Tali'Zorah knows that even in the future, corded headphones are the way to go.

I really enjoyed Mass Effect 2, so much so that I like to imagine talking to people with a choice selector near the bottom of my vision. I usually choose paragon options but I know the usefulness of a well placed renegade response. Be careful with the interrupts though!

Like many good games, I find myself drawn to the soundtrack as a way of reliving our times together. I went searching for it but unfortunately they only released it in MP3 and M4A formats so far.

Call me a snob but I think our future should be filled with upgrades and that means something better than or equal to the sound quality of a Compact Disc.

No worries though because with a bit of patience you too can…

Make your own Mass Effect 2 Soundtrack

These instructions assume you are using the PC version of the game.

• Download
  • Mass Effect 2 .AFC extractor | mirror
  • Audiokinetic Wwise RIFF/RIFX Vorbis to Ogg Vorbis converter | mirror
  • Extract, Convert and Rename scripts.
• Unzip everything into a new folder.
• Copy “C:\Games\Mass Effect 2\BioGame\CookedPC\*Music.afc ” to the new folder.
  • Your path may be slightly different depending on where you installed the game.
• Run “Extract, Convert.bat”
• Run “Rename.vbs”

Epilogue

Now you can enjoy 508 pieces of Ogg Vorbis encoded music while you wait for EA to release a proper Compact Disc.

Oh and special thanks to Extirpator for the original instructions on how to accomplish this.

There are too many good songs to choose from so here are some of my favorites.

• Angel Witch
  • Angel Witch
• Anvil
  • Tag Team
• Black Sabbath
  • Children of the Grave
  • Symptom of the Universe
• Brocas Helm
  • Cry of the Banshee
• Budgie
  • Zoom Club
• Crimson Glory
  • Queen of the Masquerade
• Dragonforce
  • Through the Fire and Flames
• Judas Priest
  • The Hellion, Electric Eye
• Manowar
  • Die For Metal
• Motley Crue
  • Dr. Feelgood
  • Kickstart My Heart
• Nitro
  • Machine Gunn Eddie
• Ozzy Osbourne
  • Mr. Crowley
• Scorpions
  • Blackout
• Tenacious D
  • Master Exploder

Seems like a long list until you realize that there are 107 songs which when played end to end will shred your soul for up to 8 hours and 40 minutes! I haven’t experienced such an epic soundtrack since the seven disc Grand Theft Auto: Vice City OST.

The problem is… you can’t really buy the Brütal Legend soundtrack.

With a bit of patience, equipment and software you can however, make your own.

How to roll your own Brütal Legend Soundtrack

I’m going to be very specific about my own hardware here but the concept is certainly applicable to a very wide range of setups.

PlayStation 3

Plug in an optical audio cable to your PS3.

Settings >Sound Settings > Audio Output Settings

Choose Optical Digital, use the defaults for Linear PCM and save your settings.

Load Brütal Legend.

Change your sound sliders so everything is muted except for music.

Load your latest save, summon the druid plow and then press up on the direction pad to get to the built-in music player.

Computer

Plug in the optical audio cable from your PS3.

I’m using an Audigy Platinum eX since it has a nice breakout box with all sorts of connectors.

Change your recording source to Optical In, S/PDIF or some other similar terminology.

The official Creative drivers would only allow me to listen to the optical in so I had to switch to the kX Audio Driver for recording. Bit of a hassle but the kX software does unlock a lot of special abilities.

Fire up Audacity or your favorite audio editor.

Make sure you recording device is set to the optical port and then change your default sample rate to 48000 Hz.

Hit record and then play whatever song you want to capture on the PS3.

Export your recording to your favorite audio format like FLAC, AAC or MP3.

Bonus Tips

Make sure to unlock all the songs you want to capture before starting this endeavor. The Brutal Legend Item Map by Achievement Hunter makes this task bearable.

Make sure to stay in the druid plow when recording otherwise your audio will become positional to the vehicle.

Recording level too low? Try normalizing to -1.5 dB before you save.

