Audio Quality?
Amazing game, but something is really detracting from my enjoyment 
Does anyone else have an issue with the audio quality of the game?
The compression used on the dialog creates some odd audio artifacting, especially with Strong Bad's voice. I understand that better quality audio would significantly add to the download size, and thus cost Telltale Games more money to deliver it to everyone; but I implore you, Telltale, PLEASE offer an audio quality upgrade pack. It's a minor detail that some people don't mind (or they simply put up with it, since they're used to the compression on the Homestar Runner website), but I expected more quality since this is a stand-alone game in it's own engine.
Does anyone else have an issue with the audio quality of the game?
The compression used on the dialog creates some odd audio artifacting, especially with Strong Bad's voice. I understand that better quality audio would significantly add to the download size, and thus cost Telltale Games more money to deliver it to everyone; but I implore you, Telltale, PLEASE offer an audio quality upgrade pack. It's a minor detail that some people don't mind (or they simply put up with it, since they're used to the compression on the Homestar Runner website), but I expected more quality since this is a stand-alone game in it's own engine.
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(and it is a decent 3.1 Realtek HD surround system i have here)
i have also noted that users that prefer headphones are the one who complain about the sound quality... why not try listening to the game with actual speakers, then are you are less likely to hear the sound compression artifacts
Charlie
I can post on the forums and hope that someone at Telltale may read it and realize that they will make people happier by changing their compression quality. And if that doesn't happen then i guess I can regret buying all the episodes without first playing a demo. And then I guess I can also stop complaining and just play the game with the audio muted and subtitles on.
For every single post like yours complaining about the audio quality... There is also a person out there who is unable to have a broadband internet connection (for whatever reason, geographical location, monetary, etc.) and the added sound file size, would add hours to their download time (if not days).
Personally, I have a cable modem and most downloads only take seconds (if that). But in my online gaming ventures, you would actually be surprised at just how many are still running dial up...
And, releasing different versions, or adding more download/install options is just too complicated (for the less computer savy crowd) and would probably would confuse most other users as well.
BUT, I do agree that at the end of the season, when (and if) they release the season on disc. The hard copy should contain higher quality audio, simply because download size is not an issue with hard copies.
Continuing to include the subpar audio in the hard copies is just wrong, and them not taking the time to perform the necessary updates makes me wonder if they even have the ability to record uncompressed sound at all :rolleyes: (but i know they do, and thats what makes it even more unprofessional... it makes them look just plain lazy).
Are you guys sure you have all the latest systems...?
no, sewiously..i never had any issues with the audio in sam&max, in sbcg4ap i totally noticed the compression though. also, the voices seem a bit different from the flash cartoons..and since no new voice actors were hired..anyway, i still like the game.
you guys just be glad it's not the same fidelity as the flash cartoons
It isn't "horrible" sound quality, no matter how much you want it to be. Is it less than you want? I should say so, but I think it is fine and you don't need to insult TTG in an attempt to make life harder for everyone except you. And all this over the way the voices are put into the game....
I don't really know what to tell you. It might bug you, but I think the people who notice that sort of thing are in the minority.
have you tried turning the graphics quality down, may seem bizzarre but i can help, i had this issue with sam and max on my old laptop which could easily run it a max settings but my sound card didnt agree with it
It's a shame that Telltale doesn't have the resources to compile a higher-quality voice package, either for the DVD release, or as a standalone optional download.
Either way, it still sounds better than those old Lucasarts Talkies
Since when do they not have the resources? Did all of you PC people forget about the second platform which has a definitive size limit, preventing them from making it any better w/o making the game itself less good? Is sound really so important you would sacrifice game length or playability? Because that is the only way you will ever get HD quality sound as long as this is a WiiWare game and the rest of the world other than yourself has at least a chance of being dial-up. As for DVD, it has been quite a bit since the S&M one was released and I'm sure that it will be higher quality.... even though I'm being cheated out of it by Nintendo.....
For the PC version, higher-quality audio could be offered as an additional, optional download for those who really care about it, without impacting the Wii version at all. We can assume that higher quality versions of the samples already exist, since it's highly doubtful that the original studio recordings are compressed so badly. But it would take time to edit and package those (hence "resources", since Telltale is a small studio).
So I guess those must have happened while recording...
Hey, the TV I always have my wii hooked up to was literally made in the 80's.You don't know what bad audio quality means.:cool:
but to bring things up to date, the audio fidelity in Strong Badia the Free is totally fine. looks like the Telltale folks paid attention. thanks, Telltale folks.
But I digress, if that's all that was wrong when I played the game in regards to audio, then I seriously don't see the problem. I'm reminded of people who complained about how the Incredible Hulk had poor graphics compared to the PS3 version. All I had to say to that was "be glad us on the PS2 could even play it."
And like someone else said, all that really matters to me in the voices is that the right people are doing them.
The really frustrating thing about this is that it should be so freaking simple. Take your uncompressed speech files, pack them with decent-quality Vorbis like you do with the music and sound effects already, and replace the lame Speex-compressed files. It should only take a few hours to do an entire season. Odds are the engine can already handle different sound formats transparently. I see they're now using FMOD for Strong Bad, so I *know* that's true.
Oh, and the other frustrating part is that TTG suggested they might do it for the Sam & Max Season 1 DVD. They didn't. And they still haven't explained why, though if pressed I expect you'll get an answer along the lines of "well, only a few people are actually on the forums complaining about it." Nevermind that it's the only technical issue people complain about. And that it would be ridiculously easy to satisfy those people.
We've said it quite a few times, actually. Unfortunately, with both Seasons One and Two, over the months of production, the master audio database of wav files, and the database of compressed dialog files ended up slowly drifting out of sync, where some words would get trimmed from a file, or some processing would be done to voice coming through a microphone, but because it was often done last minute during pre-ship clean-up, someone would quickly make the change and compress the file, but not ensure that the change was reflected in the master database as well. This meant that if we went back to the master files, we would be introducing a lot of hard(er than you think) to track down bugs.
With Strong Bad, now that we have moved to FMOD, we have changed how our audio pipeline works so that there aren't two separate databases to go out of sync, so we could, in the future, pack up the game with higher quality voice at some point if we desired. We'll see! Not only do you just "flip a switch" and send it off into the world, or whatever people think you do. Once you recompress and repack all of the audio, you'd want to (you'd have to) have the QA department re-test every line of dialog in the entire five- or six-episode season. That's not an instant process by any means.
So, as before, it's something we'd like to do and have talked about a lot, and we have improved our toolset towards that goal, but we're still not making any guarantees, despite how easy it sounds in a forum post.
PS: Your hyperbole doesn't do you much credit, man. Saying it's the "only technical issue people complain about" is patently false (as much as I wish people only had one issue to complain about, sadly that is not the case -- they have found dozens or hundreds over the past four years). Also saying that we have never explained why the DVD went out with compressed audio, when the boards, which are well trafficked by frankly very forthcoming Telltale employees, have been around for four years and you have posted on them seven times, doesn't lend that remark the air of a well-researched factual statement.
Sad to say this but the bad audio quality alone turns me away from buying more Telltale games.
(and you don't need to start telling me about bandwidth stuff, I've heard about that 1000 times allready)
Yeah, it's better then normal for homestarrunner.com. (Who, I've heard, use a microphone in their parent's basement.)
Sure that's how they started, but they've long since moved up (and moved out)
Congrats on your first post. It was a joke.
I don't know why people keep complaining about this!