I was happy when they removed the requirement of needing to own the game to buy an OST. I think they should do a similar policy as Bandcamp where you must submit FLAC quality and then can degrade the quality to MP3 if the user wants.
because the difference is negligible on 98% of the speakers, headphones or whatever people are using to listen to music.
Yes you might enjoy it more when you do nothing but listening and focusing on music but that is not something people do regularly or invest money into.
I can store a 15mb mp3 file or a 192k,24bit flac with 300mb and hardly hear the difference.
100%. FLAC is for a very specialized, niche audience which is, typically, extremely vocal on the internet. MP3 is totally fine for just about everyone.
It's zero effort to export flac. Music producers go to soooo much effort to mix and master their work at the highest resolution, for it to only get compressed.
If people prefer mp3s (ogg actually gets better file size for the same quality), that's totally fine, but just give people options.
These comments are wild. Imagine getting downvoted for wanting higher quality. Oh well, I get it's not for most people. It really is simple to implement and as you stated if you have lossesless you can format to ogg if you want to save space. This sub is lost on why it matters.
I know. My argument is also that people go to extreme lengths to get perfect visual fidelity, so why not audio, particularly when audio is so easy to export, rather than needing, say, a whole new GPU to get that fraction of extra quality.
Anyway, says more about the contrarians on the Internet that just want to knock you down rather than offer nice things to people.
It's low effort but not low cost. FLACs take up a lot of space on servers that Valve has to pay for. It may sound callous, but the truth is that most people do not care how much effort producers go through. Good enough is good enough, and that saves Valve a lot of money (and keeps costs lower for consumers).
To be fair, not all music has a master like that. I remember asking about it when the undertale soundtrack came out on bandcamp and was confirmed that the flacs were of no higher quality than the oggs the game comes with.
I don't think you understand compression. Undertale had a lofi 8-bit soundtrack perhaps, I can't remember. I work in the audio team of a large video game company btw, all music is mastered uncompressed, typically at 32 bit float resolution.
Well no I mean I emailed the undertale email back in 2016 (when it was still the undertalegame one? not sure if it still is) about what the difference was, and the response was:
I made the music and I couldn't tell you the difference
As in they weren't aware of any actual difference between the FLAC and MP3 versions.
There's no way they could be bit-dentical because one is compressed and the other is not. Mp3 is lossy. What you're saying is that the community manager you spoke to doesn't understand audio compression. But sure, keep digging yourself a hole if you want to.
I'm not really sure that's true. At Steam's scale that cost scales pretty quickly. I don't have hard numbers, but the truth is that when 0.01% of the consumer base is all that cares about a thing, it doesn't have to be much more expensive at all to make it not worth it.
I went down an audiophile rabbit hole, learned a lot... like I was getting back into buying CDs again, to get specific masters of some albums (usually the original release), because once you learn what's going on, usually you can hear an obvious difference between a modern loudness wars remaster and like an original 80s release of an album. There are SOME exceptions, but ie. every single Metallica remaster of the 80s and Black albums, are total dog shit, compared to the original releases. An example of an exception, is Balance by Van Halen... the original release was loudness wars. The most recent remaster (I believe 2023) eased up a lot on the compression and volume pushing and all the music breathes way better.
Music that is labeled as higher than 16bit44.1kHz (CD quality) is usually... not actually. There are programs to analyze ie. kHz so you can see what is actually being used by the file. I had bought some 192kHz FLACs that were actually reporting 22kHz... which, due to some scientific term that is escaping me at the moment, makes it 44.1kHz (the frequency of the file has to be twice that of the actual max kHz for it to play without sound artifacts)... so, there are a TON of "higher than 44.1kHz" FLAC quality sites out there, that charge MORE for it like it was more work... that are actually just good old CD quality. I got some refunds when I found this out... now I just usually buy 16bit44.1kHz, it is good enough for me. 24 bit is another step up, I don't know how to measure if it is actually source 24 bit or upscaled for marketing (which is useless aside from convincing a consumer to give you more money for the exact same file of a "lower quality" marked FLAC).
But, when I make my own music, it is 24bit48kHz at the source. I tried going above 48kHz but it was having issues, I did some troubleshooting with it, basically... it's just really hard to record higher than 48kHz without having playback latency, which obviously makes it harder to record (if you are hearing something from your recording software playing fine, but what you play on your instrument when recording [like playing guitar into PC with effects through PC] plays back some milliseconds or even a full second later, you are off tempo and sound like shit, it is impossible to record this way), so I just settled on 48kHz... which most people aren't going to hear the difference compared to 44.1kHz anyway. A lot of people can't hear the difference going from 320 MP3 to 44.1kHz. The main thing for me is mastering quality, like if something clips and they don't fix the mix or even sometimes have to re-record a part (if it was the track that was clipping during recording), you can notice it...
But yeah, the main thing is the quality of the master for me, then I just need 320 MP3 minimum, I go for 16bit44.1kHz FLAC ideally, for personal storage cuz then bitrot is less likely to become a noticeable problem in the audio in my life... and I can't do Spotify or whatever, cuz they use modern masters of classic albums, which, see above, usually ruins it once you've heard the difference...
Also, when you find a 24bit192kHz FLAC through a torrent... it's more than likely CD quality too. It's someone not knowing any better, or being afraid of not having the "clout" of getting a lot of seeds cuz people who don't know want the "highest quality" labeled option so if they don't do it that way someone else will... but ie. ripping a CD at 24bit192kHz when a regular CD can't even produce that level of fidelity. So if you torrent some stuff, and you know all this, you end up downconverting a lot of it because there is no loss and you just save a LOT of storage space.
But, to be honest, I buy 95% of my music these days. I make music myself, I don't really make money off of it... but I am not saying it wouldn't be nice to. And a lot of these artists, don't need my money, they are set for life. But I believe in supporting artists. Even if I disagree with artist personalities sometimes. But, you meet a lot of people in life you don't gel with, that still have things to offer. Having a personality clash doesn't mean someone deserves to be discarded, imo.
You're thinking if the The Nyquist Theorem. Also yea I think 48khz is the move. Because android resamples to 48khz anyway and the windows default is that.
