Poor quality audio yet again/ issue resolved

Pegglef

Okay, seriously, why does every single TTG game series have absolutely god-awful scratchy audio of late? I love your games to death, but the low quality audio completely breaks the experience for me every time.

I first noticed it in BTTF and figured it was a bug. I chose to ignore it at the time and assume you guys would fix it for the next series. Nope! Really, you need to stop doing this - disfiguring the solid voice acting in your series with overcompression or whatever it is that's causing the distortion. I admit I'm not an audio buff. I honestly don't care if the download is massively larger (with high quality audio) if it means my gameplay experience isn't tarnished by it.

Thanks for reading. Keep up the excellent work, TTG, and fix that darn audio!

Goldrock

Pegglef wrote: »

Okay, seriously, why does every single TTG game series have absolutely god-awful scratchy audio of late? I love your games to death, but the low quality audio completely breaks the experience for me every time.

I first noticed it in BTTF and figured it was a bug. I chose to ignore it at the time and assume you guys would fix it for the next series. Nope! Really, you need to stop doing this - disfiguring the solid voice acting in your series with overcompression or whatever it is that's causing the distortion. I admit I'm not an audio buff. I honestly don't care if the download is massively larger (with high quality audio) if it means my gameplay experience isn't tarnished by it.

Thanks for reading. Keep up the excellent work, TTG, and fix that darn audio!

Yeah thats the thing that killed jp for me was the glitchy audio.

ADavidson

Maybe your integrated audio just sucks? BttF had fine sound for me, both PC and PS3

Pegglef

ADavidson wrote: »

Maybe your integrated audio just sucks? BttF had fine sound for me, both PC and PS3

Nope. 5.1 audio through a sound blaster x-fi sound card. Why, what is your setup that you aren't getting any distortion?

To be specific, the distortion I'm talking about occurs most noticeably during voice-over lines, not during music or general sound effects.

ADavidson

Well I can't speak for TWD cuz I can't even download it yet lol

I use HDMI output from my GTX 560Ti 2Win card to my TV, and also from TV through optical audio cable to my 5.1Ch receiver when I want it loud.

Could be I just didn't notice in BttF tho, I didn't play JP

Dameon2k

Pegglef wrote: »

Nope. 5.1 audio through a sound blaster x-fi sound card. Why, what is your setup that you aren't getting any distortion?

To be specific, the distortion I'm talking about occurs most noticeably during voice-over lines, not during music or general sound effects.

You have a problem somewhere on your system. While I give you the fact that JP had bad audio in places I have played through every episode of BTTF without a hiccup. It had flawless sound. So something wasn't working right for you there.

Dameon2k

BTW I use a sound card as well.

Goldrock

Alot of times people have 2 sound programs on their machines and tend to have them both working at the same time sometimes it will cause problems go into your hardware device manager make sure you just got one if you got more than 2 disable one maybe even try the update may need to update your sound driver.

ADavidson

Could just be bad audio cable or speakers. Do other games sound bad too? There's always a myriad of possibilities when it comes to hardware(and software) problems

Bloody Eugene

The problem was very present on Tales (first 2 episodes - well the second one was patched and gives a slightly better audio). The problem lies during the hiss sounds. Too much compression and even the word "hiss" will sounds like "hisshch"

Pegglef

Dameon2k wrote: »

You have a problem somewhere on your system. While I give you the fact that JP had bad audio in places I have played through every episode of BTTF without a hiccup. It had flawless sound. So something wasn't working right for you there.

So while I have zero sound issues with every single game I own (hundreds, including some with heavy v/o work such as bioware's games) the only games I ever experience distortion with are TTG. That seems to suggest the problem is on their end rather than mine. I've already updated to the latest audio drivers and versions of software for various audio devices.

Edit: That said, I will try weeding out double instances of running audio software, as suggested by Goldrock.

