Video
Game
Music

Absolutely had similar experiences. Once audio is lossy compressed, there is no way to restore the original lossless audio. It doesnt work with images and sure as hell not with audio but audio is more complex in comparison which is also why the upscaling results there are often way more limited and need further fine tuning by a person that knows what hes doing.

My work mostly focuses on making audio more enjoyable with focus on audiophidelity and while that includes making audio sound less compressed, I am definitely aware that this will never be like a actual lossless copy of the master audio or how the composer heard the audio when he composed it. But I spent lots of time to further my knowledge and skills in the audio engineering field and try my best to actually improve the audio even if such things are highly subjective. I personally do hear the improvements and some users im in touch with also seem to like my releases even if its rather exotic work that not many do and mostly falls under the radar.

I have also seen some really bizarre releases in the web over the years. From fake lossless upconverts to stuff that was literally just run through some uncalibrated AI tool which often worsened the quality or sounded artifical so I know what you mean. Sadly such slop gives actual remasters by people that put a lot of effort into their work a bad name and futher fuels the fire for the AI hate.

i wasn't expecting any response, let alone one with care, and now i feel like a tool :( i appreciate your input and apologize for my brashness. i deal with audio myself and i find myself confused by the vast majority of people who use upscalers. most of them, at least the ones i'm aware of, are just bunk. it's basically taking a 128kbps mp3, rendering it in FLAC, and saying it's now high quality. a lot of people don't understand that with audio especially, once the signal data is lost through the compression, it's lost on that file for good. people want a visual fix for an aural issue when it's apples and guavas.

good on you for taking the time to properly try to EQ and remaster the audio even with the limitations set in place. i should definitely try to listen to what's been offered instead of running my mouth, but i hope you can also understand where i was coming from.

Not really my experience. I have worked for years in remastering and re-eqing music to make it sound less compressed and lo-fi and I can clearly tell the audio improvements both on my monitor as well as any decent pair of headphones. I admit there are some upscale algos that dont always work with every kind of audio but that also heavily depends on the compression method used and how compressed the audio is. Stereo Tool for example tends to struggle with exotic audio compression methods or low khz audio but presents pretty good results for more common formats like mp3 or ogg and can be further improved via unchirp VST processing.

And almost all of the tracks only have some low level remastering done and dont really sound that much different compared to the source audio. My remastering mostly just focused on a better sound stage EQ and declicking. The only exception is for like 3-4 tracks that were only in the original PS2 game and in 24khz and they definitely sound better to me after I processed them. I actually used the Cleaning Lab upscaling method here since Stereo Tool sucks at such audio.

I also did some testing with BT3 music but never ended up with audio quality that I find satisfying or consider a clear improvement and therefore never updated my BT3 release. There is some really weird compression going on with the BT3 audio files and some weird audio artifacts in the 10-12khz area if I remember correct.

In the end audio is hell of a subjective topic. I kinda agree with your sentiment that some upscaling methods, especially older ones like interpolation that consoles often used, mostly sounded worse but nowadays we have so many more advanced ways via VST processing or even AI that there can be improvements if done right. Dont bother with any 08/15 AI upscaler web wrapper though since they are all not good and you definitely need to know what you are doing and utilize professional software to pull off some results.

I btw still have the original version from half a year ago on my backup raid so if you want I can send you the original version without upscaling + remastering and then you can also compare and see if you hear a difference in audio quality. Its really just a raw old gamerip version of the same release here. Less bloated 16bit dithered masters are also available on my personal cloud accessible through Squid-Board for the new version. Feel free to reply or PM me if you are interested.

ngl i'd much rather have the highest quality version the game provides than some "upscaled" snake oil (music can't be "upscaled", you're just adding artificial bloat to the file size and making the high end a mess)

Updated to 2.0 on 08.06.2025
- Remastered the entire release, audio quality improvements thanks to Cleaning Lab and Unchirp VST (Upscaled 24khz tracks, more brilliance, less compression, cleaner sound, declicking)

This album was updated on 1st of December, 2022.

DUDE YOU ARE A HERO. I've waited years for a clean rip of this game!

Almost all tracks were actually taken from different games that re-used BT2 music such as Raging Blast 2. While the PS2 game only had low quality 24khz ADX files, Raging Blast had 48khz ADX files which sound way better and less compressed. Same goes for my BT3 release.

Woah! How'd you get it to sound uncompressed?

i like that video game music soundtrack. it reminds me of the original arcade video game music album soundtrack of: banpresto's dragon ball z (arcade video game music album soundtrack).

Fly High is the best in my opinion at the least

some of my favorite dbz sond tracks

One of the best VG soundtracks of all time

The audio for the majority of the tracks are quite muffled.

While I personally believe BT3 is better than BT2 I still think that the soundtrack of BT2 is better. It's got alot more energy and emotion put into it's music and I think alot of the songs fit perfectly with the scenes their put with. My 5 Favorite Tracks are:

1. Dark Half
2. Lost Courage
3. Gatebreaker
4. Mind Space
5. Lonesome Wild

One Of My Favorite Games Of All Time!

do all songs forbdbz ultimate tenkaichi