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!
Perhaps some people have hearing more sensitive than yours, making it more noticeable. It isn't an issue for you but I find it distracting, maybe you need to appreciate that people are different.
Given that the audio quality isn't particularly high I'd say it is a pretty reasonable expectation that something be done about it if Telltale want our continued custom.
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.
I do agree that the voice quality is awful and getting it fixed should be set as a priority but saying you've been duped is going a bit overboard. I'm sure TellTale will get it fixed eventually seeing that they're one of the few game developers that seem to actually listen to what the community says.
I'm sure TellTale will get it fixed eventually seeing that they're one of the few game developers that seem to actually listen to what the community says.
*USED TO, every since BTTF was released, the staff here have taken a distant call of leave, only seen Jake around a few times!
Last week I played a few telltale games (S&M S02E01, S02E02 & BTTF ep 1) and didn't have any sound issues on my headphones (Phillips I think they were). But they broke, so I went to the shop and got some Sony ones this time - now I definitely have issues with sound with S&M S02E02 - where I didn't before. The speakers/headphones you use, and the specs they have presumably have a big influence on whether you can hear the sound issues or not.
The sound now sucks for me, which is a real pity. So a quick note for those so intent on dismissing people who say that the sound compression is a problem - just because you're not having issues with sound does not mean that other people aren't. Even something as trivial as headphone choice can have a big impact on sound quality.
Having now finished Ep 2 I can say that the compression issue is still there and has not improved in the slightest. Now for the record I'm not using some really expensive system, at the moment I'm using a $80 pair of headphones, not cheap, but not really high end either, and I can still hear a lot of hiss whenever the characters make an 's' sound. Coupled with the mediocre sound effects, especially for the Delorean, I'm fairly annoyed.
As a point of reference, the indie adventure game Gemini Rue which was released today uses 148 MB for its speech.vox file, and the voices sound markedly superior to anything in the two BttF episodes so far.
Gemini Rue was developed by one man in his spare time.
As i have said before, it seems stupid to pay these great actors to do this great voice, and the ruin it with overcompression, because of some imaginery idea that 300mb or whatever number is to high to expect people to download.
Seriously we are in 2011, must of us have steam, downloading games of 20gb thats 20.000mb. Surely you can do 500mb episodes.
As they say, if you are gonna do something, do it properly.
Its better to have bigger game downloads, and then you can use somekind of preload like steam, if you seriously believe that you cant expect people to download more than 300mb, its like we must all suffer because very few has a slow internet connection, which is not fair at all.
Lets try and not have this happen again on any game, i think we have had this issue on all Telltalegames, besides CSI, Puzzle agent and bone. not sure about bone, been to long :P
here is a fun idea. lets do a big poll here on the forum, telltale put it on the front page, lets see just what internet speed people have.
The problem is their audio engineer. It has very much NOTHING to do with compression in the sense that you guys refer to. The problem is the recordings sound unmixed and very close to raw input from the mic.
This is a no no when it comes to professional audio capture. I mean hell, it sounds like they didn't even do a noise reduction pass.
What they need to do is master the vocal tracks with professional standards and not some Amateur Presets. They need to add proper multiband compression and they themselves need to learn to EQ the individual audio files.
Tell Tale's games seem Amateur at times, from the graphics engine and audio recording to File Size constraints.... It's just a complete mess, the only reason why people like their games is because they have good designers and decent writers.... Which produce excellent entertainment experiences despite it's shortcomings.
There it is... the bold truth.
BTW, I am an audio engineer myself and can record and submit examples of the problem.
The S sound hiss has nothing to do with file size compression. In the industry of sound recording the process of removing this "Hiss" sound is called "DeEssing." You do this by applying a multiband compressor to the audio track. The compressor should be setup according to your wave/spectrum view form.
In this view, you can clearly see the high frequencies produced by the S sounds, and target them specifically and compress the High Frequency that an "S" produces right out of the source file. This is all done before the recording is "mixeddown" into a .wav or .mp3, which is the step before converting it to you're game engines format. (i.e. Unreal is .ogg, or an Ogg Vorbis container.)
This removes the "Hiss" sound.