After poking around these forums a bit, I understand TTG has a history of crap audio quality, and that enough people complained about it for S&M s3 to get it changed, but that TTG went right back to over-compression for the series released after that.

Are you folks who are playing it without any distortion doing so using laptop speakers or onboard PC audio? I'm curious what setups the v/o audio quality is optimized for that allows you to get a good gameplay experience.

Bloody Eugene

Pegglef wrote: »

I'm curious what setups the v/o audio quality is optimized for that allows you to get a good gameplay experience.

maybe they use "pristine audio enhancement" from Creative (or how was it called)?

ADavidson

Considering the amount of voicework and that this episode is less than 500MB, there probably is some compression. Hopefully it won't be bad enough that it detracts from my gameplay experience

Caruu

They downsample the audio to put down the size of the game.

Pegglef

Caruu wrote: »

They downsample the audio to put down the size of the game.

I wish they would at least offer an optional high quality audio pack for people who value audio quality over a smaller download.

Bloody Eugene

Caruu wrote: »

They downsample the audio to put down the size of the game.

They downsample also the textures to put down the size of the game...

They never noticed that internet connections became a little faster during the last 7 years and there's no real need to save a bunch of mb.

Gigabytes are porn.

UnleashChaos

Caruu wrote: »

They downsample the audio to put down the size of the game.

This is true, and is definitely a problem. The episode is 550mb - little in comparison to many games released this year (or even the past 10 years) - so why have the developers felt the need to slap the voice-overs with so much compression?

The voice acting is just fine, but it's a real shame the voices are no better quality than a 360p YouTube video.

Strange that the soundtrack/effects seem to be unaffected.

Dameon2k

Regardless I still stand by the fact that I never had noticable audio problems in BTTF. Don't remember having them in Puzzle Agent either or Night at the Inventory. I did however noticed that when people try to run higher settings than they should it can cause audio glitches. All I know is that you mentioned problems with BTTF and there were never any audo issues with BTTF. I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card so it isn't anythnig Creative is doing. I also can vouch that keeping soundbard drivers loaded while running a sound card can cause issues like this.

As far as I can tell only the steam version is out and that has a ton of problems right now. I'm assuming that is the version you are trying to play so any problems you are having might be related to the tons of problesm being had by Steam users.

Caruu

As a sound designer for video games, the biggest problem we face with audio is how much memory, and size it takes up. When you have loads of lines for many characters, the size of a game goes up in insane amounts. I could be wrong, but I think telltale games are ported to touchpads, so to save space they downsample stuff. Though I personally agree they should make builds for each system, this is a massive undertaking having personally dealt with that recently. However, the reponds from fans is worth it.

ADavidson

Caruu wrote: »

As a sound designer for video games, the biggest problem we face with audio is how much memory, and size it takes up. When you have loads of lines for many characters, the size of a game goes up in insane amounts. I could be wrong, but I think telltale games are ported to touchpads, so to save space they downsample stuff. Though I personally agree they should make builds for each system, this is a massive undertaking having personally dealt with that recently. However, the reponds from fans is worth it.

The audio is all recorded at full bitrate, then compressed for the game.

It REALLY doesn't take much work to leave uncompressed audio in the PC version and use compressed for ipad and whatnot.

anatomyhorror

Honesty the bad audio quality was the first thing I noticed about the game. The second the cop opened his mouth, I thought about how badly compressed the audio was.

I am using onboard, with a decent 2.1 setup, but no other game's audio sounds this bad. I thought the sound effects like the police sirens driving by etc, all sounded solid, but the voicework, especially the copper, sounded like butt.

I have my computer also running through HDMI to a 5.1 receiver so I will try that later on as well, but until the stuttering is fixed, I won't even bother playing it period.

gamer247

I would have figured by now Telltale would have realized that people don't like lossy audio. I had actually heard some good things about the game and was actually considering picking it up...oh well .

Pegglef

anatomyhorror wrote: »

until the stuttering is fixed, I won't even bother playing it period.

