The Okami Original Soundtrack has been a constant in my playlists and CD players.  Wonderful, wonderful score, which has instantly shot up as my main contender for soundtrack of the year. Its only downside is that it could be a little TOO complete; I've cut out most of the shorter ditty tracks in favor of a more streamlined listen.  I also finally broke out that Bio Hazard 4 Soundtrack Book.  Reliving the game through its music is almost as much fun as playing through it -- and it saves me about eighteen hours to boot!

Been listening to the Mission: Impossible 2 and 3 soundtracks interchangeably.  The feel of both scores are radically different, with Zimmer bordering on the rockin'-stylish cool, and Giacchino on orchestral power of the rawest kind.  Either way, it's a Schifrin paradise I've been living in.  Also picked up the Cars Soundtrack, if just for the Rascal Flatts' song, "Life Is A Highway" -- my number one cruisin' track right now. 

I've taken to Kasey Chambers' first album again, The Captain, which is now a mainstay whenever I go on road trips.  "Mr. Baylis" is the song I always play when I'm on those long stretches of highway at night.  It gives me that needed boost of strength -- both physically and spiritually -- to keep me going.

Best Classics 100 Trance is one of my more recent favorite i-Dance Toshiba EMI/Dancemania-related albums. It's exactly what it says: 100 trance remixes of classical pieces, providing a thoroughly enjoyable near 80-minute listening experience.  Its quick short bursts of melody and seamless megamixing warrants your full, undivided attention.  Awesome stuff.

.

Besides rockin' the Shuffle/Party Shuffe on my iTunes and iPod, I've been listening to SaGa Frontier II and its Piano Collections frequently. Hamauzu always blows my mind, man. Even his stuff that I don't really enjoy that much (the campy stuff on D1 of U:SaGa) is still musically and compositionally great, even if the themes don't cater to me much. I've also been listening to my "Real FFX" playlist, which only has Nakano and Hamauzu's tracks on it.

Other stuff: Devil May Cry 2 battle music, Devil Summoner Sound Collection (thanks Conn!) and just Meguro in general, iFuturelist (FTFW), Lost Child Infinia ~ Material Side, Trash 005 and Shadow Hearts FTNW. Everything else just has been trickling in and out via the shuffle on my iPod.

There's nothing I've been listening to repeatedly, but right now I happen to be listening to the Baten Kaitos II OST.

An eight minute sample I put together just for you, Conn, if you're so inclined.  It should get'cha Beethoven on real good.

And here's the tracklisting, courtesy of shdwrlm.

I'm currently listening to the Driver rip(thanks, Slade!).

Right now, I'm listening to the Valkyrie Profile 2 rip. It's quite good.

A lot...

Rumble Roses OST's (original and XX..."Yankee Rose" was among the best WTF songs I've ever put on and it still cracks me up everytime I hear it...I have it posted to my Yahoo Briefcase below. Highly recommended as a "WTF Listen":
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/ranma124x )

Rurouni Kenshin OP/ED Songs
Ragnarok Online and its' massive doujin following...With Akineko's "Raydrick" album slowly making its' way up to the top of my favorite rock arranges.
King of Fighters XI OST/Arrange
KOF 2003 Arranged
Granada Espada OST
Atelier Iris Grand Fantasm OST
The soundtrack from the Konami X-Men Arcade game.
Guilty Gear Isuka/The arrangements of GG1 Themes from the GG Box Set
The usual Galaxy Angel songlist, plus Ryoko Shintani's "Fancy Frill" and "Pretty Good" solo albums.
Suikoden 1, 2 and 5 OST's, plus the occasional Celtic/Asian Collection track, the Namba arrange album and the Suikoden IV Arrange album.
Condensed versions of Breath of Fire V, Castlevania Curse of Darkness and Rockman Zero 2/3 Remastered
Project A-ko Songbook

And I JUST got the VP2 rip, so it'll be fired up throughout most of this upcoming work week.

My Ipod works harder than I do at work sometimes...

.

Wait, what?
You mean the CD that came with the Artifact Box, or some in-game recording thing?

Music extracted from the disc. It's about 350 meg.

Wait a sec!  Canon's on that list.  I'm hurt, Angela... what other secret Canon recordings are you keeping from me?

http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/gener … post184662

The direct spot where I got VP2's rip from. Dunno how much longer the links will be good for, but I know I have both files up for grabs in my VGM Central share.

My playlist varies greatly, but the theme of late has been Dawn of Sorrow. Oh, and Goat's newest Castlevania medley, Creeping Dusk....of course it won first place.

http://dod.vgmix.com/past/may06/

Usually I mainly listen to music from games I'm currently playing, recently released albums, and/or albums I recently bought.  So.. anything that falls under that category..

