KotOR II - STEREO Music Restoration Project =========================================== The original game music is in a poor, muffled quality (MONO, 10 kHz freq. response, 48 kbit/s MP3-encoded). Since I consider music essential to the atmosphere in a game, I decided to do something about it. This preview contains the following sample files for A/B-Comparison: mus_bat_230 (original MONO).mp3 (original *untouched* music file from the game, i.e. NOT transcoded) mus_bat_230 (restored STEREO).mp3 (new STEREO version in high-fidelity) mus_kreiadark (original MONO).mp3 (original *untouched* music file from the game, i.e. NOT transcoded) mus_kreiadark (restored STEREO).mp3 (new STEREO version in high-fidelity) NOTE: Both ORIGINAL (!) music files need to be played back with a proper MP3 player (like WinAMP). They don't work in crappy Windows Media Player. I tried to find the best approach to reconstruct the original STEREO fields and frequencies from the limited MONO sources I had at my disposal. To this end I analyzed the original two high-fidelity stereo samples that composer Mark Griskey made available on his website. This helped me to match my results to a proper original stereo recording of the music. After 7 weeks of research into how to create stereo fields from mono sources, I present my solution. I think the end result of the restored music speaks for itself. Technical notes: All audio transformations (calculations) were done in the 32-bit domain (i.e. with 32-bit resolution) to avoid any rounding errors and additional noise being added to the music (and thus preserving the original audio file's fidelity). I've also ensured that the transformed waves match the original's average RMS Power, to maintain the same volume and avoid clipping. The final waves have been re-mastered in 16-bit STEREO with the full 44 kHz sampling rate. They were then encoded with LAME 3.90.3 (currently best MP3 encoder) with the option "--alt-preset 128" for maximum quality at the specified bitrate (see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28123). -markussun