Are you VGM perfectionist?
 

Hi... I wonder if any of you're perfectionist like me, in problem of ripping and OSTs versions of VGM. Just today I found the OST of Rockman EXE 6 (GBA) which I have the ripped version already... but eventually I download it for collector purpose. The sound quality in the OST is much better than the ones in my rip.

So I wonder if you behave just like what I did? Searching for the entire soundtracks even though you already have all of the ripped tracks tagged nicely and in the end you have the various version of the VGM: the rip and OSt.:juggler:

Well the problem is, such perfectionism actually consumes my HDD.

Double Post:
And since I paranoid, I also never intended to remove the original zip archive of soundtracks that I have downloaded, incase I the tracks I have copied got corrupted.

I'd rather have the OST tracks over the gamerip version as the OST is frequently tagged more accurately to the track.

I'm such a perfectionist over my ID3 tags I make sure they're in the appropriate character set (ie: most of my JPN OSTs are in Japanese kana).

If you're a VGM perfectionist, why promote FFShrine? After all, Sarah's ID3 tags are all over the place, half of the albums are incomplete, and the whole thing is just farcical. Not that this is my only reason for hating that site...

Anyway, I'm quite a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to composer tags, and mostly use OSTs ripped by myself or downloaded from actual reliable sources rather than game rips.

Same here. The only problem is that I tend to be indecisive and change my standards a lot, so things become out of sync. I also download way more than I can handle.

You could say I'm a perfectionist with regards to how I handle my VGM collection. At least for soundtracks that I really like (or think that I will), I often end up collecting both the OST and game rip. Game rips sometimes have interesting extras or elements (e.g. sound effects) that can make them stand apart from the official release. In some cases, it makes the music more enjoyable.

I'm rather intolerant of the slightest pop and whistle as well, so before I backup any piece of music, I make it a point to listen to it at least once to be sure there are no stray bleeps. I'm also very fussy with ID tags and will almost always go all out to tag my music files to a format/style I'm inclined towards. So this usually results in massive editing of tags even if they're already well done (e.g. #gamemp3 releases). Problem with all this is it takes up a lot of time. :( But the satisfaction is quite priceless. :P

I'm somewhat of a VGM perfectionist, although with release groups like #gamemp3s around, I don't see much of a need to change the tags around, with the exception of their old releases where some of the track titles were cut off due to using only ID3v1 tags.

I do tend to backup some soundtracks that I've edited, though, sometimes simply for the sake of matching the .sfvs, despite it being not to my standards.

However, with all that's been said, there isn't really as much to edit in VGM soundtracks these days as there is when compared to anime music, IMO -- most proper releases are very sparse, unfortunately.

And yeah, I also download too much for my own good. Still have to unzip and tag dozens of my music... :edgartpg:

I'm a severe perfectionist. Since most of it makes its way to my mp3 player I am a paranoid tagger AND organization person . . . I also go through all the rips or OSTs I download and keep only the songs I like, because elsewise it's beginning to just take up too much harddisk space. :S

I'm quite the perfectionist myself. I'm very adamant about my soundtracks/gamerips being tagged and organized in the most accurate way possible. Especially in regards to gamerips. I find myself constantly double-checking the information.

When it comes to Genesis gamerips,I'm a pretty much obsessive perfectionist. Considering that 75% of Genesis rips out there are .gym-->.mp3 conversions (and we all know how they sound),I devote all my efforts to finding TV-quality rips. Take Vectorman,for instance. I've seen at least 4 different rips so far. The one I stuck to is actually incomplete,and the tracks sound kinda muffled,but I would take that one over the horrible .gym screeches any day.

Also,once I get my hands on a rip,I make it includes every single piece of music from the game. It's even gotten to the point where I've been looking all over for the "SEGA!" jingles for the Sonic rips. O.o

Finally,when I make my own rips,I go out of my way to make sure they are properly tagged/named.

Are you sure it's THAT high of a percentage? Project 2612

Firstly, I'm rather anal when it comes to the technical quality of the mp3. If it ain't VBR then it ain't goin' in my music folder (unless of course there are no alternatives). If I have a choice between a 192kbps rip and a lossless (e.g. FLAC) version, then I will download the FLAC, and decode/encode it with the VBR option that is considered the best at the present. Then again, I'm not that anal in this regard since I still want my hard drive space.

Another thing that quite annoys me is "ALL CAPS TRACKNAMES", "Tracknames with one WORD that is capped", and "First word has a capital letter but the rest don't". The latter two ain't as annoying as the first though. I also like correcting obvious typos in tracknames. Oh, and I also like to spell the "proper" British way.

I also demand consistency in the artist tags.

