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.
Well said, EvilMulder. Your thoughtfulness has eclipsed your evilness... this time, at least.
It was definitely better than W&G, I no longer had to cringe on every "s" sound, but there still are problems.
Guybrush's voice was good enough, but the voice of eg. the newspaper guy sounded awfully compressed.
This is a problem that's been around for a long while. In Tales, the biggest problem seemed to be Elaine's voice, the quality of which was just horrible. Not sure if the other voices sounded better, or if I was just too busy to notice.
The voices absolutely did not sound as bad as Wallace & Gromit, though.
I had no problems but I did have to turn the music down about 4 bars and the sound down about 5. The speech was quiet, but thats what volume sliders are for.
I thought the game was awsome and I didn't have any audio problems. I am so looking forward to the rest of the series. I think LucasArts and Telltale did a great job on the game and hope they do more in the future. The game was a lot better than I thought it would be, and I thought it was going to be really good to begin with. I am so glad the story of the game is still being made, I was so afraid Escape From Monkey Island was going to be the last in the series, and I am so happy that it isn't the last game. I just wish that I didn't have to wait so long for the rest, I want to play the rest of the game really bad. But I will be patient and I am so looking forward to Chapter 2 next month. Keep up the good work, You guys!!!!
I think the theme song was pretty lackluster compared to the ones we had in CoM and EfMI. Heck, even the first 2 games had better versions of the theme song. The percussion didn't have the same feel in ToMI, and the music in general was too midi'ish.
I have to say...
I'm normally a real stickler for quality. I can tell the difference in MP3 audio, and prefer everything in 320kbps.
Here, I noticed no issues. With balance or quality. I'm with the "maybe try a little troubleshooting" crowd if you're getting clicking/popping etc. It may not be your sound card or speakers, it could be something else like the codecs you're using on your PC.
But I agree, "just because I can't hear it doesn't mean it isn't there".
Just wanted to add to what I said before (when I said I found the audio fine). I've got one of those high-end Soundblaster cards (not an Audigy) which has the 24-bit crystalizer mode turned on, so most compressed stuff I hear is enhanced anyway. So maybe that's why I didn't notice much of an audio problem.
Then again I can hear massive differences between low bit rate and high bit rate mp3s I've got so I imagine if the whole of the game was done in high-fidelity audio without compression it would sound markedly different/better and noticeable. But I was indeed more focused on the gameplay and the content of what they were saying rather than listening out for their dynamic range...
I hope they continue to improve, but at the moment I think what they have to use is OK - it's obviously due to the download size issues and for the console versions of the game (they mentioned on Strong Bad for Wii people didn't want to download it because it was too big for their feeble Wii storage until they fixed that). Maybe they can allow their games to be bigger downloads, but then there are those people that argue about "what about all those people on dial-up". Well, it would take them longer to download it, but they'd still be able to download it eventually and maybe they'd like the better quality?
Just wondering if this happened to any1 else, after talking to the voodoo lady i clicked on the bird, after the bird is thrown to the floor the subtitles say, "Squark I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate? but There was no audio?
Just wondering if this happened to any1 else, after talking to the voodoo lady i clicked on the bird, after the bird is thrown to the floor the subtitles say, "Squark I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate? but There was no audio?
The sound is still bad. And that's a shame, because people are complaining about that since at least 3 years !
I still can't use headphones, the onyl thing I can try is with earphones, but it's not brillant anyway.
30megs for the voice package... it's ridiculous. Audio compression is just like graphic compression (except you don't see that in screenshots ). Why don't you ust ship the game in 320*240 ?
Yes, I'm disappointed, because I started a thread in 2006 about the first Sam&Max season. And almost all the points the community asked were solved, except that one (and for ToMI, the point and click issue).
Of course I find this first episode an incredible game. But the sound is crappy. Poor Jared's studio, with that performance, it's easy to belive that they just record with skype microphones ^^
I didn't notice the faults with the audio to any great extent in this one, but my set-up here is not the greatest (though probably a lot better than what most people have), so it doesn't give a good basis for a high fidelity check, as it were. I did, however, notice the unever balancing of the dialogue, with some lines inexplicably appering at much lower levels than the other lines.
What I will say though, on this subject, is that most people do not hear the difference between heavily compressed music, and high-bitrate or uncompressed music. I've done tests with my friends, using uncompressed wav and 128 mp3s, and you'd be surprised to hear that most couldn't hear the difference, and a lot of them actually preferred the 128 versions. I can only speculate that it might that they have become used to the murky sound.