I would agree with you on 320 MP3 but you definitely hear the difference in 192. Since storage is cheap why not go full HD on FLAC. If you ever get a house with Hifi equipment you will appreciate it and won't have to redownload your library.
320 kb/s MP3 is incredibly wasteful. There's no reason not to use V0 which is 256 kb/s on average for probably 90% of tracks. V0 is also named internally by the LAME devs as the "extreme" preset, similar to the "placebo" preset in x264, so even V0 is wasteful according to the people who actually live and breathe MP3, it's just less so compared to 320 kb/s.
Compared to modern formats? Sure. But it's by far the most supported codec, so it's the most sensible delivery method. No digital music consumer won't be able to play it.
MP3 also can't do gapless playback natively
That's been solved on the encoder side with LAME 3.90 which released in 2001. I've only ever seen cheap Chinesium media players not do gapless playback.
I'm not talking 20k, there's a big leap from cheap sub 100 to good quality 300 dollar headphones or 1k speakers. Cheap headphones are shit. Mostly people listen to music in their car with bad speakers or air pods or bad headphones like Beats aka Apple over the ear headphones.
I have 250GB in music files FLAC being 90% of my music, I have plenty of storage.
In my 1st point I said to give the user the option to downgrade the audio if they want to download MP3s.
Just give people options. You don't care, which I'm fine with, just don't crap on other people's experiences and needs. It's zero effort to export to flac. It's also much better for long term preservation as it's non-destructive compression. It's like saying a high resolution jpg is just as good as the original artwork.
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its more like the difference is peoples' hearing, give them a planar headphone with wide soundstage they still wouldnt be able to tell them apart with their airpod asides from "its lacking bass!". Its similar to 60 and 120 fps, some people just doesnt know what to look/hear at to know the difference.
99% of the people who claim to be able to tell the difference have never done an abx test and provided the results. I know what to listen for, I know how MP3 compresses audio, and with LAME 3.90+, anything 192 kb/s CBR or V2+ is transparent outside of very, very few edge cases.
Speak for yourself, i have personally done abx test between a 320kbps cbr mp3 and 24bit 48KHz flac, i nailed all of them. You can definitely tell how everything sounds so constraint in comparison to lossless.
Actually it is one of the reason i'm using apple music instead of shitify even though the app is not stable on windows.
You would be the first ever to have a 100% accuracy.
Where did you get this from? chatgpt?
I need to prove it to some rando on the internet? Who are you again? The ABX test authority? lmao. I can nail the test all day all night, its so easy to tell with a planar headphone. Maybe stop using trash dynamic driver headphone in the first place.
Actually reading and participating in abx testing in forums like hydrogenaudio.
I need to prove it to some rando on the internet? Who are you again? The ABX test authority? lmao.
I'll let my earlier comment elucidate for you:
99% of the people who claim to be able to tell the difference have never done an abx test and provided the results.
You're proving my point. The audiophoolery blaming dynamic drivers for not being able to resolve the difference between MP3 and lossless is just the cherry on top.
You're overestimating your ability to differentiate between lossless and properly encoded MP3 audio. Do an abx test on actual music you listen to and see for yourself. You don't insist on storing all your pictures as lossless TIFFs do you?
Yes, but what does "properly encoded" actually mean? How can I guarantee whether files are "properly encoded"?
Yes I absolutely want images in tiff format in certain cases, especially if I want to edit or re-encode them myself. Or are you suggesting I shouldn't have the right to own the original bit-accurate content? It's the same with audio.
Using the latest version of LAME, encoding from a lossless source.
How can I guarantee whether files are "properly encoded"?
You can't, unfortunately, even with lossless files. The closest you'll come is CD rips with logs and checksums, but there exists bullshit like lossy masters and the loudness war that means even CD sources aren't necessarily good quality.
are you suggesting I shouldn't have the right to own the original bit-accurate content?
No? I'm just really tired of seeing the "storage is cheap" argument for why MP3s are obsolete (which is what the person above me is writing). The average person making this claim doesn't feel this way about JPEG despite its flaws being infinitely more obvious and the only thing I can attribute to that is misinformation from "audiophiles".
My questions are rhetorical. I know what good encoding looks like. But there's no guarantee of an industry standard being applied, so why not just provide a lossless source so that if you want to save space you can compress it however you want it. Ogg is actually a better encoding, it saves more space for better audio quality, but I understand that mp3 is more widespread. So let me do my own compression. If I don't have a lossless source I can't do it. It's literally ZERO effort to supply flac. I'm arguing for mp3+flac btw, not flac only, in case it isn't clear. I've literally downloaded mp3s off steam that are lower quality than the same files I got elsewhere (from the OSTs themselves).
You can also get very high quality as a mp3, its just a method of encoding and decoding audio it could be almost if not lossless if encoded in the best quality.
That publishers and people still prefer MP3 (as a lossy format) compared to Opus these days is downright wild.
Opus is open source and royalty free, it's transparent at 128kbit/s VBR compared to Mp3's 175 to 245 kbit/s. It has better sound quality than MP3, AAC and Vorbis while also taking up less space.
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Some additional information, some devs/publisher hide their soundtrack behind the deluxe edtion, then its a 50/50 if its mp3/flac or an app where you cannot access the files to copy paste them anywhere you want
example Persona 3 Reload, soundtrack is behind the deluxe edition and you only get an app to play the music, you have no access to the files to hear them on you smartphone or anything else
Elden Ring also has the soundtrack as an app. Most Japanese games do, either that, or only playable in-game.
At least Square recently released all the Final Fantasy OSTs as actual soundtracks.
Also, even though I think the best option is a separate purchase, I do like how Microsoft (or rather Bethesda) has been doing it with their Deluxe Editions. You get the app to play the music, yes, but it also gives you an option to save the tracks to your PC. Starfield, DOOM: The Dark Ages and the Oblivion Remaster all allow that.
EDIT:
Editing this to add, because just today I decided to launch the Elden Ring Artbook/OST app, and it turns out, it does the same as the Bethesda apps, you can actually save the OST to your PC! So that's a thumbs up to FromSoftware and/or Bamco, whoever was in charge of making the app.