For example, depending on who tagged it, the artist could be "Shiro Hamaguchi" or "Shirou Hamaguchi". I use Winamp v5.0's media library feature (Though I might check out Foobar sometime to check what all the fuss is about), so if I am in the mood to listen to arranges of Final Fantasy music, then I could click on his name to listen to his works. Therefore it is rather annoying when I have a "double" entry as in the case above. This is similar to variations of "Falcom Sound Team JDK", "Sound Team JDK", "Sound Team J.D.K", etc...

To summarise, I like consistency.

On a rather unrelated note, where does the "h" come from in regards to Japanese names (e.g. Kaori Asoh, Risa Ohki, Koh-Ichi Seiyama) since AFAIK there is no "h" in the Japanese "alphabet". Or is it because it's originally Kaori Asoo with a long "o" sound, so when written it comes out as "oh".

Im sorta of a perfectionist, most of the time. I'm always striving to get the complete albums. Something which is hard to do sometimes. I spent a quite bit of time looking for the entire Morrowind soundtrack after noticing that songs were missing and were misslabeled. And I have at least 2 or 3 versions of the Dungeon Siege soundtrack on my computer. All with more or less different songs.
Also, I'm a bit annoyed at those who use the first ID3 tag window for really long artist works, which means that the last part falls off. Something I dont want to happen as I'm looking to show the entire title of the song with the artists. And where applicable I usually add an artist name or a fitting name to songs that are currently lacking it. Just to improve the whole look of the album.
So yeah, I'm a perfectionist. Im not that picky with quality as I'm extremly terrible at picking out major differences (other than the one between 64kbps and 128 and above.) So that one isnt that much of a bother for me. Its the titles of the songs that I'm a perfectionist with. That at least some good and proper names for the albums, while its a bit evil. I'm not a fan of having [Groupname] infront of the folder. As it breaks of when Im having the albums sorted. Then again, that's just me.

I can be a perfectionist at times. Whether or not I take a rip over a soundtrack depends on a few things, such as the quality of the rip and whether or not certain tracks exist on a rip that don't on the soundtrack, or vice versa. Or I'll take a rip if no official soundtrack seems to exist.

The tagging is one thing I can be quite a perfectionist with. I have so much VGM that usually anything I download gets at least one thing changed, that one thing being the genre. 'Soundtrack' is just wayyyy too general in my collection. In the case of VGM, the genre gets changed from 'Soundtrack' or 'Game' to the console the game was on. That can vary in games on more than one platform; with some I have the genre set to the platform the game was originally released on, or sometimes the console I first played it on.

One pet peeve of mine in the tagging (aside from when they're often badly done, like with FFShrine. I usually only get something from there if I can't find it anywhere else) is when the track number appears in the track title. iTunes organizes the tracks of an album by track number already, if they exist for those files. So, having to remove the numbers from the track titles and/or put them in the track number tag is always a pain. I use iTunes primarily for stuff like tag editing, but that's one of those things that isn't so easily taken care of.

this is just simple question, but might display your perfectionism: how do you name the folder of your VGM? do you use "Original Soundtracks" or "OST"?
for me, I prefer to use format like these:

Chocobo Dungeon ~Coi Vanni Gialli~ [SSCX-10016]
Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon 2 [PSF Rip] [SSCX-10026]
Rockman EXE Transmission [MP3 Rip]
Kingdom Hearts OST [7243-5-80453-21]

I don't know why, but sometimes these brackets and catalogue number beautify my VGM library :D. Weird huh?

I don't do that. I use "Original Soundtrack", "Oriiginal Sound Version", ect. when I name my folders. I also don't put the catalog number in the folder name. I put that in the "Comment" section of the ID3 tags.

One thing though:

Why would you put the catalog number with that when it's a rip and not the actual soundtrack? :P

Lastly, I would like to know your response to the question Mr. Maul posed to you here:

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to sound rude or anything. I am just curious.

Just for reference, as far as I know, some PSF set are tagged according to the real OST, it's just for reference. I dont use catalogue number for set that arent' tagged improperly though. Take a look at these:

Atelier Iris Eternal Mana [PSF2 Rip]
Digital Devil Saga 3 - Nocturne [PSF 2 Rip]

Or perhaps I'm just obsessed with brackets. :D

Because currently GH is one of the largest VGM archive in the internet, plus it's direct download. It will be easier for laymen instead of using FTP, mIRC, etc. True, the ID3 tags maybe not really complete and some albums are incomplete, but hey, I wont complain anything.:)

Btw Sarah told us at the forum she got all the OSTs through VGM Central.

I was a perfectionist, until I got really tired of reworking on all the ID3 tags so that they'd fit my standard. Nowadays I just leave it like it was, unless the album is not labeled at all but near and dear to me.