BTTF's sound is as terrible as ever. Episode 2 was much better than one but over all -- they have a very consistent "bad mixing" sound throughout all the games they release.
It's sad, it truely is.
P.S.
I'm Unemployed! I'll clean up the audio for more than a fair wage..... (lol, like they are gonna read this.)
I do agree that the voice quality is awful and getting it fixed should be set as a priority but saying you've been duped is going a bit overboard. I'm sure TellTale will get it fixed eventually seeing that they're one of the few game developers that seem to actually listen to what the community says.
I think the fact that the quality of their voice overs has been terrible since their very first release over four years ago and they haven't permanently fixed this problem despite a significant number of people complaining about it proves that they are a game developer that DOESN'T listen to what the community says. And they must be aware of this issue currently since this thread keeps popping up at the top of the BttF forum at least a couple times every day. If anything I'm hoping it lights a fire under the ass of whoever is in charge of their audio department.
I think the fact that the quality of their voice overs has been terrible since their very first release over four years ago and they haven't permanently fixed this problem despite a significant number of people complaining about it proves that they are a game developer that DOESN'T listen to what the community says. And they must be aware of this issue currently since this thread keeps popping up at the top of the BttF forum at least a couple times every day. If anything I'm hoping it lights a fire under the ass of whoever is in charge of their audio department.
See my post. Lighting a fire is probably not going to help if the audio engineer mastering the voices doesn't know how to fix it. They've attempted to fix it, file size compression effects the high frequencies worse the more it's compressed. The fact is those frequencies should be cut out before any file size compression is done.
I cannot fathom an audio engineer that knows how to do this, not doing this. It's only the ones without the considerable experience necessary to fix the problem that would ever release anything with said problem.
I know how to fix it, and not only that -- I'm capable OF fixing it. If I'm capable then surely they have the wrong Engineer as I've never been formally trained in the field. I've just learned from having a good ear, experience and the sheer will to get that "perfect" sound. So with that said, if the audio engineer has a degree in audio engineering, he must have slipped through the cracks... Because the one thing I was taught when I was in school for Computer Animation is to never let bad production ever make it into the final cut.
Pretty much a rule of thumb, as they are expected to breed professionals into the industry.
So, unless they hire a new lead sound egineer, or send him back to school, the problem will likely never get fixed.
Which is a damned shame.
P.S.
I'm not intentionally putting down any one at Tell Tale, as I them as a studio. But as in any business -- if something could be done better, it should -- as it only helps create that desired experience for the End User, which is something you MUST stimulate as a business in order to maintain and/or reach peak performance.
I.E. If people are annoyed by the sound quality that obviously takes away from the desired experience. Depending on the individual's personal threshhold will determine weather or not they purchase another product from your establishment.
Over time this could be a noted cause of lower sales metrics.
P.S.S.
I discovered the source of the problem. They never hired an Audio Engineer. In fact, they aparrently don't think they need one. There is no appropriate field in the "Jobs" section, and the ONLY audio related position they seem to have designated is "Lazar Levine Audio Coordinator."
I would imagine his job it to make sure people are in the booth and to click the record button, and then convert the audio files to a format that the engine can use. Hence the reason all of their voice overs sound like poo.
Really TTG? ONE sound guy? Not even ONE engineer?
WTF?????
I don't understand how you can take a Liscense like Jurrassic Park and not have an Audio Engineer. That seems silly. Every movie, game, audio track ever that hits the "professional" level has an Audio Engineer.
This has to go down in history as being one of the biggest oversights of a gamestudio I have ever seen, TBH.
TTG Hire an audio Engineer. It doesn't have to be me, but damn -- get one. You won't regret it.
The problem (what ever it is) exists just as bad on the ps3 version as the pc...
The PS3 version uses the same audio files for the game as the rest of the them, Archived OGG Files, so really, if they have used the same speech file on all, it should exist on all, though it might be a little harder to hear on the iPad speakers.
I'm Unemployed! I'll clean up the audio for more than a fair wage..... (lol, like they are gonna read this.)
