Substandard voice quality due to overcompression
First a bit of background: Telltale's series prior to ToMI exhibited noticeable voice quality problems and the problem reached its peak with the second episode of ToMI, when enough people complained that Telltale released a new version with much improved voice quality. Fortunately that improved quality was upheld for the rest of the season, and I also noticed no significant problems with Sam & Max Season 3.
However for the first episode of BttF the problem is back. There is significant overcompression and/or distortion that is most (but not only) evident on the letter "s", especially when spoken by female characters. Obviously this isn't a complete showstopper but it is very annoying, and at least for me it has a significant impact on my enjoyment of the game.
To get this out of the way, this is not a problem with my computer or speakers. All other games sound crystal clear, and this is the same setup that I used to play the original ToMI Episode 2 (poor voice quality) and the rereleased version (good voice quality).
It's optimistic to hope that enough people will care about this issue that we'll also see this episode fixed and rereleased, but this thread is here in that hope
However for the first episode of BttF the problem is back. There is significant overcompression and/or distortion that is most (but not only) evident on the letter "s", especially when spoken by female characters. Obviously this isn't a complete showstopper but it is very annoying, and at least for me it has a significant impact on my enjoyment of the game.
To get this out of the way, this is not a problem with my computer or speakers. All other games sound crystal clear, and this is the same setup that I used to play the original ToMI Episode 2 (poor voice quality) and the rereleased version (good voice quality).
It's optimistic to hope that enough people will care about this issue that we'll also see this episode fixed and rereleased, but this thread is here in that hope
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maybe its just his speakers distorting ?
Possible, but unlikely if the other Telltale Games (fixed audio ToMI and Sam & Mac s03) sound fine.
I doubt it, the audio has a slight compression hiss here to, I thought this problem was behind us, hopefully the rest of the season will have less heavy compression on the voices like they did with Monkey Island and Season 3 of Sam & Max.
what recording software do you use?
There has to be a way to fix this, it's completely distracting, and taking away from a game I've pretty much wanted my whole life.
Help?
The problem/issue Telltale has is that they want to make the download of a reasonable size. If they bump up the bitrate on the audio too much, it would be a very large download.
The only option they have would be to perhaps release a high-quality audio pack. I don't know if they've looked into that possibility or not, perhaps even utilizing a torrent-based distribution system so that they don't have to foot all of the bandwidth for it.
But once again, I've been distracted by over-compression on games before, and for BTTF it wasn't bad.
I think it's worth downloading 1-2 gigs if need be, if it means the voice acting doesn't sound like absolute garbage.
Although, to be honest, I don't think this is a compression issue, this seems like a bug. Everything has an electric tinge to it. Totally distracting. If they don't fix this, I'll be severely disappointed.
Bad first impression for me, buying my first Telltale game.
P.S. I bought it on Steam. I don't know if it's possible that this version has a bug that the Telltale store version doesn't have, and maybe that's why only some have this problem worse than others.
You can't judge from a YouTube video because they are also heavily compressed.
But that's not the issue, the issue is the heavy compressed speech causing a very slight hiss on the vocals, something that hasn't been done on a TellTale Game since the (much worse effected) Siege of Spinner Cay.
I'm not saying it's AS BAD as that episode, but the quality does seem a lot lower compared to Monkey island AFTER that episode and the entire Sam & Max Season 3.
Sounds fine to me as well. And I noticed the bad compression a whole lot on earlier games. That's why we're asking what kind of setup you have because, at this point, it's more likely it's just that.
you know if you bounce the final file in mono interleaved your ALOT more likely to get distortion (assuming you work for TTG)
I don't see how I can have a specific set up that targets ONE game to make it sound worse :P
The music is fine as are the sound effects, it's just the vocals, again, they are nowhere near as bad as the likes of Spinner Cay, but there is a drop in quality.