One of the problems I had was what to put in the Artist column, since this is what would be displayed on Winamp. Usually the Artist is the Composer, and then there is the Original Artist as well. Especially with the Final Fantasy Albums you'd see a row full of unchanging Nobuo Uematsu's. I'm rather more interested in knowing from which game the current track is, on which CD it's located and which track number is attached to it, immediately and not after reading the title and thinking about it for a little while. Then I would put something like this into the Artist field:
"name of Game" "CD number"-"Track number"
The problem was that sometimes the display would be really long, so I tried to shortcut the names. But that would only work with more popular titles. If you want consistency, you'd have to give all other obscure albums abbreviations as well, and that means headache. Another problem would be if there exist games that would correspond directly to the abbreviations... as a perfectionist, I had to think about it.
Outside of ID3 tags, I also tried to give any track immediate recognizability (?). A lot of tracks can only be identified when they are in their FOLDERs for example. If you take them elsewhere you wouldn't know immediately from which game and so on this track was, so I applied the "name of Game" "CD number"-"Track number" "Track title" format. But then I had the problems with burning some of those onto CD... lol.
The conflicts never ended so I simply stopped. If someone has a perfect tagging system, I would quite be willing to restart this meticulous work again.

Heh. To test Sarah, my brother temporarily put up a fake soundtrack on the hub of crappy MP3s converted from distorted MIDIs, clearly stating in the ID3 tags that it wasn't real soundtrack and also warning anyone else that attempted to download it that it wasn't real. Of course, the silly cow still put it up on GH for download during her daily and sadly unstoppable downloading fests. That one has no brain, I tell you, as well as no knowledge and respect regarding game music. When it was told the truth, it still did nothing about it. :p

As you're such a perfectionist, do you have four different versions of E.V.O. albums, when there were actually just two albums released? There are an amazing number of replica soundtracks on there. What about sound quality? There is shocking variability in quality throughout and this must be contrary to your 'audiophilic' tendencies. And, of course, the tags. If you're lucky enough not to have something named '1.mp3', the ID3 tags are 95% guaranteed to be inaccurate anyway. Horrible resource, I tell you.

Though FTP servers, VGM Central, and Bittorrent may look difficult to use, they're really not and there's plenty of documentation to help newbies. Downloading from these places not only guarantees you're going to receive mostly accurately labelled MP3s, but you're also not letting a fool profit from providing shoddy illegal downloads to mostly retarded or ignorant folk. I'm not against downloading if people make an effort to support the artists otherwise, but absolutely detest those that receive profit from it. That's why I principally hate Sarah, not my apparent 'homophobia' (hah, the irony) I was initially accused of expressing by it.

I'm picky about sound quality too; I've deleted a number of gamerips because they were of such horrible quality. You'd think people had never heard of gain control before.

Of course, I'm increasingly finding myself preferring gamerips over official OSTs now, because so many official soundtracks are cheaply done. If there's one thing that drives me nuts, it's single-looped songs. I'm rather annoyed that I'm going to have to rip Shadow of the Colossus myself for that reason. At least I'll have a tracklist to go by.

I feel inclined to note that GH is awfully hit or miss. Ms. Sarah does not appear to employ any sort of quality filter whatsoever. I've gotten high quality VBR tracks, and godawful AM radio masquerading as a soundtrack (avoid GH's Shadow of the Colossus rip). If you're picky about quality, leecher beware.

Maybe she's exist to download anything. lol. Seriously, It seems she will just download anything from VGM central. But I respect her a lot for providing wonderful site like GH. :)

No, I'm not that perfectionist since my HDD is limited in space, I'm also not an audiophile so 160 kbps will be enough for me. But well, my speed is really2bad when talking about FTP, mIRC and Torrent, so I dont have other option but to leech from GH. Direct Download is the best for dial up user:juggler:

I have to agree with Mr. Maul here. The way GH is setup is a mess. If their staff were serious about providing music to the masses, they would take the time to organize everything they download before they present it to everybody. I stay away at all costs. Though, eriol, I do understand where you're coming from with the speed issue. On a slow connection, torrents and such can be troublesome and stressful to use. Direct downloads are usually the only efficient option.

As far as myself, I don't think I'd call myself a vgm "perfectionist". I think the term "vgm enthusiast" suits me more. I like having my ID3 tags and filenames properly setup. When an album is composed by multiple people, I try hard to find out who composed which songs. Also, when a game has different names in Japan and the US, I normally use the one where the album originated, I.E.: "Eternal Arcadia Original Soundtrack" instead of "Skies of Arcadia Original Soundtrack". When it comes to quality, I'm not an audiophile so I'm not into the whole lossless scene. I prefer to have the album in VBR, but if not, 192 CBR is fine, 160 CBR is tolerable and 128 CBR is acceptable only if it's a very RARE album. And as always, if it's an album I really like, I look to gain a physical copy of it at some point.