Hey im the unemployed bum on this forum go find your own! hahahah
but no really if you go back and read my big post ive pretty much already said what you have man but they refuse to listen i guess this is just one minority that they dont care about im quite sad to see that obvisouly TTG has taken on a very lazy or unexprienced audio engineer which seems to be letting down the games over all enjoyment
I hope these issues would be fixed, it just causing Telltale to look more unprofessional, when all areas of their games are not done with the same level of quality.
Man, I wish I had never found this thread. I Don't know whether I was just so ecstatic to play the games when they released or what, but I never noticed how bad the voice audio actually is. I actually had to go back and replay to notice.
I own and have played all of the Sam and Max seasons as well as the TOMI season and never noticed the sound quality problem. Now that I have, I will always be listening for this, and I hope they fix it. I also hope this will not be an issue for the new Jurassic Park game.
The problem is their audio engineer. It has very much NOTHING to do with compression in the sense that you guys refer to. The problem is the recordings sound unmixed and very close to raw input from the mic.
This is a no no when it comes to professional audio capture. I mean hell, it sounds like they didn't even do a noise reduction pass.
What they need to do is master the vocal tracks with professional standards and not some Amateur Presets. They need to add proper multiband compression and they themselves need to learn to EQ the individual audio files.
Tell Tale's games seem Amateur at times, from the graphics engine and audio recording to File Size constraints.... It's just a complete mess, the only reason why people like their games is because they have good designers and decent writers.... Which produce excellent entertainment experiences despite it's shortcomings.
There it is... the bold truth.
BTW, I am an audio engineer myself and can record and submit examples of the problem.
The S sound hiss has nothing to do with file size compression. In the industry of sound recording the process of removing this "Hiss" sound is called "DeEssing." You do this by applying a multiband compressor to the audio track. The compressor should be setup according to your wave/spectrum view form.
In this view, you can clearly see the high frequencies produced by the S sounds, and target them specifically and compress the High Frequency that an "S" produces right out of the source file. This is all done before the recording is "mixeddown" into a .wav or .mp3, which is the step before converting it to you're game engines format. (i.e. Unreal is .ogg, or an Ogg Vorbis container.)
This removes the "Hiss" sound.
BTTF's sound is as terrible as ever. Episode 2 was much better than one but over all -- they have a very consistent "bad mixing" sound throughout all the games they release.
It's sad, it truely is.
P.S.
I'm Unemployed! I'll clean up the audio for more than a fair wage..... (lol, like they are gonna read this.)
I record and edit sound for films and have a few years of indie experience under my belt (nothing you guys have seen in theatres), and, as far as I can tell, this guy nails it. A lot of the sound that you guys are talking about does not come from file compression but seems to come from the recording itself and not tweaking said recording in post to get rid of those recording problems.
That said, this may be an aesthetic that they're going for with BTTF and Sam and Max for an old-timey feel, as audio quality/recording/editing has changed quite a bit over the years and even going back as recently as the 80s and 90s you'll hear a lot of stuff that we're not used to hearing in modern movies, and some people actually like that warmth and punch to be in their design. I haven't played TOMI so can't comment on that game's sound, but even if the same problem is present there they may still be going for that aesthetic since that series is something of an homage.
Even if it's an artistic choice, it's not an aesthetic that I particularly appreciate, but I get past if because of the rest of the game.
Have you considered taking one of the audio files from the game and applying your filters to demonstrate how the problem can be fixed? Even if telltale doesn't listen to them it'd at least show everyone here what the problem is, and that it's a real problem, not just someones sound system playing up.
cant we please get this fixed once and for all, for all release, its really annoying this issues continue, i just cannot accept, any game that has bad sound, let alone a game where you have good voice actors, then ruin it with crappy compression or whatever the problem is.
I cant believe its just me that has that good of a hearing or super sensitive ears?
cant we please get this fixed once and for all, for all release, its really annoying this issues continue, i just cannot accept, any game that has bad sound, let alone a game where you have good voice actors, then ruin it with crappy compression or whatever the problem is.