I have more than 1600 soundtracks on Steam, I collect and listen to game music while coding, and while Steam is a good place as the soundtracks regularly get discounted, are relatively cheap, and are easy to download... there are a lot of downsides too:
Missing meta data, meaning not enough tags to work with media servers or even some media players. For some even the Steam client fails at listing the files.
Missing files, faulty files, additional misc files. A depot can be entirely empty (but still sold), or also contain things like a multi-GiB documentary.
Some soundtracks can contain a whole disc of sound effects, if you enqueue this in your music player, you'll have a bad time.
Steam installs the soundtracks in the wrong place for some product IDs, so far that they can end up in the root of the Steam program folder.
Even if not set to download HD files, it seems entirely up to developers to tag their depots properly, as some soundtracks will have you download MP3+FLAC/WAV regardless of your settings.
The purchasing experience suuuuuuucks, only very few soundtracks actually have a trailer or any kind of preview in-store. I have to resort to Youtube or ironically Bandcamp to get a preview, which is ridiculous. Sometimes the soundtrack is so obscure there simply is no preview anywhere.
I've been frustrated enough about this that I wrote an open letter that I plopped into the Steam forums, sent to support, and then straight to Gabe as a hail Mary. They could do so much more with soundtracks on Steam, but yeah... Valve time and whatever.
For me there are at least two reasons to dislike it.
When installing many soundtracks it's fiddly to remember and remove said sound effects. In my case so far, goat bleats and engine noises, quite disruptive clips.
A soundtrack can get updated and restore said files, if you still have them in Steam. I've had soundtracks get an update which changed the whole folder structure in the depot, then said effects would pop back in.
Then there are also things like podcast episodes, outtakes, ringtones... that I can think of.
I think this mess of files mostly comes from Valve automatically converting a lot of DLC that included soundtracks to the soundtrack content type. This is nice, and I won't buy things that aren't soundtracks due to ability to install without the game, but it does leave the delivery format up to chance.
This reminds me that the blue revolver soundtrack has the instruments layered differently or something...making it better to just pull the master oggs from the main folder than actually listen to the soundtrack.
I've been following VGM for the past ~15 years and seen thousands of Steam/GOG releases of game music, it's such hit and miss, Wild West. There are no strict guidelines to follow, and IT SHOWS: from perfectly tagged FLAC+MP3 v0 bundle, with covers and proper filenames to a fucking 5 GB Unity app to listen to a few dozen track album.
Bandcamp has been and is the golden standard of how to do digital music distribution for all this time.
Sadly I had no idea about Bandcamp before I started investing in music on Steam, now five years ago when they introduced the soundtrack content type.
I've started work on a Steam soundtrack harmonizer that will download and prepare albums for consumption of media servers and players. It's a slow process though as I have other projects in the works, and I'm not too familiar with encoding media, but it is a sorely needed solution to make sense of what we get from Steam.
Now if DepotDownloader could just accept my pull request... 🙃
For me personally the way I do this, is I get new soundtracks, listen to them, marking the tracks that speak to me as favorites, and move on.
As I usually haven't played the games, this results in a list of music I enjoy regardless of nostalgia etc. So far I'm up to I believe 19 full days of good music, so I can put on that favorites list and it'll be a while before it repeats.
So yeah, sadly that means I've got a hard time recommending whole soundtracks, as I usually prefer just a few tracks in most, and I barely remember the album names.
Something Steam could do would be to create a way better audio player, with working playback options and the ability to rate or at least like tracks.
This could then be used to pick which part of a soundtrack to base an auto-generated trailer on. Or, be used to create mixes out of a persons full library. Etc.
Steam isn't really a good place to consume the music, just a convenient place of acquisition, even if the delivery format can be problematic.
Cheers. Thanks for the response. A few of mine that are amazing albums which could be game soundtracks are Derelicts from Carbon Based Lifeforms and the soundtrack to Tron Legacy
I'm not nearly as big of a soundtrack collector as the commenter above, but FTL's soundtrack by Ben Prunty and the No Man's Sky soundtrack by 65daysofstatic are my personal top space soundtracks.
I love when steam slowly builds up these more niche parts of their launcher. It really adds to why people never want to leave steam. They could easily just be a basic ass pc gaming launcher and call it a day but they always got something interesting that they are making or building up. Some of these things may not be much at first but eventually grows to something great like SteamOS. Could see this eventually becoming like that
Capcom has enthusiastically embraced this new distribution method, offering over 100 albums on its store page, from headliners like Monster Hunter Wilds and Street Fighter 6 to games' that aren't available on Steam.
Yeah, Monster Hunter Wilds (game) costs 70€ non-discounted (or 38.50€ discounted), so you'd think you could get the soundtrack for a reasonable price... but the soundtrack alone costs 73€ (no game included and no cheaper game + soundtrack bundle exists).
Well, but for 73€ you at least get the lossless version of the soundtrack to listen to the soundtrack in unprecedented quality that you can't find in the game... hahahaha, no you don't. It's all MP3.
Maybe expecting a lossless version is unreasonable, if it doesn't exist and would require a lot of effort to make... but of course it does exist and can be bought from OTOTOY or MORA for 11,000 Yen (≈60€).
Steam is undeniably the worst place for me to buy the Monster Hunter Wilds Soundtrack.
The Street Fighter 6 Soundtrack costs 70€ (vs base game plus year 1 and year 2 game content together 60€) and it does include FLAC versions of the soundtrack (optional download). The Year 1 and Year 2 soundtracks are separate additional purchases though (24.50€ and 12.80€ respectively) and these are MP3-only.
Putting aside that these Capcom soundtrack prices are absurd I don't think Steam is a good place to buy them.
but the soundtrack alone costs 73€ (no game included and no cheaper game + soundtrack bundle exists).
Holy shit, you weren't kidding! Even Qobuz, where I purchase all of my game soundtracks, have the soundtrack for $60. At least they have the soundtrack in lossless/hi-res 24-bit/48 kHz, but that price is still surprisingly high, though I guess it's because it's 7 discs and 126 tracks.
Anyway, for those in the west that want to purchase the lossless album for 60 bucks, Qobuz might be the easiest option.
I just discovered this recently. The Breath of Fire series is a great example. You can find the OSTs for games 1-4 and Dragon Quarter, but you can’t actually purchase the games themselves.