Epilogue

Video game music can be infectious, repetitious, evocative or just plain fun. No matter your reaction, listening to game music can be the best link to your memories of playing them.

Like that one time in Seventh Saga at 3am when I kept dying and that @#$%^ battle music was drilling a hole through my skull and … *EXPLOSION*

Audio

Boagworld
Good all around podcast for those in the web industry.

Games

World of Warcarft
For more hours than I care to admit.

Looking forward to Bayoneta, Bioshock 2 and Brutal Legend on the PS3.

Music

Luxury by Tiga

Memory Gospel by Moby

She’s Got Me Dancing by Tommy Sparks

Video

Hulu
Great for keeping up with various shows on my timetable. Yes, 3am showings of Inspector Gadget is exactly how I roll. Currently hopeful that Warehouse 13 and Defying Gravity will continue to be interesting.

Netflix
Love the Blu-ray and wide selection. Sci-fi and Comedy dominate the rental lists.

Pixel Perfect
Bert Monroy’s excellent show on Photoshop and related topics. Excellent for learning new techniques and reinforcing current skills.

TED
My late night sleep aid and all around mind stimulator. Love the fact that I can watch these on my iPhone from the comfort of bed.

Tekzilla
Patrick and Veronica do a great job of hosting this show about all things tech. The bloopers at the end of each episode are the perfect icing to an entertainly educational show.

Websites

Authentic Jobs
I visit a lot of job sites regularly but I really enjoy their layout and consistent quality of postings the best. Strong contenders include  Krop and the 37signals Job Board.

deviantART
Wonderful site for sampling a wide range of art, photography and design. I don’t think my mom would approve of some of the material but perhaps that is why I like it so much.  ;)

Twitter
I really enjoy the exercise of distilling an idea down to it’s essentials so it will remain true despite the 140 character limit. It’s a really great way to improve your writing skills.

The pesky asterisk means that not every song is available. Fortunately, my taste in music is as varied as my taste in underwear and a subsequent search led to the enchanting and technically excellent Gopher by Yma Sumac. Her vocal range causes me to shiver with the utmost respect.

The quality of the mp3 encoding is good (>200 vbr), the ID3 tags are perfect and it even includes a 600 pixel image of the album it comes from. I just wish someone would sell the same breadth of songs in lossless format. The company that did would receive a great many thousands in funds from a long night of impassioned purchases. Still, the rare treat of purging something from my “Dark” music collection while enhancing my legal sonics is a welcome occurrence.

For now, I think I’ll just keep myself entertained via Weird Music until the industry catches up with my digital needs.

The Life Aquatic is about a washed up Jaq Cousteau type figure who loses his best friend while filming a documentary. He boldly proclaims that after being a drunkard for one day that he will embark on this quest to kill the thing that got his friend. His oddball team ends up following along with some new members including his recently reunited son, a pack of interns seeking school credit and a pregnant report. Hilarity ensues soon after of course.

There are a lot of mini-memorable moments that I’m sure I’ll be reliving with Parr for the next few days. Plus the Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op tune by Mark Mothersbough is so infectious I think it will stay with me eternally.

The Life Aquatic is one of those movies that I can see myself championing although I think it would be folly to think that everyone would like it.

It can be slow, demented and awkward but it is very amusing none the less. I give it 4 out of 5 smegs, which um… in this case should be considered good.

Don’t forget to check out The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou site for previews, wallpapers and other goodies. It’s quite the perfect use of flash, video and other yummy technologies.

An hour of searching online for the song turned up nothing but preview clips. Ten seconds (literally!) of searching on DC++ found this audible gem.

Here are the latest stats on my music collection. Dark green is my unpurchased music.

Music Collection Status

Size

Files

Averaging out the percents of size and files above means that my collection is 71% and 67% legal. Not bad, but I still want to see how high I can get both of those percents before I consider this endeavor a success.

