Valet2 on 13/3/2026 at 23:55
I've been notified of this thing: (
https://thief-remastered.bandcamp.com/album/thief-the-dark-project-remastered-soundtrack)
The guy says: "The official remaster for the cult video game "Thief: The Dark Project" (1998) courtesy of Eric Brosius, Looking Glass Studios and Eidos Interactive. This edition features the complete remaster of the original soundtrack, extracted directly from the game, and two CD-quality tracks available as special content in an issue of the "Talknet" magazine."
And on his twitter: "I get in touch with video game composers who made history and work with them to remaster their soundtrack material"
(
https://x.com/arizzoschettino/status/1763528366211105176?s=20)
Also, he's so jealous of this release so he stated: "... the work performed on this remaster is the property of Fuseroom Recording Studio. For security reasons, all tracks in this album have been digitally watermarked with a unique identifier. Infringement of this agreement will be regulated by the court of Munich, Germany"
Thankfully you can download it for free by entering 0 Euros and getting the download link. What I noticed that it's barely a "remaster". The 23 in-game tracks are identical to the mp3-s which are available with the GOG purchase (I have a copy of mine dated back to 2013, so they are pretty old). And they were ALREADY somewhat remastered by the dude tho prepared them for the GOG release. Since there's no original audio available, the in-game files (22 kHz, adpcm) were taken, resampled and denoised. The result is artificial high frequencies and the gap between 10500 and 11700 Hz — you can open the file in RX, Audition or any program which can render spectrums and see it yourself.
There are also two additional tracks called "CD Version". They came from a German game magazin CD which I found, purchased and uploaded in 2017. It has two tracks from the game in much higher quality, but still not full CD-quality (the spectrums cuts at 16 kHz, but it's the best recording I've seen so far).
So, I compared all tracks from the GOG release and my CD with our guy's "remaster" and the only thing I noticed is changing in loudness (quiet parts became quieter, loud became louder), a little bit of equalization, and the unhearable hiss all over the spectrum, but which would fool the audio checker programs to think it's not an mp3 audio. All other issues like the spectrum gap, wobbling of the original mp3-s (which came from adpcm, remember) remain. For me it sounds the same, but technically there's difference, yes. But is it really a REMASTER? THE remaster which the guy is so proud of, that he says he will send you in court if you ever use his precious work? I think that if you take the original recording (which you have no right to distribute or sell), put if through a mastering plug-in, it's still the original recoding, not yours. Also, claiming it a remaster, providing them as 48/24 lossless audio, but taking poor mp3-s (which came from even poorer adpcm-s) as the source — it's like taking a 640x480 picture, upscaling it and calling a day... no, 'an official 8k remaster blessed by whoever, all files have been watermarked, see you in court if you ever use them').
Just wanted to inform the community.
