Hey guys, I know this isn't really a map-making question, but I was wondering if anyone knows how to get background music off a website. Because I want to use music from this link for my RPG.

I tried using Audacity but the quality is real terrible...

Audacity really should do the job of capturing sound card output... What settings were you using?

Yeah audacity is the right program for it. It's definitely not the program's fault unless you broke your installation or something similarly unlikely.
The only thing that could go wrong is that you're recording too loud or trying to capture it via microphone instead of wave mix.
Do you know where to set these? If not, tell us your OS.

K thanks for moving didn't know where else to put it.


Audacity captures the music but the quality is crap. I'm not sure how to change the settings to make the quality 'normal' though, I'm a bit of a nub with Audacity.

EDIT:
@NudeRaider

I think I may be recording it too loud, but no I'm not capturing it via microphone because I unplugged it. My OS is Windows XP.

DOUBLE EDIT:
Ok there are two sliders, input and output, both with a range from 0.0 to 1.0 with .1 decimal intervals in between. The input one only seems to recognize 0.0 0.5 and 1.0. They both change the sound in terms of volume? I believe?

TRIPLE EDIT:
Hmm, it would appear that an output of 0.1 and an input of 1.0 gives the perfect sound... how odd.

QUADRUPLE EDIT:
Ok belay that, now it's too quiet.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Sep 1 2010, 1:10 pm by private_parts.

np.

Define bad quality.
Is there background humming or noise? (several problems could lead to that)
Or is the sound distorted? You could also look at the waveform in Audacity: Do the waves seem clipped? Then you record too loud.
Double click on the little speaker symbol in your tray next to the clock. A window with many sliders should open. Go options > settings and change it to input or record settings. Then pull the wave mix slider down and try to record again. You can do that in Audacity too, but I'm not using it often enough to guide you there.
When recording check the signal meters in Audacity. They must not hit the red parts or it's too loud.

Usually the best settings are something around 0.5 output and 0.4 input. It depends on many factors but that should be a good starting point.
Generally output is the volume of your speakers, which obviously also alters how loud you're recording.
Input is the "sensitivity of the mic". In the absence of a mic it just scales it down/up for the software.

OK Thanks I will try following that. Now... how do I make this music loop nicely in-game? Does Audacity do it for you or will I need to do some funky stuff.

Audacity can loop the music but it doesn't make any sense to blow your file out of proportion. If you need detailed help on sound loops in SC maps you better make a new topic in UMS MMA.
Just a quick rundown: You use a death counter that counts from "[length of music clip] / 84ms" down to 0 and when it hits zero you play the wav and reset the dc countdown.

You should cut the clip at a matching bass beat or whatever defines the rhythm of the clip and then play it in loop in audacity and check if it sounds jagged or not.

EDIT:
Oh and I just checked Audacity and I had different meters in mind. The volume should stay just above -6 and never hit 0 for a good recording.

Thanks but that's fine I know how to loop music in-game, not sure if you have played my RPG Hells Awakening but that utilized looped music. I just have trouble in Audacity finding the exact place to cut the music so it loops without skipping or sounding odd etc. So is the only way to do it on Audacity trial and error then??

Oh, now I know what you mean.
Not trial and error. You need to find tacts or beats. You can see that by looking at the waveform. This needs a bit of experience I guess or the soundwave won't tell you anything.
For bass heavy clips it's easy: Just zoom in until you can see a pattern of large spikes. Those are the bass beats. You get a feel for it when you zoom your window to display roughly 2-3 seconds and then play that snippet in a loop and watch the play cursor as it wanders over the spikes you should hear the bass beats.

If it's a different clip I can't say much without having it.

OK well I think I have done it, is it just me or does music always have intros that aren't loopable? It seems to me that the intro segment of music is played once and then they insert a second segment that is the full track that they loop!

Most songs have an intro, yes.
If they also have an outtro you can use that to your advantage. Example: http://www.staredit.net/topic/9875/

Awww wicked.

I looked at the source code of the page, found the flash file that plays the music (conveniently called var bgsound in the site code) and found a free tool for extracting flash resources and recovered the original mp3 ...

I was about to write this. ;o
When I opened the Code Source, I laughed at the 10-ish lines of code. Wasn't too hard to seek through.

Awww wicked thanks! This was the sort of program I was thinking about when I originally posted this topic.

I also used audacity to get a song out of a game's installation. The song was just plain epic, but nowhere on the internet. Nobody seemed to have it because the only time it was played was while installing the game Dungeon Lords. The game absolutely sucked, but the music during installation was epiicccc. I think I captured it via wave mix.

http://us.media.blizzard.com/diablo3/_audio/snd_tristram_v2.swf
Download it, extract it, etc...
http://www.mediafire.com/?9lw7p05zmqp436b

Which program did you use farty? I can't find any which compare to flv_extract (only works on video though).

I dunno. I googled it, imstalled it, ripped it, then uninstalled it immediately.

It was one of these.