I love paying for game soundtracks on steam, because no DRM, i can copy and paste the mp3/flac music on anything i have, from smartphone to my fridge or give it some friends, its the best place for DRM free game soundtracks <3
I'm not really discounting what you say but... ah... Apple popularized DRM-free music albums back in 2009 when iTunes and all of its tracks went DRM-free and after that most other music stores quickly followed. E.g. TIDAL when they still had a store, Bandcamp, and Qobuz (which is my preferred store to purchase from) all provides DRM-free downloads of purchased albums.
So Steam providing DRM-free game soundtracks has been the expected norm since like the early 2010s.
DRM protected music haven't really been a thing for over a decade now other than on streaming platforms themselves (Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, etc).
This is my biggest gripe. Still collecting OSTs at a good price but having to manually rip them to my phone when there is literally a (actually, two) Steam App is a little braindead.
I've bought mine from Bandcamp which I do for most of my music for many years now.
Happy to pay and support the artists, but just let me download the files in the format I want and then I'll take it from there.
Black Screen Records has a fairly large amount of game soundtracks on their Bandcamp store, but there is also a lot of others on there posted by the artists themselves.
The first two were released on PC and are currently available via GOG. I don't think they released Dino Crisis 3 soundtrack on Steam, but I may be wrong.
The drakengard and drakengard 3 soundtracks were put on Steam recently for some reason. Now just for the actual games to not be stuck in ps2/ps3 limbo.
There used to be a lot more anime on there from Crunchyroll, but CR stopped selling licenses for it and so only people who bought it at the time still have access. I have 243 videos in my Steam library, mostly from episodes of anime that you can no longer buy.
It's not required to submit lossless versions, so often you just get MP3s (which most people probably want, but FLAC would still be nice). Metadata is sometimes wrong or incomplete. Sometimes files are straight up broken.
Steam is definitely not my first choice if I want to buy a video game soundtrack.
I have to double check when OSTs go on sale to see if it's DRM free, bought it for Persona 5 Strikers because it had some killer remixes IMO, found out they force you to use an external app to listen.
I checked and they delisted the P5: Strikers Bonus Content DLC, I assume because reviews were so negative for the DRM.
Meanwhile a lot of games do include full quality OSTs but I'd suggest people do their research before purchasing. Expedition 33 has a full hour and a half of free music DLC without even needing to own the game, and many indie titles deluxe versions include the full OST, usually FLAC & MP3.
For the Sega mega drive/genesis version of Sonic 3 sure. For Sonic Adventure 2 IDK (I think the singer of som rap songs in the game had a dispute). The OST is available on Spotify and on Amazon Music (Sadly I can't buy it from where I am)
Basically what happened is Epic/Harmonix went to Sega to license Live and Learn for Fortnite Festival (basically Rock Band 5-ish).
Sega told them to go to Crush 40 to license the song. Epic did, and then Crush 40 explained to them that Sega has repeatedly stated that Sega owns the song and used it themselves without asking Crush 40 first.
So they (Crush 40) sued Sega to clarify who owns what, case currently dismissed based on statute of limitations. Sega says Crush 40 owns it but won't let Crush 40 license it themselves or pay royalties on it when used in videogames. So all Crush 40 songs are in a weird purgatory.
I don't get why publishers don't just host the music on their site and allow direct to consumers purchases. If you go onto the publisher/developers site, often times they either won't have anything or they'll charge even more than if you just bought the ost on steam. Like, why the hell would I spend 18$ on Square Enix's site when I could just buy the ost on steam for 13$; even if they sold the ost at the same price, they'd still be ranking in significantly more money since they don't have to give a cut of the revenue to steam.
I buy soundtracks off of bandcamp when I can. A lot of indie/AA games' composers post their work there and you are (almost) guaranteed to get a lossless version at least. With Steam, sometimes you don't know what format you're getting, possibly only lossy encodes like MP3, and some are even locked behind DRM so you can't move them to other devices. Reviews often help there, but it's just easier to buy from bandcamp at that point.
Yeah to each their own I guess. I have listened to movie soundtracks, so that's similar. But the rare times I want to hear a song from a game I just use YouTube.
As long as steam keeps up the quality then fine by me lol. There's so many little things about steam that I take for granted and then realize how good it is when I check out what's going on with Playstation or epic games launcher.
This made me go look more at my soundtracks and hot dang I had no idea you got actual files of the tracks. I always thought it was just an in-Steam playlist, which was cool, but nothing too different than YouTube or whatever. Being able to actually put albums on my phone for offline listening is super dope.
I don't have too many OSTs on Steam but I was extremely happy with the Clair Obscur OST download. It contains two copies of every song, one 192 kbps mp3 and one 1141 or 3072 kbps wav file, basically the studio version. When the DLC came out earlier this month, the six additional songs were automatically added to the OST.
My only issue with Steam music has been with some licensed music only being available near the game's release, but I blame the publisher for that. I badly want the Death Stranding: Songs From the Video Game album but it was taken down.
I was happy when they removed the requirement of needing to own the game to buy an OST. I think they should do a similar policy as Bandcamp where you must submit FLAC quality and then can degrade the quality to MP3 if the user wants.
Yeah only having mp3s is bs
I really don't get MP3s in 2025/6 storage is a lot cheaper than in 2005 per gigabyte. You might as well go high quality audio now.
because the difference is negligible on 98% of the speakers, headphones or whatever people are using to listen to music.
Yes you might enjoy it more when you do nothing but listening and focusing on music but that is not something people do regularly or invest money into.
I can store a 15mb mp3 file or a 192k,24bit flac with 300mb and hardly hear the difference.
100%. FLAC is for a very specialized, niche audience which is, typically, extremely vocal on the internet. MP3 is totally fine for just about everyone.
It's zero effort to export flac. Music producers go to soooo much effort to mix and master their work at the highest resolution, for it to only get compressed. If people prefer mp3s (ogg actually gets better file size for the same quality), that's totally fine, but just give people options.
That resolution helps with music production, but it's not relevant at all to listening.
Lol. The whole point of music production is for listening.
