Venus Lighthouse (Restored - Roland SC-88) - Golden Sun

Playlist with all my other Golden Sun restored tracks:    • Golden Sun 1&2 Full Restored Soundtrack  
Lossless FLAC files can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...

~~ Venus Lighthouse ~~
First of all, let me be clear, I really like Cyanne's version and that video inspired me and motivated me to start my own journey. I didn't want to cover any of Cyanne's tracks so soon but this one got requested a lot. Can you spot the differences? :) I tried my best to keep the spirit of the original track intact. Just to name a few things that I did:
Brass ff: high-quality single-sample. Because the default full-patch version on the SC-88 sounds "bad" in my opinion (the gains, attacks of each sample are not consistent between notes, especially in the higher ranges) and doesn't fit GS tracks at all. Using a HQ recording of the sample that was used in the game fixes the problem.
Choir Aahs: combination of high-quality single-sample and full-patch. Because the choir in the game has a very specific sound to it (it's just one sample pitch-stretched up and down), but at the same time, the full-patch on the SC-88 sounds wider and grander. So I'm using a panned combination of both worlds.
Overall mixing decisions to balance instruments properly
Big thanks to ‪@freejusticehere624‬ for his feedback! :)

~~ Details about the restoration process ~~
Tools used: GBA Mus Riper (midi and samples extraction), agbplay (synth restoration) and Reaper.
Hardware: Roland SC-88 Pro, Roland JV-1080, expansion card SR-JV80-05 World, and Alesis DM5.
Midi files: the sequences are extracted directly from the game but need to be heavily modified in order to play them on the physical modules.
Sounds: most samples have been identified over the years, but some sounds come from my own research.
Synths: in Golden Sun, synths are specific to the internal audio engine, they are completely separate from the other instruments. ipatix managed to reverse-engineer those synths and made the code available on github. I'm using his tool, agbplay, to export them from the game in high quality (at a higher sample rate than what the GBA is capable of)
Drums: Golden Sun 1 uses samples from the SC-88 but on Golden Sun 2, Motoi Sakuraba changed all the samples. While some of them have been identified and come from the Alesis DM5, most samples still haven't been found to this day. I've extracted the samples from the game, denoised, re-panned and cleaned them.

~~ Thanks ~~
Mega thanks to Bregalad (GBA Mus Ripper) and ipatix (agbplay). I would never have been able to do those versions without their incredible work.
Massive thanks to the VGM Instrument Sources community, and especially FreeJusticeHere for his invaluable advice and help!
Special thanks to Coaltergeist and Cyanne for inspiring me!

Original song composed by Motoi Sakuraba. #GoldenSun #RestoredOST