I cant believe its just me that has that good of a hearing or super sensitive ears?
oh man just purchased BTTF & the "S" hissing sounds are the worst ive heard yet, actually bth it isnt even a hissing sound it just sounds like that low quality crappy sound like someone is throwing cans in a washing machine WTF is going on with this... i mean seriously, has Telltale even bothered to post a solution for us yet?
i actually brough a new soundcard thinking my old realtek onboard one was the problem as some users claim they cant hear it (maybe they should clean out their ears) now i got an expensive Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series & it makes absolutely no difference, i also bought a pair of Astro Digital Dolby gaming headphones (using the fibre output) ive tried all sorts of combinations in the settings & both doc marty & especially biff & martys dad sound dreadful when saying "S" sounds
i hadnt bought a Telltale game for a fair while since the crap i experienced with W&G, all the S&M seasons, for some reason TOMI didnt seem to have it so bad but was still some what noticeable
i got BTTF because tbh i couldnt help myself, it looked cool & they obviously used a different audio sample for the trailer because the sound seemed fine on it, IMO this is false advertisement on TellTales behalf
I am deadly serious when i say this, until we are offered either FREE high quality audio downloads for EVERY TellTale game we have already purchased in the past or some sort of solution to the problem, i will not be buying another Telltale game ever again & i will be making a special effort to ensure anybody thinking of buying one of their games is fully aware of this audio compression issue
Its time to pay the piper Telltale, its not like your operating out of a freakin basement, wake up to yourselves
It sounds like they removed the lower and upper bands of "near hearing" (similar to MP3 compression, except removing sounds that people can normally hear as well). Then converted to 8-bit resolution (the dull and incomplete sounds). It distinctly sounds as if it is missing most of the waveform.
Now, graphics whores are one thing. They're insisting developers spend REAL MONEY to implement small changes to "visual effects" and no changes to gameplay. In many ways, focusing so strongly on visuals can reduce what you can achieve (financially or hardware-limitations.)
This... MINOR... Audiophiling? We're insisting that developers add on an extra 100mb's, costing (at say, $1 per gigabyte) an extra 10 cents to them. It can even save them money as they don't have to spend all the time butchering the original sounds! Win-Win!
Of course, asking for RAW audio would be absurd (notes on the additional 1GB for voices)... but they're butchering Christopher Loyd!!! At least give him 22.5Hz -16bit... it's Christopher LOYD!!! He deserves it
/me wants a HD Audio Pack!
Do note, I already own the games and am NOT regretting the decision to purchase.
I'm just... disappointed, shall we say... that they would do such a horrible thing when they have so much dialogue. *and again, on the note of people who like to troll. This is rather severe audio-butchering, even for early dos games with only small amounts of spoken dialogue. (And THEY, at least, had hardware, diskspace, # of floppy's needed, to consider).
Console games may have been worse due to hardware limitations... but there really isn't a good supporting reason as to why they needed to reduce audio samples down to 22.7 MB.
This thread should be stickied at support forum, to be honest.
I was researching the sound issues I've been having with S&M several months ago, but only came to a conclusion that it only affected the first few episodes.
Now I purchased BttF and am having the same annoying sound distortion all over again.
I'm just... disappointed, shall we say... that they would do such a horrible thing when they have so much dialogue.
Complete agree with you here. I am very disappointed with the sound quality and more so after learning that it doesn't get better in later episodes.
Now, for me its as simple as voting with my wallet. I'll think twice (check if there was any progress regarding sound quality) before buying another game of Telltale's.
I have to throw my voice in here, too. There isn't really anything else I have to complain about what I've played so far. And it would be understandable if the overcompression was somehow saving them money or something like that; as several people have mentioned, they are a small company.
But it doesn't! The only thing it does is save disk space, and when an episode doesn't even take up 500MB... I played WoW for a long time, and it required 25GB of disk space, and I never heard anybody complain about it.
And no, it doesn't ruin the experience, but it's very distracting, and disheartening considering it would be so, so easy to fix.
Edit: And hey, if distribution of high-quality soundpacks is a problem due to server load or whatnot, use Bittorrent! I'm sure the fanbase would be more than happy to distribute the bandwidth; I know I'd seed that torrent .
Comments
Perhaps some people have hearing more sensitive than yours, making it more noticeable. It isn't an issue for you but I find it distracting, maybe you need to appreciate that people are different.
