Substandard voice quality due to overcompression

2

Comments

  • edited January 2011
    thank god im not the only one experiencing this

    i didnt notice the problem with TOMI at all but im currently trying to play Sam&Max E1 & the distortion on every "s" sound is horrible, i honestly cant play the game its that annoying, surely there is something that can be done because at the moment i feel completely ripped off with my purchase (i have the DVD version & no it wasnt cheap)

    poor scratchy sound quality is one thing but this problem is like nothing ive ever heard in any game (& ive been gaming since the begining) truely there is no excuse for it

    i appreciate what Tell Tale has done for the adventure games genre but unless they do something about the voice quality in their games i can say now i wont be buying another one in a hurry, i also bought Sam&Max S2 & Wallice & Grommit online & if they are as bad as S&M S1 then im gonna be spewing

    seen that BTTF game aswell, looks fair sick, hopefully it doesnt share this problem aswell
  • edited January 2011
    kanoba wrote: »
    Why does every one seem to be ignoring what im saying when im pretty positive i have a solution to this problem ..

    i tried turning down 6k & 12k to -12db & it has helped dramaticly with the problem, can still hear it a little bit but nothing like it was before... thanx (the game is at least playable now) :)
  • edited January 2011
    Just skimmed, but has anyone tried updating their audio drivers? Sounds like maybe a decompression mishap driver side causing the hiss/distortion?

    I myself don't have any problems with a distortion the voice per-se, but I have noticed that some voices are overpowering/underpowered in some scenes compared to other chars. (like the patty wagon part, Marty can be heard clearly, but doc is almost drowned out by the engine noise)
  • edited January 2011
    Iggman88 wrote: »
    Just skimmed, but has anyone tried updating their audio drivers? Sounds like maybe a decompression mishap driver side causing the hiss/distortion?

    But if you think it's that, what kind of insane mishap would cause it to only target BTTF Episode 1? (and other TellTale episodes that had terrible vocal compression) And not affect anything else (including later TellTale episodes that sorted this problem).
  • edited January 2011
    Ash735 wrote: »
    But if you think it's that, what kind of insane mishap would cause it to only target BTTF Episode 1? (and other TellTale episodes that had terrible vocal compression) And not affect anything else (including later TellTale episodes that sorted this problem).

    TellTale could have used a new/uncommon codec for decompression that older drivers wouldn't have, or couldn't handle? And to fix it they patched it to use a different one?

    There's more than one way to fix a problem, either a driver company comes out with an update that bypasses or fixes an issue, (usually takes forever) or the game company can fix it faster, because their the ones that broke it in the first place. : P
  • edited January 2011
    even though ive turned down the 6k & 12k it is still very annoying & often breaks the mood of the game

    i updated my soundcard drivers but it did nothing

    i have hundreds of games dating from 1980-2010 & its only the Tell Tale ones ive experienced this problem with...

    would be nice to get some sort of confirmation from Tell Tale about this & some options on how to fix the problem, maybe it is just a certain codec we need to download
  • edited January 2011
    This is laughable. It was a problem back in Sam & Max Season 1 episode 1. TTG is fully aware of the problem but choose to ignore part of the customer base since I guess most either don't experience this distortion or are fine with it.

    I guess they won't fix this ever..
  • edited February 2011
    Yeah, whoever is in charge of the audio department at this company needs to seriously think about changing careers. The quality of the voice overs in this game and many others they have created are terrible. The funny thing is, that his has been a repeated problem with their games since the very beginning, they have responded to numerous complaints on their message boards, and even made an effort to fix the problem with TOMI episode 2 when it became ear bleedingly awful to listen to. At that point the company took notice and every episode of TOMI and Sam & Max since then had near perfect audio quality. At that point I thought the worst was behind us but lo and behold Telltale takes a step backward again. It started again with Poker Night, where the characters ( especially Tycho) had the infamous s hiss. And here we go again with BTTF. Listen to Doc say "... you're gonna see some serious s***." The s sounds he makes sound god awful. Its more like HEAR some serious s***. I remember the difference between the file size of the low and high quality versions of TOMI E2 and they the size increase was very minimal. This isn't 1995 anymore Telltale, WE CAN HANDLE A FEW GB ON OUR HARD DRIVES!!! This is a major frustration because I have never seen a game company have such a disregard for customer satisfaction as Telltale, just seems to be looking for a quick buck off of a major movie franchise which I happen to love. Buyer beware.
  • edited February 2011
    /shrug

    I don't have any hissing or distortions in the audio, I use on-board realtek motherboard audio, keep my drivers up to date and don't have any other audio devices installed/plugged in, USB or otherwise. Granted I spent 80$ for my speaker setup. The only hiss I get is if my tremble is set to high, wear headphones and have vertical sync turned off, then I get a nasty feedback hiss/buzz from my graphics card.