All the songs from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

From Loud 2 Low - Takenobu Mitsuyoshi's solo CD (yeah, I bought it, he is the man.. Daaayyytonnaaa!)

The "michigan" soundtrack - bought that one too.. sooo good.  If you like Silent Hill and/or kt2's style, get it!  Same guy that did killer7!

FM Sound Module Maniax - another purchase.  I love hearing the old school sound again!  Koshiro's track owns me.  Plus I'm sporting the super nerdy Melody Clips keychain strap thing that it came with.

iFuturelist - for some reason I got back into this CD again.  I was addicted to it like crack back when it first came out, overdosed on it big time, and now it's making a comeback.  Still quite possibly the best album released this year.  And I'll elaborate on what Zane said about it.. it's not just FTFW buddy.. it's FTGDMFW!

Soul Blader - yeah, I just discovered this soundtrack a few days ago.  I'm a huuuge fan of the SPC7000 and I love catchy music so.. this is a natural listen for me.

Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten OST (aka Phoenix Wright) - finished this game a few months ago, still digging the music.  Actually listening to track 11 right now.. Pressing Pursuit ~ Cornered / Variation.  Love it!

I'm sure there are more, but I think that's a decent list.

-Mike

Wow, I totally forgot about that Canon fetish of yours!  Sorry, Ryu..... I can honestly say, however, that I've not discovered anymore versions of Canon since our last discussion many moons ago. 

....Other than what's featured on Best 100, of course.  Amends?

http://rapidshare.de/files/24789584/Canon.zip.html

.

Mix of things. Ayumi Hamasaki was dominating my CD player, but then I cracked open the DDR Party Collection and listened to that for a bit. I'm now listening to Utada Hikaru's latest album, "Ultra Blue." I really should give her earlier albums another chance...

What is this biohazard 4 Soundtrack Book? Is that the 2 disc 'COMPLETE TRACK' release?

http://chudahs-corner.com/soundtracks/i … CA-10126~7

Yep. It was released in a Soul Calibur II OST-esque book with lots of pictures and track commentary (in Japanese). This sucker is complete, and a great RE listen.

Thanks.
I kinda feel like a tool for not being the one who provided this (downloading, ever so slowly, from work, oh no!) ...I didn't even think to scour the disc for uncompressed ADPCM.

Thanks!  These are such teases; are most songs short like these?  I like that compilation thing you did for Conn too.  I may just buy this cd, since I can't find it anywhere online to digitally buy, leech, or torrent.

I'll not ask for you to do it again, but if you do let me know.  Have you done any new stuff in the last few months?

Rahaha.
After closer inspection, this was absolutely not digitally extracted, though it sounds awesome for a recording.

1. The music is 44.1 khz.  Most PS2 streamed bgm is natively 48khz.  Downsampling from 48/44.1 solely using an MP3 encoder, at least in my experience, seriously screws with the audio.  This sounds like it was natively 44.1kHz to begin with.

2. There are a few footsteps at the beginning of most of the files.  This again, is a sign that the music was recorded.

3. The music loops and fades out.  Were it extracted using MFAudio or something like CubeMediaPlayer, it would cut off abruptly, unless it were looped manually, and I know to do it perfectly takes... a long ass time.

4. VP2: Silmeria uses the same filesystem and compression that Star Ocean 3 and Radiata Stories do.  The music is streamed, but it's not in any format that any ripping program can currently extract.

The recordings are great, though.  Thanks for the link, and sorry to crap up the thread. :)

It doesn't take a long time at all if you use CubeMediaPlayer to export the native audio files and then play them back using the in_cube Winamp plugin which allows you to freely set the amount of repeats and the lenght of fade out. But yea, like with all other tri-Ace/tri-Crescendo games this can't be applied to VP2 to begin with.

VP2' soundtrack is simply amazing on its own. I hope not too many people are distracted by it not even trying to replicate VP1's approach to music styles.

*raises hand* Right over here.

Actually though, it's not the fact that it isn't so much like VP1. It's more that so much of it is just so...underwhelming. I would say I found about the following tracks that were really amazing and just as good as anything on VP1:

C-01
D-04
D-02
B-16
D-09
D-01
C-12
D-10
C-09
D-08
E-01
C-10

While the following definitely aren't making the return trip to work on the Ipod. I assume the majority of these work better in context:

A-01
A-02
A-03
B-05
B-20
B-15
B-13
B-19
C-08
C-07
C-02
C-03
C-04
C-14
E-04
E-05
E-06
E-07
E-08
E-09
E-10
F-01
F-02

And everything else settles somewhere between 'pretty good' and 'listenable, but will probably work better in context'.