Given that the audio quality isn't particularly high I'd say it is a pretty reasonable expectation that something be done about it if Telltale want our continued custom.
I do agree that the voice quality is awful and getting it fixed should be set as a priority but saying you've been duped is going a bit overboard. I'm sure TellTale will get it fixed eventually seeing that they're one of the few game developers that seem to actually listen to what the community says.
*USED TO, every since BTTF was released, the staff here have taken a distant call of leave, only seen Jake around a few times!
Last week I played a few telltale games (S&M S02E01, S02E02 & BTTF ep 1) and didn't have any sound issues on my headphones (Phillips I think they were). But they broke, so I went to the shop and got some Sony ones this time - now I definitely have issues with sound with S&M S02E02 - where I didn't before. The speakers/headphones you use, and the specs they have presumably have a big influence on whether you can hear the sound issues or not.
The sound now sucks for me, which is a real pity. So a quick note for those so intent on dismissing people who say that the sound compression is a problem - just because you're not having issues with sound does not mean that other people aren't. Even something as trivial as headphone choice can have a big impact on sound quality.
That said I had no real issues with it, as far as hearing it or understanding the words.
Gemini Rue was developed by one man in his spare time.
As i have said before, it seems stupid to pay these great actors to do this great voice, and the ruin it with overcompression, because of some imaginery idea that 300mb or whatever number is to high to expect people to download.
Seriously we are in 2011, must of us have steam, downloading games of 20gb thats 20.000mb. Surely you can do 500mb episodes.
As they say, if you are gonna do something, do it properly.
Its better to have bigger game downloads, and then you can use somekind of preload like steam, if you seriously believe that you cant expect people to download more than 300mb, its like we must all suffer because very few has a slow internet connection, which is not fair at all.
Lets try and not have this happen again on any game, i think we have had this issue on all Telltalegames, besides CSI, Puzzle agent and bone. not sure about bone, been to long :P
here is a fun idea. lets do a big poll here on the forum, telltale put it on the front page, lets see just what internet speed people have.
This is a no no when it comes to professional audio capture. I mean hell, it sounds like they didn't even do a noise reduction pass.
What they need to do is master the vocal tracks with professional standards and not some Amateur Presets. They need to add proper multiband compression and they themselves need to learn to EQ the individual audio files.
Tell Tale's games seem Amateur at times, from the graphics engine and audio recording to File Size constraints.... It's just a complete mess, the only reason why people like their games is because they have good designers and decent writers.... Which produce excellent entertainment experiences despite it's shortcomings.
There it is... the bold truth.
BTW, I am an audio engineer myself and can record and submit examples of the problem.
The S sound hiss has nothing to do with file size compression. In the industry of sound recording the process of removing this "Hiss" sound is called "DeEssing." You do this by applying a multiband compressor to the audio track. The compressor should be setup according to your wave/spectrum view form.
In this view, you can clearly see the high frequencies produced by the S sounds, and target them specifically and compress the High Frequency that an "S" produces right out of the source file. This is all done before the recording is "mixeddown" into a .wav or .mp3, which is the step before converting it to you're game engines format. (i.e. Unreal is .ogg, or an Ogg Vorbis container.)
This removes the "Hiss" sound.
BTTF's sound is as terrible as ever. Episode 2 was much better than one but over all -- they have a very consistent "bad mixing" sound throughout all the games they release.
It's sad, it truely is.
P.S.
I'm Unemployed! I'll clean up the audio for more than a fair wage..... (lol, like they are gonna read this.)
I think the fact that the quality of their voice overs has been terrible since their very first release over four years ago and they haven't permanently fixed this problem despite a significant number of people complaining about it proves that they are a game developer that DOESN'T listen to what the community says. And they must be aware of this issue currently since this thread keeps popping up at the top of the BttF forum at least a couple times every day. If anything I'm hoping it lights a fire under the ass of whoever is in charge of their audio department.
See my post. Lighting a fire is probably not going to help if the audio engineer mastering the voices doesn't know how to fix it. They've attempted to fix it, file size compression effects the high frequencies worse the more it's compressed. The fact is those frequencies should be cut out before any file size compression is done.