    It's not exactly fair for ppl to bash a game company the way they do, there are millions of combinations of hardware/software out there, its not easy, nor is it fast to make/fix a game that is 100% compatible with them all. It's not like a console where one console is virtually identical to the next.
  • edited February 2011
    Iggman88: It is fair though, We complained in the past and TellTale then upped the Audio Quality a bit for the rest of the Monkey Island episodes and the entire Sam & Max Season 3, no one had any hissing problems then as the voice quality was at a decent enough bitrate to handle it.

    Now, for BTTF, they've gone back to overcompressing the voice files again (no codec changes, TellTale files always seem to use Ogg-Vorbis 1.0.1), now, if this is because they're putting more languages in the game and have to make more room for that, but then again each version is a different download, so, there doesn't really seem to be a reason for them to use a higher compression on this game when they did fine with Monkey Island and Sam & Max having higher quality voices after we complained.
  • edited February 2011
    Yes but ppl always seem to forget that the 20 some ppl on the forums is not the majority of the game playbase, it makes more sense to fix something more severe that affects a lot more ppl (crash, showstopper glitch, ect). Audio is usually on the very bottom of the "things to fix totem", I'm sure.

    As to why Telltale decided to revert the overcompression change, who can say, but my guess would be they figured newer hardware could handle it, but didn't factor in ppl who are using 6+ year old machines or w/e.

    Believe me I know how ppl feel, I quit WoW because blizzard couldn't get their sh** straight and fix the horrible FPS issues affecting only (pulling random number) 1% of their playbase, but affected all of my 3 computers, which 1 of them I spent more money than I would care to admit on to overhaul it so I could play WoW flawlessly, yet only get 30fps max on a "good" day, staring at the floor, on low settings. Yet I can play GTA IV on the same machine and get 50fps average, on high settings... /rant

    Back to the problem, my only thought would be maybe pull out your soundcard if you got one and try onboard audio once. I've never had much luck with soundcards myself, I gave them up 7 years ago. : P
  • edited February 2011
    Don't try and insult people " but my guess would be they figured newer hardware could handle it, but didn't factor in ppl who are using 6+ year old machines". I have quite an expensive Sound Card thank you very much and a kick ass setup, if anything, the BETTER your Audio Equipment is, the more it will show flaws in things that are over compressed, there's only soo much it can do to try and mask the problems, but as the saying goes, you can't polish a crap, you can try all you want but it's still going to be crap. :p
  • edited February 2011
    You sound like most "My computer is kick ass top of the line, there nothing wrong my end, I don't have to troubleshoot anything". Just because you spent $$$ on hardware doesn't mean its going to work for everything. (didn't I just explain that earlier?). Maybe Telltale favors Creative cards and their drivers, or maybe they favor Realtek onboard.


    It may or may not be as simple as revering a compression change,
    Ash735 wrote: »
    I have quite an expensive Sound Card thank you very much and a kick ass setup, if anything, the BETTER your Audio Equipment is, the more it will show flaws in things that are over compressed.

    because by that logic, onboard sound is worlds better because that's all I have and it sounds fine, there is no distortion. Sounds deep than just a simple overcompression to me.
  • edited February 2011
    No Iggman, when this problem got solved with TOMI E2, Telltale admitted they used higher compressed audio and fixed it by lowering it. Its an old problem that has come back and it is no one's fault except Telltale's.
  • edited February 2011
    No Iggman, when this problem got solved with TOMI E2, Telltale admitted they used higher compressed audio and fixed it by lowering it. Its an old problem that has come back and it is no one's fault except Telltale's.

    Yes but the fact that it only affects certain ppl and not everyone says to me that there is more going on than just that. Either card company's are missing something, drivers are missing something, or possibly bad download/install of the game.
  • edited February 2011
    Iggman88 wrote: »
    Yes but the fact that it only affects certain ppl and not everyone says to me that there is more going on than just that. Either card company's are missing something, drivers are missing something, or possibly bad download/install of the game.

