I'm still in the middle. So far my favorite episodes are 3 (focused on striga fight) and 4 (focused on the law of surprise).

Episode 2 felt underwhelming for those who read the books. The whole sub-story line with elves, Lille and Dana Méadbh is practically missing. But I guess for those who didn't read them it will go unnoticed, if may be slightly confusing due to lack of context.

On the other hand, you could say it's the result of adaptation to the series medium. I suppose they could do a better a job at that, but overall it was still good.

Last edited by Shmerl on 23 December 2019 at 12:47 am UTC

Pretty good song indeed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHgowJ7d33k
Joey Batey plays Jasksier (aka Dandelion) very well too.

I'm looking for the name of the composition in episode 6

Spoiler, click me

where Geralt and Co. are going through the dwarven mountain path, and camera zoomes out and shows the bird view of the mountain. Really good Witcher style music there!

Last edited by Shmerl on 26 December 2019 at 11:54 pm UTC

Quoting: The_AquabatJaskier: “When a humble bard...”

Geralt: “THAT’S NOT HOW IT HAPPENED.”

:D

Don't touch Roach :D

Quoting: The_Aquabatthis the official link to the song, The youtube recordings have inferior quality.

https://soundcloud.com/giona_ostinelli


(that's what the artist said on twitter https://twitter.com/SonyaBelousova )

Nice, but let's analyze them. I downloaded the sample from Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/giona_ostinelli/toss-a-coin-to-your-witcher
They are using 128 Kbit/s mp3. That's below transparency for mp3, so result is worse than lossless source.

Analyzing the Youtube stream on the other hand:

youtube-dl --list-formats 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHgowJ7d33k' | grep audio
249          webm       audio only tiny   57k , opus @ 50k (48000Hz), 1.12MiB
250          webm       audio only tiny   75k , opus @ 70k (48000Hz), 1.48MiB
140          m4a        audio only tiny  130k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 2.89MiB
251          webm       audio only tiny  145k , opus @160k (48000Hz), 2.92MiB

The interesting one is format 251. Let's download it:

youtube-dl --format 251 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHgowJ7d33k' -o toss_a_coin_to_your_witcher.webm

Open it with mpv, and then press Shift+i to show statistics:

mpv toss_a_coin_to_your_witcher.webm 
 (+) Audio --aid=1 --alang=eng (*) (opus 2ch 48000Hz)
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz stereo 2ch float
File: toss_a_coin_to_your_witcher.webm
        Size: 2.922 MiB Format/Protocol: mkv
        Total Cache: 41.55 KiB (1.0 sec) Speed: 17.19 KiB/s

Audio: opus (Opus)
        Channels: 2     Format: floatp
        Sample Rate: 48000 Hz
        Bitrate: 141 kbps
A: 00:00:20 / 00:03:06 (11%)

Bitrate fluctuates around 130 - 150 Kbit/s. That's around or above transparency for Opus:

https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Opus#Music_encoding_quality

So if Youtube one was recorded from the lossless source, it's actually better quality than Soundcloud. However if they used lossy source, it's likely worse, since transcoding from lossy to lossy is always reducing quality.

By listening, Youtube one sounds a bit worse, so likely they didn't have lossless source.

Basically, to get good quality audio, we should ask them to release the OST in lossless FLAC :)

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 December 2019 at 1:44 am UTC

Quoting: The_Aquabatyeah the soundcloud version sounds better but just a tiny improvement, it still has lots of distortion on my speakers.

flac is king, but I don't think they will upload a flac version? or yes? apple music does support flac right?

Incumbents like Apple, Amazon and Spotify don't sell FLAC. Alternative and innovate stores like Bandcamp do. I always prefer to buy music in FLAC and ask all composers and artists I'm interested in to release that way if they can.

Some other stores (besides Bandcamp which is the biggest one) you can get FLAC in:

https://us.7digital.com
https://uk.7digital.com
https://www.junodownload.com
https://store.tidal.com
https://www.prestomusic.com
https://www.prostudiomasters.com
https://www.hdtracks.com

Then there are of course FLAC releases for games OSTs on GOG (and Steam I suppose).

The workaround for those who don't release in FLAC is to get a physcial CD, and rip FLAC from it. Good thing physical media is still being released with lossless audio.

Some publishers also don't sell lossless, but if you contact them directly, they can sell it to you. I once bought lossless soundtrack for Grim Fandango that way from Sumthing Digital (otherwise you can only get mp3 one). That was a pleasant surprise (they actually responded quite quickly and said they are glad to provide lossless files for their audiophile customers even though they aren't selling them on the site).

I'll contact The Witcher series composers, may be they'll release it in FLAC (unless Netflix will block it, they are not exactly fond of DRM-free releases). I also have some questions about the names of the compositions.

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 December 2019 at 2:36 am UTC

Does Apple still sell DRM-free ALAC? If so, converting from ALAC to FLAC is very easy (happens in an instant basically; since there's no transcoding; and IIRC the metadata transfers over with no problem).

Last year I converted heaps of lossless m4a (ALAC)s that I had accrued while I was using a Mac, into FLAC, with a shell script -- though I forget what converter I used. In any case, ALAC is open source; so all the repositories have the required tools.

Quoting: wvstolzingDoes Apple still sell DRM-free ALAC?

I'm not using any Apple stores, but yes, I've heard they used to sell some lossless music too. However lately they are replacing it all with their new service where you can't buy anything, only rent. They are be pushing everyone (including music creators) there, so I suppose they are getting rid of ALAC as well? I'm not really following their developments, so I might be wrong.

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 December 2019 at 7:06 am UTC

I'm old and still just buy CDs :P On that note, I did buy a nice collector set for Appetite for Destruction, and it came with a bluray Audio disk that has AMAZING sound. Now if I can figure out how to rip it to a FLAC...

Quoting: slaapliedjeI'm old and still just buy CDs :P On that note, I did buy a nice collector set for Appetite for Destruction, and it came with a bluray Audio disk that has AMAZING sound. Now if I can figure out how to rip it to a FLAC...

I don't know about Blu Ray, but I rip all my normal CD Albums to FLAC using Audacity, then I use EasyTAG to add the metadata info and album art icons.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI did buy a nice collector set for Appetite for Destruction, and it came with a bluray Audio disk that has AMAZING sound. Now if I can figure out how to rip it to a FLAC...

You can probably rip it to WAV using ffmpeg (ffmpeg can read almost anything), and then encode to FLAC with regular flac encoder from Xiph flac package.

mpv also works as a nice frontend for ffmpeg.

Something like:

mpv --no-video --ao pcm --ao-pcm-file target.wav some_source

Though flac encoder is picky, you need to figure out how to generate a wav it can understand.

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 December 2019 at 11:43 pm UTC