I cannot fathom an audio engineer that knows how to do this, not doing this. It's only the ones without the considerable experience necessary to fix the problem that would ever release anything with said problem.
I know how to fix it, and not only that -- I'm capable OF fixing it. If I'm capable then surely they have the wrong Engineer as I've never been formally trained in the field. I've just learned from having a good ear, experience and the sheer will to get that "perfect" sound. So with that said, if the audio engineer has a degree in audio engineering, he must have slipped through the cracks... Because the one thing I was taught when I was in school for Computer Animation is to never let bad production ever make it into the final cut.
Pretty much a rule of thumb, as they are expected to breed professionals into the industry.
So, unless they hire a new lead sound egineer, or send him back to school, the problem will likely never get fixed.
Which is a damned shame.
P.S.
I'm not intentionally putting down any one at Tell Tale, as I
I.E. If people are annoyed by the sound quality that obviously takes away from the desired experience. Depending on the individual's personal threshhold will determine weather or not they purchase another product from your establishment.
Over time this could be a noted cause of lower sales metrics.
P.S.S.
I discovered the source of the problem. They never hired an Audio Engineer. In fact, they aparrently don't think they need one. There is no appropriate field in the "Jobs" section, and the ONLY audio related position they seem to have designated is "Lazar Levine Audio Coordinator."
I would imagine his job it to make sure people are in the booth and to click the record button, and then convert the audio files to a format that the engine can use. Hence the reason all of their voice overs sound like poo.
Really TTG? ONE sound guy? Not even ONE engineer?
WTF?????
I don't understand how you can take a Liscense like Jurrassic Park and not have an Audio Engineer. That seems silly. Every movie, game, audio track ever that hits the "professional" level has an Audio Engineer.
This has to go down in history as being one of the biggest oversights of a gamestudio I have ever seen, TBH.
TTG Hire an audio Engineer. It doesn't have to be me, but damn -- get one. You won't regret it.
NO WONDER the T-Rex sounds like poo....
The PS3 version uses the same audio files for the game as the rest of the them, Archived OGG Files, so really, if they have used the same speech file on all, it should exist on all, though it might be a little harder to hear on the iPad speakers.
Hey im the unemployed bum on this forum go find your own! hahahah
but no really if you go back and read my big post ive pretty much already said what you have man but they refuse to listen i guess this is just one minority that they dont care about im quite sad to see that obvisouly TTG has taken on a very lazy or unexprienced audio engineer which seems to be letting down the games over all enjoyment
=[
P.S
I asked for a job first and am much cooler !
I own and have played all of the Sam and Max seasons as well as the TOMI season and never noticed the sound quality problem. Now that I have, I will always be listening for this, and I hope they fix it. I also hope this will not be an issue for the new Jurassic Park game.
I record and edit sound for films and have a few years of indie experience under my belt (nothing you guys have seen in theatres), and, as far as I can tell, this guy nails it. A lot of the sound that you guys are talking about does not come from file compression but seems to come from the recording itself and not tweaking said recording in post to get rid of those recording problems.
That said, this may be an aesthetic that they're going for with BTTF and Sam and Max for an old-timey feel, as audio quality/recording/editing has changed quite a bit over the years and even going back as recently as the 80s and 90s you'll hear a lot of stuff that we're not used to hearing in modern movies, and some people actually like that warmth and punch to be in their design. I haven't played TOMI so can't comment on that game's sound, but even if the same problem is present there they may still be going for that aesthetic since that series is something of an homage.
Even if it's an artistic choice, it's not an aesthetic that I particularly appreciate, but I get past if because of the rest of the game.
PS. I think the trex is better now.
@HooblaDGN or Laokin
Have you considered taking one of the audio files from the game and applying your filters to demonstrate how the problem can be fixed? Even if telltale doesn't listen to them it'd at least show everyone here what the problem is, and that it's a real problem, not just someones sound system playing up.
and this is just in the first part of the game. isnt any spoilers really. but man listen to that sound.
I dont know about you, but everytime they say S, it cuts in my ears
http://gupl.dk/59363/
cant we please get this fixed once and for all, for all release, its really annoying this issues continue, i just cannot accept, any game that has bad sound, let alone a game where you have good voice actors, then ruin it with crappy compression or whatever the problem is.
