or so I’ve been told. I would have to venture to guess though that at least 95% of the songs I’ve converted end up working near perfectly.

How to play them? <better instructions below>

This sound rip is 98-99% faithful to the original music, but it is free from the static and quality impact produced by the GBA sound driver. To instantly hear the difference, compare the Love Theme with any other game version.

This is the best quality the MOTHER 3 game music has ever been heard in. It gives MOTHER 3i a run for its money, especially considering the significant hit it took from the low-quality iTunes AAC encoding.

There are known issues with certain songs but in most cases the elimination of the static outweighs the majority of [minor] problems.

MOTHER 3 Ultimate Music Rip v1.0
MIDI & Soundfont Pack (8.36 MB) – MediaFire
MP3 Pack (695 MB) – torrent – 4shared
FLAC Pack (2.55 GB) – torrent – 4shared: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I updated the OP with some better instructions. That should get the files to play.

I’ll run an MP3 conversion overnight and see how large it is.

Have you extracted the 7-Zip archive? http://www.7-zip.org

My MP3 conversion is processing.

If you want to convert the files to MP3 yourself for the time being, even though they won’t have the tags that my set will have, foobar2000 has the capability.

First, make sure all the fade times in Preferences→Playback→Output are 0. http://i.imgur.com/yIA1p.png

Then, select in foobar all the files you want to convert, right-click, and select whatever settings you would like from the Convert submenu.

My MP3 conversion ended up being 695MB, still more than I can handle.

Instead, here are some detailed settings to get the best result (the same I did) when you transcode. This is an album containing all the settings images I have posted. Note that in the middle there are two examples sets of two images, one for MP3s, and one for lossless FLAC (for audiophiles and preservationists with 2.5GB to spare). http://imgur.com/a/QDhCa

If you follow these directions, MP3s or FLAC files (whichever you choose) will be created alongside the MIDI files with the same names. This should allow me to figure out a way to provide a small script which will add the desired tags to the files.

Actually, the Tag+Time set was so well done that the internal song IDs were stored in the comment field, so it was just a matter of using the grep utility to get the data out.

Hey guy, this is fantastic! Mind if I post this to the front page?

I added links to torrents (using OpenBitTorrent) for my full, tagged packs in FLAC and MP3 (V2). BitTorrent is the only distribution means I have.

METC:

Hey guy, this is fantastic! Mind if I post this to the front page?

That would be great!

Note that these sets are not perfect. This is still new territory. The MIDIs don’t have any problems as far as rhythm; I have identified only a handful of possible pitch issues. I have noticed an oddity in the pitch in first second of the tracks Fate and Serious. (If you compare to the GSF, the second note sounds off.) One of the ending tracks, Curtain Call, has an instrument oddity where the siren comes though as a rather annoying noise.

It would be helpful if anyone could report any issues with the pack they find.

I’m still in the process of downloading, but I’ve been sampling individual tracks as they finish. The worst thing I’ve noticed so far is that the vibrato in the beginning of Mom’s Hometown is WAY too fast. The only other thing I’ve noticed is that there’s no reverb at all, but that doesn’t surprise me.

I’ll keep listening to these and report any oddities I discover.

I noticed a vibrato thing going on with the Shower Ballad. In the original, it doesn’t do a vibrato, but it does this weird thing where it switches from the L speaker to R speaker really fast, making the impression of almost a vibrato? Basically, it’s close, but not quite right…

I’ll go through some of them and see what I can find.

EDIT:

So the two things I saw in several songs were the weird vibrato thing and this thing where an instrument would lag in one speaker but not in the other (but the rest of the track was fine). Usually that was present in the original, but really quiet, and without the static it became a lot more noticeable.

Still, this is awesome stuff. I think some of these songs were meant to be heard without the static. <3

Be back with the other two hundred some other time!

I’m still uploading, slowly. The MP3 torrent is at 43.5%.

This all seems really complicated. . . How does it fare against LMMS? LMMS is basically a free open source clone of Fruity Loops and supports the sound font format as well as importing MIDI files. http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

BlueStone:

This all seems really complicated. . . How does it fare against LMMS? LMMS is basically a free open source clone of Fruity Loops and supports the sound font format as well as importing MIDI files. http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

Its actually a lot easier to use the Foobar plugin. It automatically matches the sounds from the soundfont to the midi, even instrument changes. FL doesn’t do that.

Finally got this thing working! The files all sound really amazing; it’s a dream come true! :D
However, I don’t know how to export the midi files as an MP3 from foobar. Is that what the bassmidi program is for?
Oh well, guess listening to the music this way will suffice :P

It looks like the downloaders of the MP3 pack are reaching 100%. I will continue seeding both packs.

Tomorrow I will upload the packs to JumboFiles.

TheNessEB:

^Select all, right click, than click convert.

Ah, ok.

But the problem with selecting all is that you’re also including the short 2-second tracks that are basically sound blips. I’d rather exclude those when converting :P

I may be completely wrong, but I’m pretty sure the laggy instrument was meant to make some kind of echo effect.

But I don’t know how music/GBA sound limitations work, so yeah.

Thank you.

Some of these tracks sound off. Take Mr. Saturn Theme Z for example, in the first few seconds it plays a flat note when transitioning almost as if it’s lagging when it should be going between notes.

No idea if other tracks suffer from this, but I’m sure it’s an easy fix.

I uploaded a comparison here.

Okay. Okay. I just want to say. HOLY CRAP!!!!

I love how Leder’s Gymnopedie sounds! Wow. Great job on finding this! Holy dang!

The notes being cut off might be caused by foobar2000’s default fade-in settings. I set the fade-in times to zero and I have no cut-off problems with the tracks you mentioned.

Also, quoting this because nobody seemed to notice it:

Life’s An Inner Turn Radius has a glitch at the beginning.

Also, Blip-Blip High Score has some timing issues. The Pigmask theme snippet plays too early the first time and then far too late the second time.

Thanks for working on this! I’ve always wondered if there was a way to remove that hiss… That said, Leder’s Gymnopedie sounds like it’s being played by an 800 pound gorilla! If I’m understanding the process correctly, could the dynamic be dialed back before sending the midi data to whatever is “rendering” them? The soundfont distinguishes between soft and loud piano notes, judging by the attack. It really sounds very jarring to hear the otherwise dulcet chords being pounded out so violently… Anyway, thanks, and great work!

Jupiter-x:

The soundfont distinguishes between soft and loud piano notes, judging by the attack. It really sounds very jarring to hear the otherwise dulcet chords being pounded out so violently…

While the notes will play quieter or louder depending on the note velocity, that has no effect on the sound of the piano itself. Mother 3’s sample banks don’t have velocity layers, so the instruments sound the same whether they’re played hard or soft. The best you can hope for is for someone to take the resulting MIDI for the song and play it through some higher quality sound bank.

Like so.

Is possible to put this songs (remastered) in a GBA rom?
Knowing that the rom will run on the emulator, not on the GBA …

Is It Just Me or Are You Gorgeous? sounds just like the original Magypsy song. :/