My sentiments as well. It completely kills my immersion when it sounds like all the characters are speaking through a $5 tape recorder. And never mind recommending the game to my friends with the audio in this state. It literally is game breaking for me, and that's in spite of admiring most everything else I've seen so far.

As other folks have also suggested, they really do need to make separate PC builds and laptop/tablet/whatever builds for those platforms that are starved for HD space.

L1qu1dat1on

Learn from their mistakes stop buying their game launch. These companies need to learn we're not Beta Testers, at least not with our money.

neilka

Oh Lordy. I was hoping against hope that they might have hired someone to compress the voices who had any idea what they were doing this time, but apparently not.

Maybe for the next series?

My thread about the same issue in ToMI:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8586
My thread about the same issue in BttF:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21583

neilka

Here's the only post where Telltale ever acknowledged the problem, when they reuploaded a new version of ToMI episode 2 with much improved voice quality:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=189277&postcount=180

The voice quality stayed much better for the rest of that series but sadly returned to its current lamentable state with later series.

Bloody Eugene

Adventure Gamers website even gave them prize for JP audio compartment.... that website is some of the worse for giving prizes...

Telltale is just deaf to our requests. Maybe they're just deaf.

neilka

The only situation I can imagine is that the developers are using much higher quality voice data when working on the game - then when it gets released to the public it gets pushed through the packaging process which mangles it into what we get to hear.

It's unlikely that many people involved in making the game ever sit down to play the publicly released version, but you've got to hope that if they did then at least one of them would be horrified enough to speak up about the terrible voice quality!

Pegglef

neilka wrote: »

The only situation I can imagine is that the developers are using much higher quality voice data when working on the game - then when it gets released to the public it gets pushed through the packaging process which mangles it into what we get to hear.

It's unlikely that many people involved in making the game ever sit down to play the publicly released version, but you've got to hope that if they did then at least one of them would be horrified enough to speak up about the terrible voice quality!

You know, that's probably not unlikely. Internally, they might be listening to uncompressed audio files through their telltale tool instead of the packaged release product. It's hard to imagine the entire crew working on the game being exposed to hisses and distortions in the v/o lines and going: "Yeah. That sounds alright."

salmonmax

Bummer. This has been a big problem with their games for years. I thought they'd fixed it with Tales of Monkey Island after they patched the incredibly distorted episode 2 audio. But apparently not.

Guess I'll be passing on this one unless it's fixed...

gamer247

I mean in my opinion this is pretty major problem, because I can't think of any other company that compresses audio in their games to the point that I would not want to play the games that are released by them.

Pegglef

Just finished Ep1, and, speaking as a fan of the comics, I think you guys really nailed it. That is, except the audio that sounds like it was playing out of an old timey gramophone box. It doesn't completely kill the mood, but it detracts significantly.

I don't know. I know several people aside from myself who are into the WD comics, and I can't bring myself to recommend it to them. I speak of the controls in glowing terms, how they absolutely capture the tension and urgency. I mean, my heart is pounding right now. I tell them about how the story is solid and in the spirit of the comics, the tastefully done QTEs and branching conversations, but I have to append it with "oh but the audio hisses and pops and spoils the impact of the v/o work." Again, I don't really know what to suggest here; I'm not an audio engineer. All I can ask is that you please consider approaching your download size economizing from another direction. Is it really such a big problem if the download size, per episode, is doubled (heck, even tripled) if it means the experience isn't diminished?

Please consider the platforms your games are being played on. The compressed v/o files might sound fine on compact tablet or laptop speakers, but your PC users, generally speaking, are better equipped with audio hardware capable of detecting these weaknesses. Maybe give the PC users a version with less audio compression? I don't speak for us all, but I think that, on average, we aren't concerned about hard drive space or mobile internet download caps. I think we, in general, would rather have one of your great games in all of its glory than a small download full of technical compromises. I personally don't mind the textures (I think they're simple but they work) but the compressed audio really is a compromise too far: it spoils what could have been a perfectly immersive Walking Dead experience.

