Sorry, but this was definitely not converted from FLAC, at least not from an actual lossless source - the only one I know of is the physical Soundtrack disc that was part of the Collector's Edition, as far as I know (and even on that one, the title track is not in lossless quality). I openened the files in Audacity and compared their spectrograms with the files included in the original game and an actual lossless flac version, and the ones from this mod look virtually identical to the originals. Not exactly the same, because they sound a bit louder, but both are cut off at about 16kHz, which is typical for 128kBit mp3s, while the FLAC goes all the way up to 22kHz, as it is supposed to. A 320kBit mp3 would still go as high as 20kHz. So, I suspect these FLACs were just converted from the original 128kBit game files and then they were slightly edited to sound a bit louder and maybe "fuller" but the actual quality is the same.
There exists a "remastered" version of the Soundtrack that used to be sold on DirectSong, which was founded by Jeremy Soule himself (but no longer exists, to my knowledge), but apparently, this was also based on the 128kBit game files (see here for Details: https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/20qptx/somebody_remastered_the_morrowind_soundtrack_from/). This seems to be identical to that one. If someone converted that to FLAC and then back to 320kBit mp3, the quality would not improve, obviously. But as I said, they have been edited in a way that may have made them sound subjectively better, but they are still nowhere near 320kBit quality.
If this is indeed the version from DirectSong, this is certainly not the uploader's fault, unless he also converted the FLACs himself. It seems that there used to exist a different version, of which the creator claimed to have made it from the original tapes. I have no idea if that's true or not, but that version seems to be no longer available, at least I could not find it anywhere. In any case, if you download this and are happy with how the music sounds, good for you, but be aware that this is not really better quality than the original game files. If you want the best quality available, I suggest you find an actual FLAC rip of the original CD (which is not very difficult).
edit: The mp3 soundtrack that can be bought on Amazon has the same track list as the DirectSong had, except for the last track "Nerevar Rising (Morrowind Title Song Reprise), so it is possible that they are identical, since the original CD only contained 15 tracks (the 5 additional tracks are very short, however, and consist of the Death and Triumph music as well as the music from the cutscenes).
Edit2: Amazingly, I found an actual 320kBit version of this exact soundtrack, which also includes a high quality version of the main theme. Not sure I should post the link, though. However, if you google "Morrowind Special Edition Soundtrack download", you should be able to find it.
They were Indeed Flac Audio files. As for the spectrogram cutting off at 16khz is probably from converting them to 320kbps using a lossless format with Adobe Media Encoder. In reality, I was trying to downsize the file sizes so more people would be able to download them in less time and still have a decent quality. I found they were better quality then what came with Morrowind.
Sorry for the late reply, I had completely forgotten about this, but was just reminded that I wrote this 1,5 years ago. It would seem that I have to apologize, because I downloaded Adobe Media Encoder and this is indeed what exporting 320kbit from a lossless FLAC looks like. I was under the impression that the cutoff at 16kHz meant that it was at some point upscaled from 128kbit, but apparently, that's not the case. Also, I now know that you can't really say much about the quality of a piece of music just by looking at the spectrograms. Obviously, the Adobe encoder works different from the ones I know and use. Instead of trying to preserve some high frequencies, it seems to concentrate on the lower ones, which other encoders seem to "thin out" a bit. In any case, I really don't know what is "better" - and I have learned enough about audio compression in the last 1,5 years to know that I really know nothing about it (like many other people on the internet who post about it).
Sorry about that, I won't base my "expertise" on some reddit posts again in the future.
10 comments
There exists a "remastered" version of the Soundtrack that used to be sold on DirectSong, which was founded by Jeremy Soule himself (but no longer exists, to my knowledge), but apparently, this was also based on the 128kBit game files (see here for Details: https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/20qptx/somebody_remastered_the_morrowind_soundtrack_from/). This seems to be identical to that one. If someone converted that to FLAC and then back to 320kBit mp3, the quality would not improve, obviously. But as I said, they have been edited in a way that may have made them sound subjectively better, but they are still nowhere near 320kBit quality.
If this is indeed the version from DirectSong, this is certainly not the uploader's fault, unless he also converted the FLACs himself. It seems that there used to exist a different version, of which the creator claimed to have made it from the original tapes. I have no idea if that's true or not, but that version seems to be no longer available, at least I could not find it anywhere. In any case, if you download this and are happy with how the music sounds, good for you, but be aware that this is not really better quality than the original game files. If you want the best quality available, I suggest you find an actual FLAC rip of the original CD (which is not very difficult).
edit: The mp3 soundtrack that can be bought on Amazon has the same track list as the DirectSong had, except for the last track "Nerevar Rising (Morrowind Title Song Reprise), so it is possible that they are identical, since the original CD only contained 15 tracks (the 5 additional tracks are very short, however, and consist of the Death and Triumph music as well as the music from the cutscenes).
Edit2: Amazingly, I found an actual 320kBit version of this exact soundtrack, which also includes a high quality version of the main theme. Not sure I should post the link, though. However, if you google "Morrowind Special Edition Soundtrack download", you should be able to find it.
Edit: No, they did not come from direct sound.
Sorry about that, I won't base my "expertise" on some reddit posts again in the future.
I do wonder though, what's the purpose of these files? From what I can tell they aren't part of the regular soundtrack:
AM\AM_music2.mp3
AM\AM_music3.mp3
amb\silence.mp3 (silent file)
Explore\mp3silencieux.mp3 (silent file)
dreamvo_s_mp3 (silent file)
May those be files you added by accident?
jw. Thank you for the mod, Modinzerker!