As time goes on its getting harder and harder to make big dents in the remaining dubiously found songs. Most are singles and I refuse to buy a whole CD to get the the one song I am looking for. I also think it would be wrong for me to throw away a song just because I don’t have the original. I keep hoping that AllofMP3 or a similar service will be official endorsed by the music labels. Yeah I know, rather unlikely considering they have a fair and righteous model that lets you get exactly what you want at different price levels. If it did happen (are you listening music execs?) I would gladly drop whatever money it took to legalize my whole collection. If it was 2k, no problem.

I’m willing to spend whatever it takes but I don’t want to buy some lossy, crippled or soon to be outdated format. I want to buy the original music, not a temporary license or some other garbage.

Not all is lost though, there are great places like Magnatunes which let you download songs (not mainstream though) in formats such as MP3, OGG and even FLAC for 100% perfect copies. Me like. In fact I’ve bought an album from them already and have been very pleased. I highly recommend them if your looking for a new source of music that is fair to both artists and consumers.

Consumers will ultimately win of course, just have to keep voting with your dollars in the right places.

Happy shopping!

Doing good on file vs. file size but that’s to be expected as I’m using OGG quality 7 to archive all my new stuff. Some of the not so legal things are mp3 128bit and on decent speakers you can really tell the difference. The real downer is seeing how many files I still have to go. It’s getting harder and harder to find albums too. Might have to make a massive (aka expensive) run at a video game music site to really knock a dent in it.

On a more happy note, GTA Vice City OST really helped out of the forces of good recently. Plus I got lots more newly purchased CDs on the way which should get here soon.

Hip hip huzzah for progress!

That’s right. You may have heard about Dance Dance Revolution (one of my all time favorite games along with Dune II and Sam & Max) but you haven’t HEARD nothing yet.

Karaoke Revolution! Yes! Sing into your PS2. Use your falsetto. Sing like a muppet. Do Weird Al lyrics instead of the normal ones. The skies the limit when you open up yourself to social embarrassment.

I personally enjoy making up alternate lyrics on the spot. It’s a lot like rapping, you have to come up with a rhyme and quick. Plus, it better flow with your previous lines or it’s not going to flow.

I had Parr laughing her butt off tonight in case you were wondering.

So, I had a blast, sonically maimed some songs, got a few platinum albums (mostly when I sing Bizarre Love Triangle, love that one) and almost blew out my voice.

My voice is only level 1 right now but it’s gaining xp really fast. I’m sure eventually it will be harder to gain levels or even catch up to Parr since she started her character with Chorus Class skill.

Speaking of new music, the item currently distracting me is the very excellent Metamorphoses by Jean Michel Jarre. The music can be considered New Age or Electronic and uses all electronic samples which the occasional cool voices/quotes thrown in. Not your typical dance hall music though, it’s something higher. The emotions run deeper yet the music tapestry itself can be very simple. Perhaps its the Jean Michel Jarre’s clean sound that always entranced me. It’s the kinda music that can put me in a trance and always helps me code / reflect on life / relax / think new things and more.

I’ll be savoring this album for the next few days playing it perhaps even donning headphones for that extra bit of sound escape. For this I thank you Jarre, you have been a close part of my music life since I first started listening to you as a very young and troubled teenager. How far we have come together.

The quality of the extras on this disc is what really surprised me. For example you get get a full 1024×576 resolution trailer. That’s higher than DVD which weighs in at 720×480! You also get a 300 megabyte poster in PSD (Photoshop) format. Now if only I had one of those crazy large format printers to send it to…

Overall it’s a nice bonus to anyone who enjoys seeing a bit of behind the scenes magic and would like to get even more worked up before the official release.

~

Adding an amazing 0.002 percent to my total music collection comes Juno Reactor – Shango. You may be a bit more familiar with the first song titled “Pistelero” after you see Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The preview for Once Upon features some instrumental sections of Pistelero and I’m hoping the rest of the song actually plays out during the movie. The song is a really a high energy, whip out your pistols, get up and dance oddity which I think compliments the Once Upon perfectly.

Other songs on the Shango CD will definitely not disappoint Juno Reactor fans. While the mood changes frequently it’s all very entertaining and even scary during certain tracks.

Maybe Parr will want to use it as background music during this years Halloween haunt.