Dissapointing Audio Quality
I really enjoyed this first episode but was put off by some dodgy audio issues.
Firstly the dialogue was at a low sample rate or had used some dodgy audio compression which sounded terrible, especially those characters with high voices.
Secondly some of Guybrush's lines had some room tone/echo on the lines where he is shouting and this destroyed the illusion of the sound being in the world and not a small room somewhere.
Finally the whole audio was poorly mixed with dialogue that was too quiet to hear some moments and far too loud at others, some compression might have helped even out the volume.
Anyway I hope this is something that will improve as the series progresses, otherwise an excellent start to the series.
Firstly the dialogue was at a low sample rate or had used some dodgy audio compression which sounded terrible, especially those characters with high voices.
Secondly some of Guybrush's lines had some room tone/echo on the lines where he is shouting and this destroyed the illusion of the sound being in the world and not a small room somewhere.
Finally the whole audio was poorly mixed with dialogue that was too quiet to hear some moments and far too loud at others, some compression might have helped even out the volume.
Anyway I hope this is something that will improve as the series progresses, otherwise an excellent start to the series.
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As a result it sounds badly mixed and it's hard to hear the voices over the other stuff or even get interest to listen to it since it sounds so flat.
The default mix is something of a disaster, though. The default of SFX/music/voices all at maximum volume makes it pretty much impossible to hear the dialog, particularly considering how noisy the opening scene is. I had to immediately turn the subtitles on and the SFX/music way down.
If they could somehow employ a system where the music and sound effects get quieter when dialog is being spoken, that would be ideal. After all, I'd love to hear the music nice and loud, but if I have to choose between music and dialog, the music has to lose out.
As long as there's no hissing/static/loud pops or skips in the audio, I'm all fine.
Guybrush sounded a bit echoey when he was talking to the voodoo lady, I'm not sure whether that was just my headphones, but other than that, it's been fine.
I'm sure everyone already understands this, but with the amount of voiced dialogue in these games, Telltale has to reduce the bitrate a little in order to keep the files small enough for people with all kinds of connections to download conveniently.
It's also considerably less expensive than MP3. To the tune of free
you mean standalone player? Because most new players can play ogg (My favorite of the cheap ones is the IAudio F2)
The audio is pretty clear to me
If I didn't notice it, it's a non-issue to me.
Maybe you need a better sound card? It all sounds nice and rich on my SoundBlaster X-fi and quad surround speakers.
But still, the audio quality here is definitely a step up from previous games and dropping the music and effects volume a few notches below the vocals clears it up nicely.
Further improvement would be appreciated, but this is a step up.
Not bad Telltale.
I've been quiet about it for too long, so I promised myself that if anyone raised the issue again, I would have this to say... (So don't kill me, this is only the truth
From what I gather its only certain speaker systems that appear to have this issue... Personally, my computer is hooked to my home theater in my living room (I use my plasma TV as a monitor), its also hooked to my THX surround sound system.
The verdict? I have never ONCE heard ANY sort of artifacting, scratching, etc. (Some bad echoing and changing room tone in the past, but none of it was in MI). And trust me, if any system would pick up any sort of problems in the audio files themselves, this system would.
So I say, rather than beat a dead horse, why not solve the ACTUAL problem... which is YOUR speaker system.
If you are enough of a stickler (and crabbass) to bitch about audio quality, Them I'm sure you will have no problem affording a different soundcard/speaker/headphone setup... So shuddup, and good day.
(Not to mention rude to tell people to shut up... I think everyone in this thread has been pretty level-headed.)
About 90% of the complainers have one of the "soundblaster audigy" series... which is a cheep generic card found in many "lick em and stick em" computers sold by computer retail outlets because of its low cost. (it also wreaks havoc with many other games)
but that's not to say there are not other "bad" cards out there.
(I also DID kinda mean to be a bit rude, because after 3 years of whining, I DO have the right to say "be quiet")
Not to be callous, but when you look at the fact that telltale has not done much in 3 years to change the audio quality (besides an odd format change or two) then that might be tell you that they don't see it as a necessity... which means that most of the public is happy with the current quality, and that means that they see the "audio-philes" as a minority. And *that* should REALLY tell you something, huh?
Come on now. Isn't this kind of like going into a tinnitus support group and saying "I don't see what the problem is. I don't have tinnitus."?