These comments are wild. Imagine getting downvoted for wanting higher quality. Oh well, I get it's not for most people. It really is simple to implement and as you stated if you have lossesless you can format to ogg if you want to save space. This sub is lost on why it matters.
You really expected users from /r/pcgaming to have standards?
I know. My argument is also that people go to extreme lengths to get perfect visual fidelity, so why not audio, particularly when audio is so easy to export, rather than needing, say, a whole new GPU to get that fraction of extra quality. Anyway, says more about the contrarians on the Internet that just want to knock you down rather than offer nice things to people.
It's low effort but not low cost. FLACs take up a lot of space on servers that Valve has to pay for. It may sound callous, but the truth is that most people do not care how much effort producers go through. Good enough is good enough, and that saves Valve a lot of money (and keeps costs lower for consumers).
I don't think that's a really good explanation when Valve is already completely fine with hosting terabytes of workshop mods
But people actually care about Workshop mods.
To be fair, not all music has a master like that. I remember asking about it when the undertale soundtrack came out on bandcamp and was confirmed that the flacs were of no higher quality than the oggs the game comes with.
I don't think you understand compression. Undertale had a lofi 8-bit soundtrack perhaps, I can't remember. I work in the audio team of a large video game company btw, all music is mastered uncompressed, typically at 32 bit float resolution.
Well no I mean I emailed the undertale email back in 2016 (when it was still the undertalegame one? not sure if it still is) about what the difference was, and the response was:
As in they weren't aware of any actual difference between the FLAC and MP3 versions.
There's no way they could be bit-dentical because one is compressed and the other is not. Mp3 is lossy. What you're saying is that the community manager you spoke to doesn't understand audio compression. But sure, keep digging yourself a hole if you want to.
Well, it’s up to devs to provide the file type, not Steam. Do you want Steam to demand that all soundtracks sold by devs be of a particular file type?
Why is asking for more user options a bad thing when it's easy to provide?
Because they need to host that stuff on their servers and that costs money. Easy and free are not the same thing.
Negligible cost for them. 100MB for MP3 files vs 300MB for a company that hosts video games. Steam would not notice the difference.
I'm not really sure that's true. At Steam's scale that cost scales pretty quickly. I don't have hard numbers, but the truth is that when 0.01% of the consumer base is all that cares about a thing, it doesn't have to be much more expensive at all to make it not worth it.
They already provide FLAC files for some games, it's up to the devs. The company with the CEO that owns a yacht company has the money to spare.
I went down an audiophile rabbit hole, learned a lot... like I was getting back into buying CDs again, to get specific masters of some albums (usually the original release), because once you learn what's going on, usually you can hear an obvious difference between a modern loudness wars remaster and like an original 80s release of an album. There are SOME exceptions, but ie. every single Metallica remaster of the 80s and Black albums, are total dog shit, compared to the original releases. An example of an exception, is Balance by Van Halen... the original release was loudness wars. The most recent remaster (I believe 2023) eased up a lot on the compression and volume pushing and all the music breathes way better.
Music that is labeled as higher than 16bit44.1kHz (CD quality) is usually... not actually. There are programs to analyze ie. kHz so you can see what is actually being used by the file. I had bought some 192kHz FLACs that were actually reporting 22kHz... which, due to some scientific term that is escaping me at the moment, makes it 44.1kHz (the frequency of the file has to be twice that of the actual max kHz for it to play without sound artifacts)... so, there are a TON of "higher than 44.1kHz" FLAC quality sites out there, that charge MORE for it like it was more work... that are actually just good old CD quality. I got some refunds when I found this out... now I just usually buy 16bit44.1kHz, it is good enough for me. 24 bit is another step up, I don't know how to measure if it is actually source 24 bit or upscaled for marketing (which is useless aside from convincing a consumer to give you more money for the exact same file of a "lower quality" marked FLAC).
But, when I make my own music, it is 24bit48kHz at the source. I tried going above 48kHz but it was having issues, I did some troubleshooting with it, basically... it's just really hard to record higher than 48kHz without having playback latency, which obviously makes it harder to record (if you are hearing something from your recording software playing fine, but what you play on your instrument when recording [like playing guitar into PC with effects through PC] plays back some milliseconds or even a full second later, you are off tempo and sound like shit, it is impossible to record this way), so I just settled on 48kHz... which most people aren't going to hear the difference compared to 44.1kHz anyway. A lot of people can't hear the difference going from 320 MP3 to 44.1kHz. The main thing for me is mastering quality, like if something clips and they don't fix the mix or even sometimes have to re-record a part (if it was the track that was clipping during recording), you can notice it...
But yeah, the main thing is the quality of the master for me, then I just need 320 MP3 minimum, I go for 16bit44.1kHz FLAC ideally, for personal storage cuz then bitrot is less likely to become a noticeable problem in the audio in my life... and I can't do Spotify or whatever, cuz they use modern masters of classic albums, which, see above, usually ruins it once you've heard the difference...
Also, when you find a 24bit192kHz FLAC through a torrent... it's more than likely CD quality too. It's someone not knowing any better, or being afraid of not having the "clout" of getting a lot of seeds cuz people who don't know want the "highest quality" labeled option so if they don't do it that way someone else will... but ie. ripping a CD at 24bit192kHz when a regular CD can't even produce that level of fidelity. So if you torrent some stuff, and you know all this, you end up downconverting a lot of it because there is no loss and you just save a LOT of storage space.
But, to be honest, I buy 95% of my music these days. I make music myself, I don't really make money off of it... but I am not saying it wouldn't be nice to. And a lot of these artists, don't need my money, they are set for life. But I believe in supporting artists. Even if I disagree with artist personalities sometimes. But, you meet a lot of people in life you don't gel with, that still have things to offer. Having a personality clash doesn't mean someone deserves to be discarded, imo.
You're thinking if the The Nyquist Theorem. Also yea I think 48khz is the move. Because android resamples to 48khz anyway and the windows default is that.
I would agree with you on 320 MP3 but you definitely hear the difference in 192. Since storage is cheap why not go full HD on FLAC. If you ever get a house with Hifi equipment you will appreciate it and won't have to redownload your library.