Anyway, to those who say you have no problems, try this out: http://mp3ornot.com/
If you can't hear the difference there, you certainly won't hear anything wrong in the game either.
I didn't notice any sound issues, except that for me, the music was way too quiet in the default mix. I turned down the dialogue so I could have the music nice and loud. I love that music.
However that doesn't mean that it couldn't be way better. More dynamics and panned effects could really enhance everything. And having the music dynamically change volume (quiet during talking, heighten during drama, etc) would be really effective.
Anyway, to those who say you have no problems, try this out: http://mp3ornot.com/
If you can't hear the difference there, you certainly won't hear anything wrong in the game either.
Well, even if your test is interesting, there is a whole difference between the "small" gap you have here (two mp3 files played through a flash player, so, no real quality difference and that's totally normal, and a 128kbps is a high bitrate for only speaking voice in a game), and the incredible compressed sound of the game... it's more a gap between a 128kbps mp3 and let's say a 56kbps mp3 here.
We're in a time where we sell incredibly precise displays, come one, full HD and more, and we sell also incredible sound products (for blu-ray for example) where we use DTS MA, format that blows away Dobly Digital and DTS. We're in a time where even a 50$ cheap headphone can let you make a difference between a 128kb mp3 and a 256kb AAC. We are not speaking about thousand bucks hifi configurations ! but 100$ ones ! And we're dealing here with voices compressed at a very very low rate !
I'm quite sure it's decent when you got low quality speakers, but I'm talking about good quality speakers (100$ 2.1 and more) AND headphones (in my case, it's about headphones, I can't use speakers for some reasons).
In a few days now, we will be able to download SoMI:SE, and i'm curious about the voice quality, but I'm quite sure, even if it's also a game made for downloading, that we won't have a mutilated Armato.
Well, even if your test is interesting, there is a whole difference between the "small" gap you have here (two mp3 files played through a flash player, so, no real quality difference and that's totally normal, and a 128kbps is a high bitrate for only speaking voice in a game), and the incredible compressed sound of the game... it's more a gap between a 128kbps mp3 and let's say a 56kbps mp3 here.
We're in a time where we sell incredibly precise displays, come one, full HD and more, and we sell also incredible sound products (for blu-ray for example) where we use DTS MA, format that blows away Dobly Digital and DTS. We're in a time where even a 50$ cheap headphone can let you make a difference between a 128kb mp3 and a 256kb AAC. We are not speaking about thousand bucks hifi configurations ! but 100$ ones ! And we're dealing here with voices compressed at a very very low rate !
I'm quite sure it's decent when you got low quality speakers, but I'm talking about good quality speakers (100$ 2.1 and more) AND headphones (in my case, it's about headphones, I can't use speakers for some reasons).
In a few days now, we will be able to download SoMI:SE, and i'm curious about the voice quality, but I'm quite sure, even if it's also a game made for downloading, that we won't have a mutilated Armato.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this was my test; this was just something I googled up to support my theory and show people that a lot of them will not be able to identify the difference, whilst one should be able to hear it, even in that test, quite clearly on even decent equipment.
My test involved cds versus an mp3-player playing 128kb over a very high end stereo set-up. But all this is besides the point. What I was trying to say is that most people due to a combo of less-than-stellar equipment and the lack of training in audio fidelity won't be able to hear the problems.
Now, as I said, I only briefly noticed them, but I was rather caught up in the game, and I'm sure I'd hear it a lot more if I went back and listened for it. Certainly it's not as bad as previous games, where the compression would just jump out at you, oftentimes taking you completly out of the game.
edit:
Honestly, I don't see why they don't give us uncompressed voices as an optional download. I assume they have all the voices gathered in one voice file anyway; wouldn't be too hard to compile one in flac or something. There's aren't that many lines in there. Probably a few hundred megs at the most, which objectively is nothing, when most people can do several gigs an hour these days.
When I played this first episode I didn't notice the sound to be that bad, but after reading this thread I decided to test it again by turning the effects and music down to zero. And yes the audio isn't perfect and it seems to vary between characters and time. There is a particulary bad line in the opening scene with Le Chuck that sounds really bad and Guybrush's lines seems to have issues too every now and then.
I hope they put more effort to the sound quality in the future, since it really doesn't make sense to compress the sounds so much. I would rather download a 1GB episode with great sounds than a 200MB with "crappy" sounds. If there really are people still with some dial up connections they can buy the physical copy of the game.
i'm sure the voice quality is better than previous games like sam and max right?
