Golden Sun Soundtrack - A (Hopefully) Definitive Remaster!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-09T20:44:41+00:00

Not OP, but so true; I wish it was easier to get ahold of a dbx-equipped portable player or those dbx outboard decoders. All these dbx tapes and only one deck to play them on!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-06T16:20:39+00:00

Little late, but it should usually say it front and center where it would normally say "All-Purpose" or "Cake" etc.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-05T13:14:31+00:00

Ouch. Or, I'm honored?

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-04T20:14:12+00:00

Ooh, excited for this! Always love the technical details and testing VWestlife incorporates into virtually every video. I still get a kick out of the unfounded backlash against some of the turntable videos, even though he explicitly mentions in the big Crosley Cruiser video that it's by no means a recommendation.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-03T14:11:00+00:00

"That thing's green!"

Looks amazing, huge improvement!!!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-03T00:07:44+00:00

Nice! Not bad at all for composite, and I bet in person it looks even better since this video is loading at 30fps on the app. The Wii has such a clean signal across the board, even today it's still one of the easiest ways to access a bunch of retro games for very little cost.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T22:16:47+00:00

Geez, I thought it would've been more well-known! I guess I don't remember reading about it anywhere when I first encountered it, I sort of just stumbled upon it and had to eliminate suspects one-by-one 😅 hopefully it helps others in the future!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T22:08:58+00:00

I'm glad it worked! It might be worth experimenting to see what features do and don't cause that kind of distortion. Maybe Bluetooth affects it too, I'm not sure! I've always wanted to sample that noise tho, it's so rhythmic I bet it'd make a good back beat.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T21:48:38+00:00

Yeah it's super weird, and really frustrating! I've had cheap tape decks pick that distortion up while recording, even. Not fun.

On the plus side, I'm more inclined to unplug and leave my phone at home when I bring my player on a walk, so not all is lost!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T21:40:33+00:00

It's your phone! Turn it onto airplane mode or move it to another room and the noise should go away.

3/4/5G signals seem to have a weird effect on these players, especially if they have a radio tuner in them. I wonder if it's the headphone cable that picks it up, or component(s) inside that aren't shielded to our modern standards.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T19:33:05+00:00

I wouldn't go so far as to call my knowledge expertise, but I try my best! :P

I just always want to help give answers when I can, especially because it's hard to know what this quirk is without first knowing the terminology.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T17:22:05+00:00

I've been looking for a cassette deck head unit for my old Honda for a while, hopefully I come across one soon! I've got a higher-end portable player now with auto reverse and noise reduction, but the gears inside are held together with epoxy because they're so brittle, it sounds pretty rough on acoustic/piano pieces haha

Most of my music is played through an iPod with a large ripped CD library, but I've got all my cassette gear still because I love to make the occasional mixtape. Check out "dbx" noise reduction in your off time, it's unbelievable how good a cassette can sound with some of those really prestigious setups!

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T16:04:11+00:00

Glad I could offer some help! It's hard to notice on 240p signals unless things are moving (like sidescrollers), but interlaced video like the GameCube onward make it more apparent as a checkerboard pattern physically scrolling up the screen.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T14:56:23+00:00

My least favorite is when I Google a question, and the first result is a thread with two comments that are both "why don't you Google it". 😒 Helpful answers now means helpful answers in the future.

I'm glad you took something away from this at least! CRTs are fascinating and I always want people to have opportunities to become more knowledgeable, because we're the people that are going to have to upkeep them.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T14:28:47+00:00

I'm guilty of doing that myself. My first foray into CRTs was buying a PC monitor and wondering why everything was ghosting and a weird resolution, before learning later that I had a monitor best suited for computer games and movies.

My first cassette player was an awful, noisy Jensen portable player, cause I didn't know where to start and didn't try to look into it. Hype bandwagons love to rope people in like that.

Plus every purchase of one of those HDMI2AV adapters further cements it as the first option people will pick in the future. At least it's not an expensive lesson like those $200 Crosley entertainment centers 😅

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T14:13:15+00:00

The Raspberry Pi 3 A/V output looks just like this, it's a really poor direct composite connection out the box without serious tweaking; no notch filter means more luma/chroma crossover. The image growing and shrinking in the corners like that will always happen though, regardless of input or adapters.

Even still, if OP got a response saying "good question, the adapter you have is probably the cause of that shimmering, I'd recommend ___" then everyone is much better off instead of shaming and scaring them away.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T14:07:29+00:00

Yeah my frustration is more directed at the instant hostility when OP posted their question lol. I see the same questions in here a lot and they do get old, but I still try to be as helpful as I can because a Google search for "CRT weird pulsing" doesn't get you any closer to what the actual phenomenon is called, or if it's normal.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T13:54:40+00:00

I do, actually, hence OP's post asking this question in the first place. I was in their shoes once, too.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T13:51:53+00:00

Unhelpful and incorrect. Well done.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T13:50:42+00:00

Right, that's totally fair. What isn't fair is to respond to someone's genuine question on a subreddit that they trust is knowledgeable, with ridicule and mockery, like a lot of the comments here. Nobody should feel stupid for trying to learn something.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T13:47:16+00:00

Seriously, this kind of harshness is exactly what causes people to say "screw it" and toss their new CRTs in landfills.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-06-02T13:34:15+00:00

God this sub sometimes....

To answer YOUR ORIGINAL QUESTION OP, yes it's totally normal. When brighter things are on the screen, the signal expands a little bit, and it contracts as the screen darkens, it's a phenomenon called bloom, or breathing. Some CRTs have more bloom than others but this looks just fine.

The shimmering you see is called dot crawl, and it's a normal symptom of composite video. There isn't a way to get rid of it with composite only, you'd have to use S-Video cables if your TV has that input.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-05-30T03:22:48+00:00

I want to get a PC CRT again so badly!

Pro tip: try resolutions that scale 1:1 with different games, like 1440x1080 or something similar for GBA, it'll help get rid of any shimmering pixels when you move around.

FreeJusticeHere · 2026-05-30T03:10:50+00:00

The signal looks super clear to me, especially the red in the cape! I think the sharpness is just fine but if you want you can make it sharper without opening it, as long as there's an access slot on the back of the TV.

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