    Or maybe, people just have a different tolerance of what they'd class as Bad Audio Quality? I'll admit, the botch job on Monkey Island was far worse, but when TellTale upped the bitrate the vocal quality was good, and remained good through the rest of the Season and through the entire Sam & Max Season 3, the first downgrade came with Poker Night, which had Higher Compression, but wasn't that noticeable, now with BTTF, it's slightly more noticeable, so we'd rather TellTale nip this at the bud before the quality degrades any further just to save a few damn MB's.
  • edited February 2011
    Ash735 wrote: »
    Or maybe, people just have a different tolerance of what they'd class as Bad Audio Quality? I'll admit, the botch job on Monkey Island was far worse, but when TellTale upped the bitrate the vocal quality was good, and remained good through the rest of the Season and through the entire Sam & Max Season 3, the first downgrade came with Poker Night, which had Higher Compression, but wasn't that noticeable, now with BTTF, it's slightly more noticeable, so we'd rather TellTale nip this at the bud before the quality degrades any further just to save a few damn MB's.

    Exactly. Call me an audiophile but I listen to pretty much everything on my computer through a pretty top notch headset. I can hear everything down to the smallest detail, which is different for you listening through generic speakers or whatever your set up is. Point is, they had good quality with their games from a few years ago and any other game on my set up , now they don't. How could that be a problem with my set up? Honest to god, I just finished playing Sam and Max Season 3, Episode 4 for the first time last week and is sounded almost perfect. Again, how do you explain the difference? Are you THAT apposed to downloading an extra measly 500 MB at the cost of good sound quality?
  • edited February 2011
    Exactly. Call me an audiophile but I listen to pretty much everything on my computer through a pretty top notch headset. I can hear everything down to the smallest detail, which is different for you listening through generic speakers or whatever your set up is. Point is, they had good quality with their games from a few years ago and any other game on my set up , now they don't. How could that be a problem with my set up? Honest to god, I just finished playing Sam and Max Season 3, Episode 4 for the first time last week and is sounded almost perfect. Again, how do you explain the difference? Are you THAT apposed to downloading an extra measly 500 MB at the cost of good sound quality?

    My internet is so slow I wouldn't be able to play the game for a few days if I had to download an extra half a gig.
  • edited February 2011
    I've noticed the audio quality has gotten worse once again. Honestly, I'm getting pretty sick of it. The hiss on certain sounds is really grating and audio compression has been a long standing complaint here. If download size is a concern, fine - give us an optional higher quality audio download.

    Please, please give us the choice.
  • edited February 2011
    kanoba wrote: »
    This Could be a number of Things But i do think i know the solution

    (If some one working at TTG reads this please tell Julian Kwasneski to read this)


    I see in the footage you do use a pop filter so the problem isn't there but Christopher Lloyd's voice is very sibilant so here is my Potential solution and im going out on a limb here seeing as i dont know what recording gear was used

    You need to use a De esser

    So you go

    Microphone > EQ > Compressor > recording medium

    On the EQ Turn down about 6-10 Khz about 3-6DB so that when the a hiss comes through it doesn't set of the compressor this should help to reduce/hopfully remove distortion on the sibilance

    Apologies if you already do this just trying to help out :D

    (P.S I am qualified Audio engineering looking for a job hint hint)

    Oh and please do note if your using a recording desk with a compressor on the insert depending on the brand of desk it will go out the insert first then come back through the EQ strip so use a external EQ in the chain =]

    Or if your using recording software make sure your EQ is first in the chain =D

    By the way, I would like to change my audio settings to fix the problem (even though I shouldn't have to, that is Telltale's job). Are you using XP because I don't have "Microphone > EQ > Compressor > recording medium" in my control panel. Can you or anyone else help me fix this in Windows 7?
  • edited February 2011
    By the way, I would like to change my audio settings to fix the problem (even though I shouldn't have to, that is Telltale's job). Are you using XP because I don't have "Microphone > EQ > Compressor > recording medium" in my control panel. Can you or anyone else help me fix this in Windows 7?
    Kanoba was talking about a way to fix the audio issue during the recording process at Telltale.

