I own multiple versions of Riven, used to hang out on Mystcommunity.

Using a program the extract the game assets, I did a comparison recently between the Gog version, based on the CDs from what I understand, and my 10th Ann. set DVD copy of Riven, which will run on an XP Virtual box.

What I found... wasn't good. The sound GOG uses is packed in .wav format, which should be superior.

However, there is a hell of a lot of hiss and reverb in the music sections that shouldn't be there. I don't remember if this affected the CDs. However, compared to the .mp2 files from my DVD, the audio has been remastered, or perhaps resaved from master copies.

Here's a file showing the difference in just one track. The first track that plays is a clip directly from the gog files. It's fresh from the source, not recorded via speakers or anything. Right after I include the same section as heard from the DVD.

Here the hiss? That's not meant to be there gog. This isn't just one track, and there are others where it's much more obvious that I can upload if needed.

If that's present in the CD version, then you really need to use the DVD for your source. Better video. Better sound.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1ntfxGtbMXw

They do, but only if you download the game through Galaxy.

No it shouldn't. The WAV format is older than any compressed audio format, especially the popular ones like mp3 or OGG, so you will often stumble upon it in old games. And because older games also came on CD-ROMs (or even floppies) it means that they had less space at their disposal and so file size was critical, ergo these WAV files usually had to be of extremely low quality (much worse than an mp3 of even lower file size would be). So the files were uncompressed, comparably large and of awful quality. It makes perfect sense that a newer version of a game would use a compressed format and have better audio quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qYbVQu7YAQ