If you must know my set up:
- Asus Xonar D2X Sound Card
-- S/PDIF Output @ LPCM Stereo 48Khz/24bit
-- Twin 50watts RMS Speakers Frequency Range 35hz - 24,000hz
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
(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
Basically, ever since the first Season of Sam and Max a few of us, myself included have complained about the poor quality of the voice audio. At first the basically said they might do another version with higher audio, but that never happened.
Pretty much anyone with ears and anything less than a shitty speaker set-up will hear the compression hiss on the voices. It's not as as bad as it was in Monkey Island, but it's still unforgivable to save space on voices in these days of cheap bandwidth. I mean, at least offer decent quality voices to those of us who want them.
However, when it all comes down to it, we've been complaining about this for almost half a decade, and we've gotten nowhere, so you know, don't expect anything to be done about it. Ever.
Hm. You might be on to something. I've always just assumed it was an issue of bitrate, like they use 56k ogg vorbis or something like that. It could be the recordings, of course. What I can say is that I play a lot of games, and I've never experienced this kind of hiss in any other game in recent memory, at least.
Bit rate effects recording resolution so they can record higher frequencies i dont know they would want it to go up to 56k though 44.1k is usually the industry standard after that your really just wasting space
unless you believe in sub concise noise perception which does happen but i really dont know much about the subject other then it supposedly be used to induce feelings
Nah, you misunderstood me. I meant 56k, as in 56kb per second, in the actual encoding for the sound file included in the game. I'm sure it's not actually that low, but it was hyperbole.
The Telltale Speech Extractor lists the filenames as .vox, indicating that Speex has been used as the voice codec. Now Speex is a great codec, and does indeed compress speech down to ridiculously low bitrates (the highest it supports is 44 kb/s), but whenever I've used it I've always come away with the impression that its output sounds like a telephone call — understandable but not pleasant to listen to.
Considering the download (at least on Steam) is less than 500 mb, I don't think it unreasonable for TT to offer higher quality audio. The Monkey Island SEs are happy to stray towards 2 gb per game, and thanks to the extra size the voice quality was fantastic. Considering the importance of the voice acting to games such as BTTF I think it would be a fair trade off. I guess all we can do is make our opinion known and hope that they either take it on board for the future episodes, or release a higher quality audio patch later on, for those who find the issue irritating. I know Obsidian did exactly that with the videos and music files for Knights of the Old Republic II...
It's never going to change, stop wasting your breath
And dont assume this is because I cant hear it, Becuase Yeah I hear the crackling at a few very brief points... I choose to ignore it, Because this is only a 25 dollar episodic internet game from what is still a pretty small company
Case in Point: It took us four years to finally get real time shadows
Actually i am sure they will one day use a better bitrate, but not anytime soon
However, the voice quality was instantly notable and somewhat disappointing for me. While I would love to see it 'fixed' I am not going to let it ruin a great old school adventure game experience.
Anyway I do appreciate the difficulties involved in even getting a game developed and released these days, so thanks TT. Enough said from me on the matter.
But they fixed it during the later episodes of Monkey Island and especially during Sam & Max, the voice quality was great during Season 3.
I agree, I usually notice if audio is low quality, but I didn't notice anything particular about BTTF. Actually that's wrong. I wasn't impressed with the delorean time-travel sounds. They sounded muffled like they were ripped from a VHS version of BTTF and I thought they lacked bass.
Aside from that I didn't notice anything wrong with the voices. And for those who said there was distortion issues, I'd say there's something up with the sound settings on your PC. Like if you're using the EQ settings in your sound setup. That'll make things distort for sure.
and its harmonic distortion not digital clipping so the bit rate is not a problem if it was digital clip it would be like this for say a 24 bit system the highest audio value is ofcourse
1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111
so if the system tryed to push it any futher it would of course go back to
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001
resulting in a drastic level change not the distortion i hear
the hissing is not that noticeable on all characters, except you concentrate on hearing it (soup kitchen guy for example), but for old edna its really bad. and no its not my setup.