320 kb/s MP3 is incredibly wasteful. There's no reason not to use V0 which is 256 kb/s on average for probably 90% of tracks. V0 is also named internally by the LAME devs as the "extreme" preset, similar to the "placebo" preset in x264, so even V0 is wasteful according to the people who actually live and breathe MP3, it's just less so compared to 320 kb/s.
Using MP3 at all is wasteful, Opus is transparent at 128 kb/s and same for aac at 192 kb/s. MP3 also can't do gapless playback natively
Compared to modern formats? Sure. But it's by far the most supported codec, so it's the most sensible delivery method. No digital music consumer won't be able to play it.
That's been solved on the encoder side with LAME 3.90 which released in 2001. I've only ever seen cheap Chinesium media players not do gapless playback.
Oh maybe I should enable gapless playback
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I'm not talking 20k, there's a big leap from cheap sub 100 to good quality 300 dollar headphones or 1k speakers. Cheap headphones are shit. Mostly people listen to music in their car with bad speakers or air pods or bad headphones like Beats aka Apple over the ear headphones.
I have 250GB in music files FLAC being 90% of my music, I have plenty of storage.
In my 1st point I said to give the user the option to downgrade the audio if they want to download MP3s.
Just give people options. You don't care, which I'm fine with, just don't crap on other people's experiences and needs. It's zero effort to export to flac. It's also much better for long term preservation as it's non-destructive compression. It's like saying a high resolution jpg is just as good as the original artwork.
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True enough, but if I am choosing to buy music in the year of our Lord 2025, I'd like the option of having flac if I could.
That comparison is disingenuous. 16 bit 44,100hz is lossless. you should use that to compare the filesize
its more like the difference is peoples' hearing, give them a planar headphone with wide soundstage they still wouldnt be able to tell them apart with their airpod asides from "its lacking bass!". Its similar to 60 and 120 fps, some people just doesnt know what to look/hear at to know the difference.
99% of the people who claim to be able to tell the difference have never done an abx test and provided the results. I know what to listen for, I know how MP3 compresses audio, and with LAME 3.90+, anything 192 kb/s CBR or V2+ is transparent outside of very, very few edge cases.
Speak for yourself, i have personally done abx test between a 320kbps cbr mp3 and 24bit 48KHz flac, i nailed all of them. You can definitely tell how everything sounds so constraint in comparison to lossless.
Actually it is one of the reason i'm using apple music instead of shitify even though the app is not stable on windows.
Post proof. You would be the first ever to have a 100% accuracy.
Where did you get this from? chatgpt?
I need to prove it to some rando on the internet? Who are you again? The ABX test authority? lmao. I can nail the test all day all night, its so easy to tell with a planar headphone. Maybe stop using trash dynamic driver headphone in the first place.
Actually reading and participating in abx testing in forums like hydrogenaudio.
I'll let my earlier comment elucidate for you:
You're proving my point. The audiophoolery blaming dynamic drivers for not being able to resolve the difference between MP3 and lossless is just the cherry on top.
You're overestimating your ability to differentiate between lossless and properly encoded MP3 audio. Do an abx test on actual music you listen to and see for yourself. You don't insist on storing all your pictures as lossless TIFFs do you?
Yes, but what does "properly encoded" actually mean? How can I guarantee whether files are "properly encoded"?
Yes I absolutely want images in tiff format in certain cases, especially if I want to edit or re-encode them myself. Or are you suggesting I shouldn't have the right to own the original bit-accurate content? It's the same with audio.
Using the latest version of LAME, encoding from a lossless source.
You can't, unfortunately, even with lossless files. The closest you'll come is CD rips with logs and checksums, but there exists bullshit like lossy masters and the loudness war that means even CD sources aren't necessarily good quality.
No? I'm just really tired of seeing the "storage is cheap" argument for why MP3s are obsolete (which is what the person above me is writing). The average person making this claim doesn't feel this way about JPEG despite its flaws being infinitely more obvious and the only thing I can attribute to that is misinformation from "audiophiles".
My questions are rhetorical. I know what good encoding looks like. But there's no guarantee of an industry standard being applied, so why not just provide a lossless source so that if you want to save space you can compress it however you want it. Ogg is actually a better encoding, it saves more space for better audio quality, but I understand that mp3 is more widespread. So let me do my own compression. If I don't have a lossless source I can't do it. It's literally ZERO effort to supply flac. I'm arguing for mp3+flac btw, not flac only, in case it isn't clear. I've literally downloaded mp3s off steam that are lower quality than the same files I got elsewhere (from the OSTs themselves).
On my computer storage if fine I can buy more but iPhones never had sd card slots and most flagship androids no longer have them either
You can also get very high quality as a mp3, its just a method of encoding and decoding audio it could be almost if not lossless if encoded in the best quality.
MP3s by definition are not lossless. As others have said you could argue it's imperceptible. FLAC is a compressed lossless format.
That publishers and people still prefer MP3 (as a lossy format) compared to Opus these days is downright wild.
Opus is open source and royalty free, it's transparent at 128kbit/s VBR compared to Mp3's 175 to 245 kbit/s. It has better sound quality than MP3, AAC and Vorbis while also taking up less space.
There is a "download high quality audio files" in the settings that downloads flac files if available.
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Most people don't even have the sound quality to tell 320 mp3s from FLAC files
Some additional information, some devs/publisher hide their soundtrack behind the deluxe edtion, then its a 50/50 if its mp3/flac or an app where you cannot access the files to copy paste them anywhere you want
example Persona 3 Reload, soundtrack is behind the deluxe edition and you only get an app to play the music, you have no access to the files to hear them on you smartphone or anything else
I was going to say that's a moot point because I can't imagine any game ever going through the effort of doing that. But ah, of course it'd be Atlus.
Elden Ring also has the soundtrack as an app. Most Japanese games do, either that, or only playable in-game.
At least Square recently released all the Final Fantasy OSTs as actual soundtracks.
Also, even though I think the best option is a separate purchase, I do like how Microsoft (or rather Bethesda) has been doing it with their Deluxe Editions. You get the app to play the music, yes, but it also gives you an option to save the tracks to your PC. Starfield, DOOM: The Dark Ages and the Oblivion Remaster all allow that.