Clearly some people are experiencing issues. Even if the problem is, as Dangerzone's shut-uppity response seems to indicate, due to an individual's particular sound card.
Not really a problem, I thought that guybrush sounded echoey just a teeny bit when he's shouting to Elaine at the beginning, but that's not even worth listing to be honest.
Geeze, Dangerzone. You seem angry. What's going on, man? Trouble at home? Work? Let's get to the heart of this.
Anyways, I'm not saying "shut up" in the "go away" sense... I'm saying "shut up" in the "stop blaming telltale and find the problem" sense
Its clear that everyone receives the SAME game... and its clear that many have no issues with sound quality. but since you seem to be having audio issues, why not troubleshoot the issue?
From the threads like this in the past... its painfully clear that certain hardware configurations aggravated the audio and made it poppy and cracklely.
But dont bitch at telltale to change their whole damn sound format compression system when it is YOUR computer that's fouling it up.
See my point now? I'm telling you to stop bitching at telltale... I'm not saying you don't have a sound issue, or that's its all in your head, no. I'm merely telling you to fix the real problem.
It puts a real bug up my rear to see someone assigning blame when its their own fault, this case is no exception.
I think if someone from Telltale were to say "let's have a look at your audio configuration and see where the problem might be", we wouldn't even be having this exchange. Unfortunately, they've been rather silent on this issue, leaving people to think: a) it's a problem with the games, and b) there's some reason they refuse (or are unable) to fix the problem.
Like I said before, the audio quality seems to be improved in ToMI. On the other hand, I'm playing it on a different, newer computer than I had the other games. I may install S&M on this thing in order to do a comparison.
You should receive a reply in about a day or so... Ask if your system specs would cause any issues with their games. It also can't hurt to ask which setup they would recommend (what they use in-house, for example).
They may have more advice for you than you would think
The issue here is not artifacting, scratching or any sort of glitches in the audio. The issue is how compressed it is, which means all dynamic range has been reduced to zero leaving the audio flat and muddy.
Here's an example, a video from Flight of the Conchord's TV show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozSSseCh3U
This video has a HQ button which mostly affects the audio. Granted both versions are very compressed. The low quality one doesn't have any glaring issues or audio problems, the sound is just devoid of dynamic range and sounds flat. I'm sure most people wouldn't find any fault with it until they tried the HQ verison. Switching to high quality is a significant improvement. ToMI basically sounds like the low quality version, while most other games (previous MI games included) have a much crisper quality to the voices.
Yes, good audio equipment will make this a whole lot more obvious than crappy equipment. That goes for everything, crappy equipment makes crappy stuff seem better than it is while quality equipment reveals just how crappy things can be. Personally I have a decent amplifier and a pair of speakers that I sometimes use but mostly I use high-end Sennheiser headphones. And with all due respect to your THX certified equipment, it has never been very highly regard among audiophiles and especially nowadays we're even seeing all kinds of stuff getting the THX logo slapped on it, even small PC speakers.
Tales is my first Telltale game so I can't comment on how the quality has been in previous games and frankly I think it's irrelevant. I'm glad to hear they are improving but they seem to have a ways to go still and frankly I'm surprised this is even an issue with a 2009 game. I read in a review somewhere that it's disappointing that a game coming out in 2009 gets beat by a game from 1992 in audio quality.
And do not say "who cares, It's a very small group" because it actually isn't... the worldwide audience/hype is what made telltale/adventure-games-in-general what they are, many games would not be here if it were not for the interest from our friends overseas.
So, anyways, they had to draw the line somewhere... Audio is where they drew it.
Granted, they could give the disc version higher res (or even HD) voices... this has also been argued for years. But given the large amount of work it takes to resound the games (about 5000 lines per episode and and about 200 SFX/music tracks) it's a heavy burden, and I guess that the small enough group who actually want higher quality audio is not enough justification for them to do this.
And yet when my dad (who is a sound and light technician in a theatre) asks me to listen to the difference between his new expensive speaker set and his old slightly less expensive speaker set I can hardly notice the difference. Even when he insists that it's really, really obvious. He has to tell me what to listen for, and then I can hear that yes, those high notes do indeed sound crisper, and the bass does indeed sound a bit fuller. But I would never notice it if I wasn't looking for it.
My point is, it's not because *you* don't hear anything wrong with it that someone else doesn't. And that doesn't even mean that your ears aren't as good. You might just be more focused on the content of the sound instead of on the presentation.