Some of you may notice a few pieces missing from the list. I haven't yet rendered those MIDIs into wave/ogg, but I will do so soon. I believe the ones missing were never actually used in the game unless you manually played them from the menu.
--PhantomSnake 22:51, 24 Aug 2005 (EDT)
Anyone have more info on these?
Hamgyong Nam-Do ~ Dark is obviously Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, but I'm not familiar with the other pieces. I think I heard that some of them might be traditional Korean folk music, but I really have no clue.
--PhantomSnake 23:02, 24 Aug 2005 (EDT)
Why Ogg?
If these came as MIDI files, where can I find the original MIDI? Most players (WinAMP included) can play MIDI, and MIDI files are much smaller than Ogg, because MIDI is a sequenced format, not a streamed one.
If these came as MP3, as we find the current music (broken as it is), this is even more confusing. Converting from the original WAV or CD to Ogg will sound better and take less space than MP3, but converting from MP3 to Ogg will take the same or more space and sound much worse than either MP3 or Ogg from the original source.
And if someone does have the original source for the current music, where are they? I'd like to make some FLAC files...-- Masover
- Hi Masover. I made these OGGs from the original MIDIs (I ripped the MIDIs from the game myself, ages ago). I think we had no choice but to use OGG. MediaWiki doesn't allow MP3s by default, and though we can customize it in, that breaks some of the license agreements... or something. Zaventh could probably tell you more. I can post the original MIDIs later today (if the wiki allows it).-- PhantomSnake
09:15, 9 Feb 2006 (EST)
Re: Why Ogg?
Ogg and MIDI cannot really be compared directly as their differences are many, but Ogg has several advantages over MIDI and other formats such as Mp3 in particular. The primary reason is that Ogg is a patent-free multimedia container designed to for streaming and compression 1. While it is generally believed that the MIDI format is also patent-free, the creators of the format have met at least once in 2005 about patenting its features. Additionally, what is known and confirmed is that many ways to convert raw sound formats to MIDI are definately patented. The sounds from the original Nexus were indeed in MIDI format, but if they were converted into that format from a patented method of audio conversion, then legally they cannot be on this site due to the GNU Free Documentation License. Of course we have no idea what method was used to convert the sounds, if any, but to avoid even the neglibile chance of a legal conflict, Ogg format is an easy solution. On that note, Mp3's will never be on the wiki, since it is a highly patented format.
I should also take this point to say that Ogg is in fact a container format, which wraps around the actual codec. Vorbis, the most popular codec for Ogg, is just one. There is also Ogg Flac which is loseless and several others.
In summary, while we could probably upload the MIDI format without any real problems, its questionable outlook and the unability to confirm if patented methods were used in their creation makes them undesirable if at all possible. Ogg is now natively supported by the later Winamp releases, and it is fairly simple to make it work on other media players, I don't really see the need to take unnecessary risk. --Zaventh 09:30, 9 Feb 2006 (EST)