EDIT:
Editing this to add, because just today I decided to launch the Elden Ring Artbook/OST app, and it turns out, it does the same as the Bethesda apps, you can actually save the OST to your PC! So that's a thumbs up to FromSoftware and/or Bamco, whoever was in charge of making the app.
The infamous Xenoblade X ost flash drive that would replace your X drive if you had one and set protections on your X drive to prevent copying music
Welp there goes my raid I guess
Meanwhile, I can pirate it for free and get the FLAC files to use however I want I want forever.
This is why I only buy game OSTs on Bandcamp. Piracy is a service problem.
I have more than 1600 soundtracks on Steam, I collect and listen to game music while coding, and while Steam is a good place as the soundtracks regularly get discounted, are relatively cheap, and are easy to download... there are a lot of downsides too:
I've been frustrated enough about this that I wrote an open letter that I plopped into the Steam forums, sent to support, and then straight to Gabe as a hail Mary. They could do so much more with soundtracks on Steam, but yeah... Valve time and whatever.
Guess I should read the article now.
The sound effects being included is just a bonus for me that i can sort out in my files later, but i agree with the rest.
For me there are at least two reasons to dislike it.
Then there are also things like podcast episodes, outtakes, ringtones... that I can think of.
I think this mess of files mostly comes from Valve automatically converting a lot of DLC that included soundtracks to the soundtrack content type. This is nice, and I won't buy things that aren't soundtracks due to ability to install without the game, but it does leave the delivery format up to chance.
This reminds me that the blue revolver soundtrack has the instruments layered differently or something...making it better to just pull the master oggs from the main folder than actually listen to the soundtrack.
A cry in the open, I feel you.
I've been following VGM for the past ~15 years and seen thousands of Steam/GOG releases of game music, it's such hit and miss, Wild West. There are no strict guidelines to follow, and IT SHOWS: from perfectly tagged FLAC+MP3 v0 bundle, with covers and proper filenames to a fucking 5 GB Unity app to listen to a few dozen track album.
Bandcamp has been and is the golden standard of how to do digital music distribution for all this time.
Sadly I had no idea about Bandcamp before I started investing in music on Steam, now five years ago when they introduced the soundtrack content type.
I've started work on a Steam soundtrack harmonizer that will download and prepare albums for consumption of media servers and players. It's a slow process though as I have other projects in the works, and I'm not too familiar with encoding media, but it is a sorely needed solution to make sense of what we get from Steam.
Now if DepotDownloader could just accept my pull request... 🙃
What are some of the best maybe top 5 soundtracks? What are the best space-themed ones?
For me personally the way I do this, is I get new soundtracks, listen to them, marking the tracks that speak to me as favorites, and move on.
As I usually haven't played the games, this results in a list of music I enjoy regardless of nostalgia etc. So far I'm up to I believe 19 full days of good music, so I can put on that favorites list and it'll be a while before it repeats.
So yeah, sadly that means I've got a hard time recommending whole soundtracks, as I usually prefer just a few tracks in most, and I barely remember the album names.
Something Steam could do would be to create a way better audio player, with working playback options and the ability to rate or at least like tracks.
This could then be used to pick which part of a soundtrack to base an auto-generated trailer on. Or, be used to create mixes out of a persons full library. Etc.
Steam isn't really a good place to consume the music, just a convenient place of acquisition, even if the delivery format can be problematic.
Cheers. Thanks for the response. A few of mine that are amazing albums which could be game soundtracks are Derelicts from Carbon Based Lifeforms and the soundtrack to Tron Legacy
I'm not nearly as big of a soundtrack collector as the commenter above, but FTL's soundtrack by Ben Prunty and the No Man's Sky soundtrack by 65daysofstatic are my personal top space soundtracks.
Thanks a lot. Will check these out!
I love when steam slowly builds up these more niche parts of their launcher. It really adds to why people never want to leave steam. They could easily just be a basic ass pc gaming launcher and call it a day but they always got something interesting that they are making or building up. Some of these things may not be much at first but eventually grows to something great like SteamOS. Could see this eventually becoming like that
Yeah, Monster Hunter Wilds (game) costs 70€ non-discounted (or 38.50€ discounted), so you'd think you could get the soundtrack for a reasonable price... but the soundtrack alone costs 73€ (no game included and no cheaper game + soundtrack bundle exists).
Well, but for 73€ you at least get the lossless version of the soundtrack to listen to the soundtrack in unprecedented quality that you can't find in the game... hahahaha, no you don't. It's all MP3.
Maybe expecting a lossless version is unreasonable, if it doesn't exist and would require a lot of effort to make... but of course it does exist and can be bought from OTOTOY or MORA for 11,000 Yen (≈60€).
Steam is undeniably the worst place for me to buy the Monster Hunter Wilds Soundtrack.
The Street Fighter 6 Soundtrack costs 70€ (vs base game plus year 1 and year 2 game content together 60€) and it does include FLAC versions of the soundtrack (optional download). The Year 1 and Year 2 soundtracks are separate additional purchases though (24.50€ and 12.80€ respectively) and these are MP3-only.
Putting aside that these Capcom soundtrack prices are absurd I don't think Steam is a good place to buy them.
Holy shit, you weren't kidding! Even Qobuz, where I purchase all of my game soundtracks, have the soundtrack for $60. At least they have the soundtrack in lossless/hi-res 24-bit/48 kHz, but that price is still surprisingly high, though I guess it's because it's 7 discs and 126 tracks.
Anyway, for those in the west that want to purchase the lossless album for 60 bucks, Qobuz might be the easiest option.
I just discovered this recently. The Breath of Fire series is a great example. You can find the OSTs for games 1-4 and Dragon Quarter, but you can’t actually purchase the games themselves.
I love paying for game soundtracks on steam, because no DRM, i can copy and paste the mp3/flac music on anything i have, from smartphone to my fridge or give it some friends, its the best place for DRM free game soundtracks <3
I'm not really discounting what you say but... ah... Apple popularized DRM-free music albums back in 2009 when iTunes and all of its tracks went DRM-free and after that most other music stores quickly followed. E.g. TIDAL when they still had a store, Bandcamp, and Qobuz (which is my preferred store to purchase from) all provides DRM-free downloads of purchased albums.
