Petition for better voice audio quality
Bought the entire season purely on the merit of the first game (from what, 1994?). Overall I liked the game a lot, although I suppose the situations could be slightly more 'zany' for my tastes.
One thing bugged me though, the bad audio quality used for the voice samples. Now I admit I'm a music lover so my standards are probably higher than average but really, the sound quality was so sub par.. what did you guys use, 10kbit mp3? (OK I overexaggerate a bit, but frankly I found the sound of the ORIGINAL game better :eek: )
(just to make it clear Im not suggesting to replace the voice actors, those were fine)
Please telltale games, won't you either
a/ encode the audio (I heartily reccommend ogg vorbis - its 100% free) at a higher bitrate
b/ keep the audio the same for internet download size reasons, but give us better audio in the CD release
I figure I'll add a poll here to see if I stand alone on this.
One thing bugged me though, the bad audio quality used for the voice samples. Now I admit I'm a music lover so my standards are probably higher than average but really, the sound quality was so sub par.. what did you guys use, 10kbit mp3? (OK I overexaggerate a bit, but frankly I found the sound of the ORIGINAL game better :eek: )
(just to make it clear Im not suggesting to replace the voice actors, those were fine)
Please telltale games, won't you either
a/ encode the audio (I heartily reccommend ogg vorbis - its 100% free) at a higher bitrate
b/ keep the audio the same for internet download size reasons, but give us better audio in the CD release
I figure I'll add a poll here to see if I stand alone on this.
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Anyway while I'm at it, allow me to make another minor point. People's sensitivity to bad sound quality is always increasing. When 128kbit mp3's hit the scene (again, 1993 or so..) they called it 'near CD quality' and very few people criticized that. By now, many people would be ashamed to play such mp3's to friends while saying 'here, listen to how awesome my new stereo sounds!'. I submit that MAYBE you don't hear the problems today, but that in the future, this might start to bug you, while it is little to no additional effort for telltale to fix this stuff pre-emptively. The human brain learns to listen for things, and in some samples, the compression artifacts really stick out. (at least for me, longtime mp3-listener)
Anyway I suppose I should've added another poll option: 'It's OK but I don't mind it improving'
That would be even more poll engineering than what you've already done...
It's totally up in the air for now.
Needless to say, we've read the threads (and believe it or not we've also played the game a couple times), and it's being discussed.
Ogg can sometimes delay a bit so it can make sense using a mix of uncompressed formats like wav for responsive short stuff and a compressed one like ogg for all the long sounds.
Well, my point is anyways my dear friend, if noone points out what THEY believe is a down-point in someones art, the artist never find out, and has no way of even considering if it's a valid critisism, and thus maybe even contemplating if they should do something about it or not.
Me myself, didn't notice it, but then again, I have a lousy stereo.
Let's just say the guys from hit the road died... should we just cancel the series forever because of it?
No, of course not. Give the new guys a chance. I'm sure the old actors had time to refine their work, let the new ones get a chance, too.
I guess if it's not too much trouble, pump them up for the CD release. But for now, all eyes on staying the course and pumping out episodes in a timely fashion!
That's what I get for not actually reading the posts. ;-)
I'll just save this for the next time some one brings it up.
You mean like, say, stating something without any proof, providing no quotes/examples, implying foul play and hinting that anyone who doesn't see through my obvious tricks is an idiot? That kind of engineering? :rolleyes:
Anyhow, In my defense, Ive looked through the first few pages of the forum, and didn't see a topic (let alone a poll) that I thought applied to the issue at hand. Now that telltale says they are at least aware of the topic, I'm satisfied that they will at consider the issue. If it is their business choice to leave it as it is, I will respect that.
I suppose I expected at least sound quality better than the 1994 game.
I will say that this has given me reason to wait to buy other games like Bone and such. Fuzzy voices don't do it for me. And Maxes voice levels need to be brought up if you are going to keep it at that high compression level. Alot of that voice actors low range voice is sliced off when you compress it all.
offtopic: The voice acting is great in the game! I really liked every charecter and how their voice was just what I would've expected.
Uh that's exactly what this poll is about
I'm actually amazed at the filesizes that Telltale use, how much they can fit into these little packed files of theirs. It's genuinely amazing on times when one considers all the models, textures, art and voices in such a small space. If there's one thing other companies could learn from Telltale it's proper compression and optimisation methods.
The sound quality in the first might've been a little off but it's definitely improving and it's better in the second episode, I think they're just trying to get a good quality-to-file-size ratio whilst keeping it a viable download for dialup people and to be frnak, I think that's a noble goal, I just wish that other companies cared about dialup users as much.
I'm not a dialup user anymore (thank the pantheons) but I'm not incompassionate or deaf to their plight either, not everyone has broadband yet and it's nice to see that some online content is available to them, too.
It would be about 300mb - much less than the Dreamfall demo
The very first thing I noticed was the absolutely appalling quality of the voices. Disappointed again. It's very sad, but I shalln't be buying this game until the voice quality is sorted out.
It doesn't have to be some uber lossless compression like FLAC either, just enough so that there's no unbearable hissing at the end of.... apparently every single word spoken.
