Music Upgrade If you have the HL2 OST

[Drax]

If you have the Half-Life 2 soundtrack from the gold package and want to spend some time bringing your music up to the same quality as the rest of the game's sounds I've compiled a list of what tracks replace which music files. This is probably only going to be in the interest of audiophiles with good sound systems or headphones with too much free time (like me).

If you haven't extracted the sound files from the source sounds.gcf file (and you should because it fixed all my stuttering problems) then you'll need to create a \hl2\sound\music directory from your HL2 root directory which is the Half-Life 2 directory with your HL2.exe file in it. Just start from there and go into your hl2 directory, then create a "sound" directory then go in there and create a "music" directory and go into there.

Next you'll need your soundtrack burned as .wav files (burning them as mp3's would obviously be redundant). You can burn them right into the music directory to get this over quickly. Then rename each track to it's corresponding file name.

So for example rename track #28 to "HL2_intro.wav". Don't know if HL2 is case sensitive but best not to risk it. If you have the .mp3 files from the gcf file then delete those at some point. I've listed which files don't have replacements towards the bottom of the list, so keep those if you have them.

I also listed which soundtrack tracks don't get used at all.

And finaly if you want to replace the HL2_song6.mp3 file use track 7 as listed, but track 7 is a slightly different and much longer version of the song. If you want to stay "pure" to the game, don't replace it.


File Name - Track #
HL2_intro.wav = 28
HL2_song1.wav = 27
HL2_song2.wav = 19
HL2_song3.wav = 5
HL2_song4.wav = 3
HL2_song6.wav = 7 *
HL2_song7.wav = 8
HL2_song12_long.wav = 26
HL2_song13.wav = 25
HL2_song14.wav = 24
HL2_song15.wav = 23
HL2_song16.wav = 22
HL2_song17.wav = 21
HL2_song19.wav = 20
HL2_song20_submix0.wav = 2
HL2_song23_SuitSong3.wav = 17
HL2_song25_Teleporter.wav = 15
HL2_song26.wav = 14
HL2_song28.wav = 13
HL2_song29.wav = 12
HL2_song30.wav = 10
HL2_song31.wav = 4
HL2_song32.wav = 11
HL2_song33.wav = 9

Ravenholm_1.wav = 6

HL1_song3.wav = 32
HL1_song5.wav = 31
HL1_song6.wav = 30
HL1_song9.wav = 29
HL1_song10.wav = 43
HL1_song14.wav = 41
HL1_song15.wav = 40
HL1_song17.wav = 39
HL1_song19.wav = 38
HL1_song20.wav = 37
HL1_song21.wav = 36
HL1_song24.wav = 35
HL1_song25_REMIX3.wav = 34
HL1_song26.wav = 33

---no equivelant---

HL2_song0.mp3
HL2_song8.mp3
HL2_song10.mp3
HL2_song11.mp3
HL2_song26_trainstation1.mp3
HL2_song27_trainstation2.mp
HL2_song20_submix4.mp3
radio1.mp3

---Soundtrack Non-Used---
Track 16
Track 18
Track 42

 

[Drax]

All this to find out the files have to be .mp3's. I swapped two songs around to test this, it only worked when I converted the songs into .mp3's.

Ah well, you can still get better then game quality sound if you use a good encoder at high settings.

Also my list is missing HL1_song14.mp3. For that I used track 4 from the HL1 disc (track 4 assuming the HL data is track 1). Seemed more appropriate.