So Steam providing DRM-free game soundtracks has been the expected norm since like the early 2010s.
DRM protected music haven't really been a thing for over a decade now other than on streaming platforms themselves (Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, etc).
Listen to music, yes.
But owning music drm free is the standard valve is following, not pioneering.
I wish they had a easier way of accessing them. Like steam player phone app. All your sound tracks ready to download and play.
This is my biggest gripe. Still collecting OSTs at a good price but having to manually rip them to my phone when there is literally a (actually, two) Steam App is a little braindead.
I've bought mine from Bandcamp which I do for most of my music for many years now.
Happy to pay and support the artists, but just let me download the files in the format I want and then I'll take it from there.
Black Screen Records has a fairly large amount of game soundtracks on their Bandcamp store, but there is also a lot of others on there posted by the artists themselves.
They did it quietly....
Soundtracks for games that never were on pc huh?
there are some breath of fire soundtracks available, while the games themselves were never released on pc (apart from 3 and 4, latter is on gog)
There's also the Dino Crisis soundtracks.
The first two were released on PC and are currently available via GOG. I don't think they released Dino Crisis 3 soundtrack on Steam, but I may be wrong.
Weird...
The drakengard and drakengard 3 soundtracks were put on Steam recently for some reason. Now just for the actual games to not be stuck in ps2/ps3 limbo.
Damn, unavailable in my region :(
That’s neat I guess…
Its super weird thing to be amazed at, its like asking why i cant play games on my apple music or spotify when i can listen to the soundtrack.
I also have anime on steam like Ghost in the shell. Most folks don't even know you can buy stuff like that on there
There used to be a lot more anime on there from Crunchyroll, but CR stopped selling licenses for it and so only people who bought it at the time still have access. I have 243 videos in my Steam library, mostly from episodes of anime that you can no longer buy.
I didn't know that. They don't promote it at all
wait what lol
Steam can be pretty bad for soundtracks.
It's not required to submit lossless versions, so often you just get MP3s (which most people probably want, but FLAC would still be nice). Metadata is sometimes wrong or incomplete. Sometimes files are straight up broken.
Steam is definitely not my first choice if I want to buy a video game soundtrack.
I have to double check when OSTs go on sale to see if it's DRM free, bought it for Persona 5 Strikers because it had some killer remixes IMO, found out they force you to use an external app to listen.
I checked and they delisted the P5: Strikers Bonus Content DLC, I assume because reviews were so negative for the DRM.
Meanwhile a lot of games do include full quality OSTs but I'd suggest people do their research before purchasing. Expedition 33 has a full hour and a half of free music DLC without even needing to own the game, and many indie titles deluxe versions include the full OST, usually FLAC & MP3.
And yet Sonic Adventure 2's OST is still not available (note: The in game audio files aren't complete)
Isn’t this due to some kind of legal dispute?
For the Sega mega drive/genesis version of Sonic 3 sure. For Sonic Adventure 2 IDK (I think the singer of som rap songs in the game had a dispute). The OST is available on Spotify and on Amazon Music (Sadly I can't buy it from where I am)
Basically what happened is Epic/Harmonix went to Sega to license Live and Learn for Fortnite Festival (basically Rock Band 5-ish).
Sega told them to go to Crush 40 to license the song. Epic did, and then Crush 40 explained to them that Sega has repeatedly stated that Sega owns the song and used it themselves without asking Crush 40 first.
So they (Crush 40) sued Sega to clarify who owns what, case currently dismissed based on statute of limitations. Sega says Crush 40 owns it but won't let Crush 40 license it themselves or pay royalties on it when used in videogames. So all Crush 40 songs are in a weird purgatory.
Lots of disputes over Sonic music so i doubt we will ever see them.
I don't get why publishers don't just host the music on their site and allow direct to consumers purchases. If you go onto the publisher/developers site, often times they either won't have anything or they'll charge even more than if you just bought the ost on steam. Like, why the hell would I spend 18$ on Square Enix's site when I could just buy the ost on steam for 13$; even if they sold the ost at the same price, they'd still be ranking in significantly more money since they don't have to give a cut of the revenue to steam.
You generally get discs on SqE website. Tough also it's more like 30 dollars and the BDR comes with music videos as well.
I buy soundtracks off of bandcamp when I can. A lot of indie/AA games' composers post their work there and you are (almost) guaranteed to get a lossless version at least. With Steam, sometimes you don't know what format you're getting, possibly only lossy encodes like MP3, and some are even locked behind DRM so you can't move them to other devices. Reviews often help there, but it's just easier to buy from bandcamp at that point.
it would be pretty funny if steam became a one stop shop for all digital content
It’s be nice if they made a real client then
People buy soundtracks????
Yeah to each their own I guess. I have listened to movie soundtracks, so that's similar. But the rare times I want to hear a song from a game I just use YouTube.
Gotta fund Gaben’s next yacht no matter what it takes 😅
As long as steam keeps up the quality then fine by me lol. There's so many little things about steam that I take for granted and then realize how good it is when I check out what's going on with Playstation or epic games launcher.
How can I listen to them on my phone?
Slow news day?
I would love if Steam start selling movies. I don't understand why they don't do it
Since spotify I've never really bought a souns track again now that I think about it.
This made me go look more at my soundtracks and hot dang I had no idea you got actual files of the tracks. I always thought it was just an in-Steam playlist, which was cool, but nothing too different than YouTube or whatever. Being able to actually put albums on my phone for offline listening is super dope.
I don't have too many OSTs on Steam but I was extremely happy with the Clair Obscur OST download. It contains two copies of every song, one 192 kbps mp3 and one 1141 or 3072 kbps wav file, basically the studio version. When the DLC came out earlier this month, the six additional songs were automatically added to the OST.
My only issue with Steam music has been with some licensed music only being available near the game's release, but I blame the publisher for that. I badly want the Death Stranding: Songs From the Video Game album but it was taken down.
It's weird I never once considered the fact that I could listen to music from a game whenever I want outside of the game. I kinda like doing it, too.
The OSTs as a bonus from GOG were cool, makes sense to do it more often, people willing to pay.
I use iTunes as there isn’t any DRM.