(it's not literally every single word spoken, it's just the sibilance is rather bad and in passages with a lot of speech it can give the impression of every word)
Still, I do understand that TTG wants to keep file sizes down, but I hope that it can be improved (perhaps the same download that is available now + an optional high quality sound pack?).
Especially when I played part of it with headphones, the heavy compression was very apparent.
It's shocking because the rest of the game - the humor, the art, the animation, the voice acting, and especially the music - is excellent. So what happened to quality control on the voice samples? I will buy the series as soon as this is sorted out, but not before.
The speach is acceptable but it isn't what I expected from a feature game!
Now, I am a music producer and I am quite fussy about my sound quality.
Have you guys ever considered ATRAC? Basically its a Sony codec which allows a very low bit rate. ATRAC set as 24kb will sound like an mp3 set at 192kb. It's amazing! A song file which would weigh in at around 5mb in mp3 format is downsized to around 1mb in ATRAC and it sounds fantastic! I don't know if sony will supply the codec for games and software but heck, TTG theres no harm in asking!
With ATRAC you can meet our quality demands and meet your low file demands.
But I DIDN'T say it WAS free did I.
It is far better than all the other options (quality and stability wise).
There is no latency in sound as .ogg formats seem to have and the compression rates can be a lot lower than an mp3 and still have a CD quality sound which mp3's can't do.
You get what I mean? The whole complete package thing comes in play and until an update or CD release comes out with this, it's always going to feel lacking in the audio department.
It's not so much a complaint as it is a comment.;)
If there is "latency", the game engine/audio library is broken. It's not the fault of Vorbis; at the point where sound output gets synchronized with game action, the sound should already be decompressed into memory. Sure, Vorbis takes a few more CPU cycles to decode than MP3, but this really isn't an issue unless you're running ancient hardware. It's not like Sam & Max is a resource-intensive game.
(yes, i'm referring to the people who suggested hairbrain ideas such as atrac AND the guilty devloper who decided that the voiceover quality was "good enough)
there are tuns of FREE audio codecs that are designed for speech. How do you think VoIP sounds so good with such a low bit rate? How do you think your cellphone works?
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Codecs
do some research! The voice overs sound like ASS. Peroid!
Unless you're using some crap plastic speakers that are built into your LCD screen, or unless you're playing the game with your fingers firmly planted into your ears, you HAVE to agree with me.
(voice acting is top notch though!!)
The voice samples in both episodes are *shockingly* bad - bad enough that you shouldn't get away with it without people pointing it out wherever you go, like having red pen ink on your face. If I were to describe the voices in one word, it would be "bubbly".
Seriously guys - you're charging full game prices for the season, and we should get full game quality for that price. The difference in download size is going to have less bearing on the overall gameplay experience than the quality of the content therein. Just a thought.
It's not the first thread about audio quality, I already gave my point about this part, and as I'm a hughe audiophile, I really hate the compression used in the game. I use "semi" hifi headphones (beyerdynamic DT440) with a very big precision and honesty, and if the music sounds pretty great, speech tracks are ugly, very very ugly. So ugly that I can't play using my headphones because I feel like playing sort of smd tracks (sega genesis audio files), but it was in 1992.
It has already been said that this choice was made to improve size of the package. Of course I think it could be great to have the choice, to download a "hifi pack" for those who can use broadband access. But for the moment, no response about that. For sure, telltale guys knows some people wants that, as some people wants widescreen resolution, as some people wanted a new voice and a new model of the girl in bone. It took time but now it's done. I think (and I hope) it's just a matter of time
Based on your poll, the people that care way outweigh those that don't so I guess I can eat my tongue, but I'm just wondering if this really is a huge issue for people or it's one of those minor game issues that people wouldn't notice had this not been brought up.
I didn't really notice the sound quality issue as I played the game. True, I'm no audiophile, but I just wonder if it would really make such a difference to the gameplay experience.
That being said, I'm all for releasing an extra audio pack or better quality on the CD (or even DVD?) version. Being in the position where I actually pay for my internet bandwidth, I would apreciate the option to not download 50mb extra (and thus pay extra) for something which I did not even notice in the first place.
But I can assure you that playing back any of Sybil's lines makes my speakers cry :P
And I know that Telltale are professional enough to record such talented voice actors in full studio quality, so they have all the files.
I think it's great that Telltale distributes small, highly compressed games for downloading, because it's sure to hit a broader audience (especially those with tiny speakers), so I'm most definitely in favor of a separate download package that those who have the bandwidth, patience and desire for full quality audio can retrieve and install on their own.
I would really, really like to hear from a technical developer at Telltale on this issue, because as far as I can tell, all the spoken audio are in separate vox files and all you'd need to do is overwrite all of those with uncompressed versions (or less compressed ones). You wouldn't need to change the audio engine to accept other sound formats or anything.
I can't imagine this could take more than 10 minutes to write a script for that'll zip all the bigger vox files and put them in one file that can be downloaded on the website, so I get the feeling that I'm missing something important here.
Are there performance issues with large vox files?
Is there a limit to the filesize?
Do larger files take too long to process and will cause lag in the game?
Is it mandatory to compress vox files this much?
Will full quality vox files be too gigantic to distribute?
Do you need to change the file format and rewrite the audio engine if you want better quality audio?
What obvious obstacle to success am I missing here?