Has anybody listened to the offically released soundtrack and then played the game? The difference is night & day.

I went digging into the game's music files to see how Bethesda encoded them because I was curious on why the game's music sounded drowned out compared to what came off the CD. Turns out their encoded at a shocking 48 kbp/s with everything above 12KHz gone, ouchies! Even YouTube has a decent bitrate up to 192 kbp/s. You would think the Elder Scrolls games would have better bitrates than that, considering the Elder Scrolls is a big franchise.

After more digging around it seems Beth is using a tool from the DirectX SDK called "xWMAEncode.exe" to encode all their music files to this bizarre .XWM format. Also the tools default bitrate is 48 kbp/s, did they not bother to configure it or something?

So after discovering all of this I set out to replace the game files I could (done everything I could, even Dragonborn Morrowind music, except stuff like level up sounds, discover sounds, dragon shouts, and one dragon boss track, that didn't come with the CD) with the one's from CD version and used the xWMA tool to convert them back, But this time using the tools highest bitrate option of 192000 (192 kbp/s). The results are brilliant, the new files blended in a lot better in background and generally just a nicer experience (you can hear the instruments on the dragonborn theme a lot better too). The game doesn't seem have any problems playing these files either. And after day of testing without crashes suggests that Skyrim can handle these 192 kbp/s files just fine. I bet they did this so the game would fit onto a X360 disc (not being rude, just realistic).

Take a look between these screens, massive difference!

Original 48 kbp/s .XWM Dragonborn Main Menu Theme:

CD Version converted to 192 kbp/s .XWM.



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Anyway I've finished the files and would really like to share the mod to the community, I bet a lot of people would enjoy the higher quality music. But doing that violates the User Agreement doesn't it? But what mods like Bethesda High Textures Optimised? It also violates the User Agreement. On the nexus there's a higher bitrate dragonborn main menu theme, but it's been there for a while and still is.

So I'm basically wondering this, can I release this mod to community without worrying? I could release this on the Steam Workshop so only legit users could use it.

The best way would be for Bethesda to release a High Resolution Sound Pack, that'd be nice!

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So what do you think?

Your best bet would be to PM an admin directly and ask them.

I'll probably do that.

While Bethesda probably owns the music to the soundtrack, there are more than likely licensing issues (dang lawyers) that might prevent this usage, at least to share it. For sure, anyone using the sound files would need to own the soundtrack. Send GStaff a PM about this thread and he will run it past the lawyers.

Worse comes to worse, you could publish a guide, without the sound files, for folks to do this to their own game.

My thinking is that if you own the game then technically you already own the music... but that would be in a world without nitpicky copyright lawyer crap.

My thinking is if you've bought the game you've bought a non-transferable license to the audio-tracks that ship with the game. And if you've bought the CD you own the physical media and have bought a non-transferable license to the higher quality audio tracks contained on the CD.

Similar rules would apply to the audio as to the textures in the game - you don't go bulk re-distributing them. re-interpretations and derivative works (with major alterations) are tolerated by Bethesda, bulk re-distribution wouldn't be. And I doubt that distributing the audio tracks from the CD will be either legal or tolerated however much you adjust the format.