All in all, I'm disappointed. I REALLY and honestly hope this rip is incomplete, because I don't think what's here lives up to VP1 at the least (which was a great thorough listen even before playing the game and still THE Sakuraba score to beat to me). I'll listen some more, but I'm thoroughly underwhelmed by anything not in the top list at this point and scratching my head at what happened to the ones in the lower list (though I assume the 'E' tracks are some kind of cutscene music).

It is incomplete, but only missing a few extra tracks (the ending staff roll theme for example).

Like the_miker, usually what I listen to the most is what's new, or what I'm playing recently. That said, the ones I pull up from their respective soundtracks on Winamp most often this week have been (in alphabetical order, for no good reason):

Ape Escape 3 - Gunfight at the Monkey Corral (Say, by the by Angela, has the full rip been canceled?)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Clock Tower
Final Fantasy XII - Royal City of Rabanastre
FM Sound Module Maniax - The Absolute Primitive
Kingdom Hearts II - The 13th Struggle
Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club Soccer Edition - Ego Games
New Super Mario Bros - Main Boss Castle
Phoenix Wright - Oo-edo Soldier Tonosaman
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando - Flying Lab

And in light of the latest SotW Battle, I know that Schrodinger's Cat piece will be back up there again.

And the final battle themes.

Yeah, I WAS expecting something more akin to VP1, or barring that, something close to Baten Kaitos, but what I got was something that uses similar sound to Baten Kaitos but entirel misses the oomph and....well....quality of said title.

I'm immensely disappointed with the soundtrack so far.

Well, one hundred songs in a 75 minute+ time span; you've gotta do the math.  Quite a few songs are stripped down to its core melody, with "Horn Concerto No.4 in E flat Major, K.495 III. Rondo (Allegro vivace)" and "Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op.48" being the shortest tracks at just 13 seconds.

Thanks for DoD heads-up! Goat's definitely got another winner on his hands here; the guy so knows his Castlevania.  Amazing, amazing work.

It's..... been in limbo for the longest.  The long and short of it is that I lazy; I've got all the data recorded in waves, yet I never got around to editing it.  On top of which, I never did complete the game in its entirety - or rather, I never hit the 75% mark to unlock "Ultim-ape Fighter," so I'm not sure if there's a designated music piece for it.  (Can you confirm if there is or not?)

It seems that people have picked up the slack, though, and took the recordings in their own hands.  Though I'm not sure of the quality of their recordings (or even if their links are working right now), you can check out the details at the GameFAQs boards with the topic titled "Angela's Legacy."

In any case, you've just inspired me to try and finish it up myself.  Gonna have to designate a weekend in doing so, but if you're still interested in a copy, I'll fire one off to ya once I'm done.

I guess it will take some time for former Sakuraba listeners to appreciate the subtlety of VP2's music, especially since being this subtle was never really seen as his strength before. Probably the most fitting comment is from ch2, complaining that VP2 would be the most background of background music (BGM) Sakuraba composed so far. The music goes incredibly well with the graphics, pieces like the very atmospheric A02 (the map theme) were breathtaking for me in-game where the map first unfolds to reveal new areas. Just bad I'm stuck in the game (at chapter 3) and don't have the time to do the huge leveling apparently required to proceed.

The VP2 recording will stay exclusive in my player for some more days for sure tho. Still plenty details to find for me here and there. ^^

Just out of curiosity Datschge, where are you stuck exactly?
I'm at Chapter 3 as well, and I've reached the end of the Volcano Dungeon, but haven't tried the boss on yet, assuming there even is one, cos I couldn't find an exit out of the last room I visited, but I haven't really looked into it yet.

The rise in difficulty is rather steep isn't it?

Yes it is. And you are further than me. ^^;; Well, I guess I'm not stuck per se as proceeding is likely just a matter of investing time for gaining more experience through additional battles, time I don't have atm. Now that there are decent skill FAQs I'll look if I can gain enough power through those obscure rune connections or whatever. If so it should become more fun again and I'll likely play much more next weekend.

I dunno, I haven't spent any time whatsoever on creating skills, and I'm doing fine so far.
Haven't really spent time levelling up either.
The most important thing is that you make enough money so you can buy the best equipment, and you need LOTS of healing items. Finishing battles quickly is also a prerogative since that will earn you the max amount of exp.
Also it helps if you can read Japanese so that you know what kind of effects all the Seal Stones have on each specific Dungeon Area.

Sometimes even normal battles can be a REAL pain in the ass though.