Please excuse me for labouring the point so much, but I hope you can see I only do it because I feel this game is close to being perfect, and falling short because of something rudimentary like this.

Fluffyburrito

Played through the steam version with absolutely no bugs. The sound only fizzled slightly for two lines of dialogue, both near the end of the game.

GameplayCrush

Dameon2k wrote: »

Regardless I still stand by the fact that I never had noticable audio problems in BTTF. Don't remember having them in Puzzle Agent either or Night at the Inventory. I did however noticed that when people try to run higher settings than they should it can cause audio glitches. All I know is that you mentioned problems with BTTF and there were never any audo issues with BTTF. I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card so it isn't anythnig Creative is doing. I also can vouch that keeping soundbard drivers loaded while running a sound card can cause issues like this.

As far as I can tell only the steam version is out and that has a ton of problems right now. I'm assuming that is the version you are trying to play so any problems you are having might be related to the tons of problesm being had by Steam users.

Itd not that we all have audio problems, most of us dont, the issue is the quallity as stated before.
I tried on 3 diffrent soundcards and i think its just poor bitrate.
No idea why they keep doing this, cant be just for file-size cause none of their games are that big at all.

neilka

Is there a representative of Telltale who's able to comment on this problem?

Drowning witch

i have this same problem, hissy low fi sound.

Jurrasic park was fine for me generally though. no where near as bad as some cahracters in here, epsecially the main character, the copn in the first scene.

i even made a thread about it on steam forums, and other people confirmed the same issue.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2668274

Eraser74

Same here, just finished the first episode and loved it VERY much, except those audio hiccups.

Some times the audio was fine and then were sequences were there were cracking sounds, like it was being played from an old record.

Ah well, Telltale won´t change that, but this game would have deserved better audio.....it´s so immersive despite of it.

Stoibs

Caruu wrote: »

They downsample the audio to put down the size of the game.

See that's just ridiculous. Did Telltale all of a sudden somehow forget that this is the year 2012 and that multi GB game downloads are fairly common these days? Hell Aussie internet here is notoriously one of the worlds worst ever, and I knocked over the 13GB Guild wars 2 Beta client this morning no worries

Was annoyed at this in back to the future.
Was surprised they didn't fix this in Jurassic Park.
Absolutely astounded the problem still persists in this.

V_Ben

Ugh, come on Telltale. At least give people the option to download a version of the game with dramatically improved audio. It adds so much to the experience

Bloody Eugene

From another thread:

crofael wrote: »

Hey, just wanted to thank you for being one of the rational ones, and that I will personally bring up audio quality concerns at our programming post-mortem and see if they can be addressed. I can't promise a stunning turn-around, but I want to let you know that your feedback will not go unheard.

Sheldipez

Hi this is the first time I've posted over on this forum, I decided to pop by and comment after reading Rock Paper Shotgun's review of Walking Dead

And the developer’s old audio issues are back, the quality compressed so much to get a vast amount of dialogue into the game’s total 450MB, that voices bubble and pop. Which is a huge shame since the actors are all very good.

The way TellTale compress their audio so much has bothered me with every one of their games. I downloaded the trial of Sam&Max on XBLA when it first came out with the idea of going through them all again for some achievements and I lasted about five minutes before I gave up in despair. I'm sure it's actually worse on that version than the PC; go and download the trial yourself.

The dialogue is way too raspy, tinny and too often rattles along. If you can't pick this up through your speakers then hook up a [good quality] pair of headphones. You can easily recreate this by ripping some CD's to low quality MP3.

TellTale get a great set of voice actors then ruin their performances by compressing the audio WAY TOO MUCH. I can't believe that there's no audio engineers on the payroll that has failed to pick this issue up after all these years. This needs to STOP now. PLEASE!