I cant believe its just me that has that good of a hearing or super sensitive ears?
If it is still happening now I doubt Telltale is going to change it. Even though it does a pretty good job ruining the cinematic experience they're aiming for.
I have the same issue here, i also have some graphic issues on Emmett's car.
i actually brough a new soundcard thinking my old realtek onboard one was the problem as some users claim they cant hear it (maybe they should clean out their ears) now i got an expensive Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series & it makes absolutely no difference, i also bought a pair of Astro Digital Dolby gaming headphones (using the fibre output) ive tried all sorts of combinations in the settings & both doc marty & especially biff & martys dad sound dreadful when saying "S" sounds
i hadnt bought a Telltale game for a fair while since the crap i experienced with W&G, all the S&M seasons, for some reason TOMI didnt seem to have it so bad but was still some what noticeable
i got BTTF because tbh i couldnt help myself, it looked cool & they obviously used a different audio sample for the trailer because the sound seemed fine on it, IMO this is false advertisement on TellTales behalf
I am deadly serious when i say this, until we are offered either FREE high quality audio downloads for EVERY TellTale game we have already purchased in the past or some sort of solution to the problem, i will not be buying another Telltale game ever again & i will be making a special effort to ensure anybody thinking of buying one of their games is fully aware of this audio compression issue
Its time to pay the piper Telltale, its not like your operating out of a freakin basement, wake up to yourselves
It sounds like they removed the lower and upper bands of "near hearing" (similar to MP3 compression, except removing sounds that people can normally hear as well). Then converted to 8-bit resolution (the dull and incomplete sounds). It distinctly sounds as if it is missing most of the waveform.
Now, graphics whores are one thing. They're insisting developers spend REAL MONEY to implement small changes to "visual effects" and no changes to gameplay. In many ways, focusing so strongly on visuals can reduce what you can achieve (financially or hardware-limitations.)
This... MINOR... Audiophiling? We're insisting that developers add on an extra 100mb's, costing (at say, $1 per gigabyte) an extra 10 cents to them. It can even save them money as they don't have to spend all the time butchering the original sounds! Win-Win!
Of course, asking for RAW audio would be absurd (notes on the additional 1GB for voices)... but they're butchering Christopher Loyd!!! At least give him 22.5Hz -16bit... it's Christopher LOYD!!! He deserves it
/me wants a HD Audio Pack!
Do note, I already own the games and am NOT regretting the decision to purchase.
I'm just... disappointed, shall we say... that they would do such a horrible thing when they have so much dialogue. *and again, on the note of people who like to troll. This is rather severe audio-butchering, even for early dos games with only small amounts of spoken dialogue. (And THEY, at least, had hardware, diskspace, # of floppy's needed, to consider).
Console games may have been worse due to hardware limitations... but there really isn't a good supporting reason as to why they needed to reduce audio samples down to 22.7 MB.
It's just... a major disappointment.
I was researching the sound issues I've been having with S&M several months ago, but only came to a conclusion that it only affected the first few episodes.
Now I purchased BttF and am having the same annoying sound distortion all over again.
Complete agree with you here. I am very disappointed with the sound quality and more so after learning that it doesn't get better in later episodes.
Now, for me its as simple as voting with my wallet. I'll think twice (check if there was any progress regarding sound quality) before buying another game of Telltale's.
was just kinda annoyed today thinking what am i gonna play & staring at my list of telltale games in steam that i cant play due to the audio issues
still waiting for a high quality audio download for previous games
& i still havent bought another telltale game since BTTF & will continue not to until this has been addressed
But it doesn't! The only thing it does is save disk space, and when an episode doesn't even take up 500MB... I played WoW for a long time, and it required 25GB of disk space, and I never heard anybody complain about it.
And no, it doesn't ruin the experience, but it's very distracting, and disheartening considering it would be so, so easy to fix.
Edit: And hey, if distribution of high-quality soundpacks is a problem due to server load or whatnot, use Bittorrent! I'm sure the fanbase would be more than happy to distribute the bandwidth; I know I'd seed that torrent .