    If there were issues with the recording, and if the dialogue for the entire game has already been recorded (I assume it has) then I'm not sure that the subsequent episodes will be any different.

    Though I do think that the issue is more with the compression codec than anything else.
  • edited February 2011
    If it helps I've also noticed the distortion on the pronounciation of 's's by characters in the BTTF game, and I noticed it in S&M Seasons 1 and 2, though I didn't notice it in TfMO, but I might have played them after the fix was put in. It definately sounds like compression, but surely bumping up the bitrate by a small amount, enough to fix the problem, wouldn't increase the filesize that much. The S&M Season 3 chapters were around 600MB, compared to the ~300MB for the Season 1 and 2 episodes, but Season 3 also had higher quality models and textures, so I don't think the higher quality audio really drove the file size up that much.
  • edited February 2011
    Nah, telltale games always got terrible compression into voices and sfx in order to save space. Nothing to do with speaker setups. I work in as a sound mixer for a sound studio, the speakers that we use here, including the audio interfaces and Post-processing units are so expensive that most of us can't afford it, I occationally (when I am alone in the studio) play games through the audio system here and it sound even more terrible because of the speakers being Hi-Fi.
  • edited February 2011
    No distortion here, my pc setup is pretty good, I'm using an onboard soundcard. I also use a really nice set of headphones when I do most of my gaming. I have read this thread and gone back to play bttf and sam and max season 1. I tried tweaking my audio properties and codec properties to produce an effect similar to what you guys are talking about and ...nothing.

    If it is the bitrate that the audio is recorded at, I should be able to detect some kind of audio distortion. Not saying your making it up, but its just a weird problem that a lot of people can't see. Good luck. :)
  • edited February 2011
    Timmeh2006 wrote: »
    I've noticed the audio quality has gotten worse once again. Honestly, I'm getting pretty sick of it. The hiss on certain sounds is really grating and audio compression has been a long standing complaint here. If download size is a concern, fine - give us an optional higher quality audio download.

    Please, please give us the choice.

    This.

    I don't really notice the sound on my system (using decent headphones) and given restrictive the download caps here I prefer smaller download size. Having 1gig downloads for each episode would stop be buying the game to be honest. As an aside - I'd actually like telltale to show how big the downloads are for released games, as this is the biggest impediment to me buying games. I have to take a punt on how big they are going to be.

    However, back to sound, if it is a big problem on some systems as it seems to be telltale really need to change the game config to fix this (surely that can account for it, they can't be the only game company in the world to use compressed audio) or much better release a higher quality audio version alongside the regular version for those that want it.
  • edited February 2011
    Caruu wrote: »
    Nah, telltale games always got terrible compression into voices and sfx in order to save space. Nothing to do with speaker setups. I work in as a sound mixer for a sound studio, the speakers that we use here, including the audio interfaces and Post-processing units are so expensive that most of us can't afford it, I occationally (when I am alone in the studio) play games through the audio system here and it sound even more terrible because of the speakers being Hi-Fi.

    ARGH give me a job! lol
  • edited February 2011
    This.

    I don't really notice the sound on my system (using decent headphones) and given restrictive the download caps here I prefer smaller download size. Having 1gig downloads for each episode would stop be buying the game to be honest. As an aside - I'd actually like telltale to show how big the downloads are for released games, as this is the biggest impediment to me buying games. I have to take a punt on how big they are going to be.

    However, back to sound, if it is a big problem on some systems as it seems to be telltale really need to change the game config to fix this (surely that can account for it, they can't be the only game company in the world to use compressed audio) or much better release a higher quality audio version alongside the regular version for those that want it.

    I cant really say i have the problem of Bandwidth when it comes to downloading games and such expect towards the end of the month when im about to cap really but i doubt increasing the bit rate on the audio file would make the download a bit bigger especially seeing as there is alot of dialog in this game.

    and pretty much every piece of audio that comes out of a recording studio is compressed to help normalize the level so the loud and quite bits are relatively close
  • edited February 2011
    kanoba wrote: »
    and pretty much every piece of audio that comes out of a recording studio is compressed to help normalize the level so the loud and quite bits are relatively close
    That's not the kind of compression we're talking about. You're talking about dynamic range compression, we're talking about file-size audio compression. Different things.
  • edited February 2011
    Argh! No improvement in the second episode. Thanks for nothing.
  • edited February 2011
    Just downloaded the first free episode and was disappointed the bad audio is back again, I thought this would have been resolved after the first episode of monkey island.

    2_BackToTheFuture101_pc_voice.ttarch about 23 megs
    2_MonkeyIsland104_pc_voice.ttarch about 65 megs

    It just doesn't make sense since BTFF ep one takes 422MB of my hard drive so extra 20-40 MB wouldn't have incresed the package that much.

    Anyway even if I am in minority here, Im not going to buy the rest of the episodes or any other TT games until they relelease their games with proper sounds.. :(
  • edited February 2011
    Laffer wrote: »
    Just downloaded the first free episode and was disappointed the bad audio is back again, I thought this would have been resolved after the first episode of monkey island.

    2_BackToTheFuture101_pc_voice.ttarch about 23 megs
    2_MonkeyIsland104_pc_voice.ttarch about 65 megs

    It just doesn't make sense since BTFF ep one takes 422MB of my hard drive so extra 20-40 MB wouldn't have incresed the package that much.

    Anyway even if I am in minority here, Im not going to buy the rest of the episodes or any other TT games until they relelease their games with proper sounds.. :(

    Agreed. I will definitely be researching this problem with every game series they release from now on once the verdict is in. No more pre-orders. When they announce every new series someone should post a thread in that specific game forum looking into the quality of the voice overs and get the input of everyone who has played it. If enough people say there is no problem then I will purchase it. I won't be duped again by this company.
  • edited February 2011
    Agreed. I will definitely be researching this problem with every game series they release from now on once the verdict is in. No more pre-orders. When they announce every new series someone should post a thread in that specific game forum looking into the quality of the voice overs and get the input of everyone who has played it. If enough people say there is no problem then I will purchase it. I won't be duped again by this company.
    Wait so if a game has poor sound quality that automatically means you've been duped?
  • edited February 2011
    If they're that critical that they're willing to miss out on an otherwise great game with great story over a little distortion in the audio, then it's their loss. Honestly to me, it's really petty.
  • edited February 2011
    gamer247 wrote: »
    Wait so if a game has poor sound quality that automatically means you've been duped?

    When a company starts off with poor sound quality, and finally acknowledges that it is a problem and fixes it in one series (TOMI) and then later starts degrading the sound quality again without notice or reason for another series (BttF) and many people don't find out until they purchase the game, since common sense thinking would assume that the problem should be fixed for all future releases.... I would call that being duped.
  • edited February 2011
    When a company starts off with poor sound quality, and finally acknowledges that it is a problem and fixes it in one series (TOMI) and then later starts degrading the sound quality again without notice or reason for another series (BttF) and many people don't find out until they purchase the game, since common sense thinking would assume that the problem should be fixed for all future releases.... I would call that being duped.

    Did you ever consider that there are other things they have to factor into the game than just the sound? And the distortion is not ear shattering, so to go as far as duped? Come on, seriously!
  • edited February 2011
    jweir wrote: »
    Did you ever consider that there are other things they have to factor into the game than just the sound? And the distortion is not ear shattering, so to go as far as duped? Come on, seriously!

    Most of the game for me is about dialogue and when they use substandard quality audio clips of people like Christopher Lloyd its a crime...
  • edited February 2011
    Will you audiophiles just grow up and appreciate these excellent games?! Just because you probably have speakers the size of small buildings in your respective mothers' basements and can hear a tiny amount of distortion does NOT mean that everyone can!
  • edited February 2011
    Its not even a tiny distortion, Im not expecting lossless audio or even the highest rated mp3's at 320kbs but a decent track. You don't need expensive equipment or golden ears to hear the problem. If you can enjoy the game its fine, but don't tell others that they should just accept it without saying anything.
  • edited February 2011
    Teeth wrote: »
    Will you audiophiles just grow up and appreciate these excellent games?! Just because you probably have speakers the size of small buildings in your respective mothers' basements and can hear a tiny amount of distortion does NOT mean that everyone can!

    So suddenly people who like to get the best from their audio equipment live in their mothers basements now? Hah.

    You don't even need decent equipment, just a good pair of earphones will be enough to show up the flaws in these over compressed archives.

    It's just weird, how can they fix a problem, and then un-fix it?
  • edited February 2011
    I had a few technical problems with the game but low quality sound was not one of them, the sound was fantastic.
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