Yeah, it's not as bad as Sam and Max Season One. But it's still noticible. Alas, this is a concession to keep download sizes small. I wish they had higher quality audio on the disc version or an alternate download for people with big boy internet.
I don't see why this has to be a "quality versus download size" issue... just offer two download options: normal and high quality audio. Or have one download option and a "bonus pack" with high quality audio.
So I can sense someone bringing up the "bandwidth cost" issue of offering huge downloads... well, a gigabyte of bandwidth is likely around $0.10 - $0.75 depending on volume, and I would gladly pay that to have, for example, 128kb audio instead of what is even being called here "dialup friendly".
Hey, now I can sense someone bringing up the "managing multiple sets of thousands of audio files" issue. Well, there are plenty of automated batch converters that could convert even tens of thousands of original sound clips into whatever quality levels are desired with the click of a mouse button.
Many people don't care. Many people simply can't tell the difference, or don't see anything wrong even if they did hear the difference. Many people simply don't have sound systems capable of making it possible to hear the difference. Many people can't tell the difference between ordinary Dolby Digital and Dolby TruHD on Blu-ray.
I am, however, not one of those people and audio quality is one of my highest priorities in home theater and even my computer system. On that A/B test I clicked on the right answer even before the low-quality clip was 1/4 of the way through.
I'm not saying that if you can't hear or don't care about the problem that you SHOULD. However it is unfair for anyone to tell those of us that DO care that we SHOULDN'T, just because it's not of concern to you.
This audio quality issue is as old as Telltale themselves. It's saddening that so little progress has been made, despite the fact that the solution is so simple to implement.
Well, even as it is it's hardly dial-up friendly or even isdn-friendly. Now, this is surely 7-8 years ago, so I can't be sure, but I seem to remember it took me a full hour to get 20mb on my isdn line. So that's about 10 hours on an isdn line, I can't even imagine how long it would take on dial-up. Whereas I downloaded it in slightly less than a minute, not even at full line capacity, and I hardly have anything out of the ordinary, merely a 12mb line.
I don't see why this has to be a "quality versus download size" issue... just offer two download options: normal and high quality audio. Or have one download option and a "bonus pack" with high quality audio.
I didn't notice any sound problems, but I wasn't playing at high volume. My sound card is of medium quality: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi.
You guys are being really brutal with your criticisms. Adventure games these days are very low-budget compared to the shooting/fighting/sports games that dominate in sales.
The Myst games were the only adventure series that sold enough copies to allow for profitable high-budget sequels. Other adventure/puzzle game makers went under when they made high-budget games that didn't sell millions (i.e. Trilobyte collapsed after making 11th Hour, even though 7th Guest was one of the most popular PC games of the early 90s.) This is why Lucas Arts and Sierra stopped making adventure games altogether. Costs were too high and profits too low because the market for adventure games is relatively small.
I work in the same building as a video game company. They spent 4 years with over 100 employees making one game. That's what it takes to make a cutting edge game these days. That game has sold over a million copies but they are still barely making a profit. Adventure games can't afford this business model.
The only way adventure games will survive is if we accept this new format of episodic games with relatively low production values. Besides, I think Tales of Monkey Island is still fantastic despite its modest budget. Graphics and sound are still pretty good. Puzzles and humor are exactly right for a Monkey Island game. And Guybrush's voice acting remains among the best of ANY game out there. I think Telltale nailed it! I'm so sorry if you're not enjoying it as much as I am.
This isn't a question of production value though. It's just how much compression they put on the audio. They can easily change it if they don't mind making the file size larger.
It's a great game and it didn't bother me that much, but at the same time, if they could accommodate audiophiles for minimal extra effort, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
Adventure games these days are very low-budget compared to the shooting/fighting/sports games that dominate in sales.
Again budget has basicly nothing to do with this, apart from some minor bandwidth costs? Its not like we are saying Le Chuck needs a 1 million dollar voice actor.
When you rip a cd to mp3 format, does it cost you any more to make a 320kbs version than a 96kbs one?
I was one of the people complaining about Wallace & Gromit's audio quality, as Felicity's voice had so much hissing whenever she pronounced an "s" that I almost couldn't stand it, but I didn't notice any of this sort with ToMI - Elaine, where I most expected this to happen, sounds perfectly fine to me.
You won't hear me complaining about ToMI's audio if they continue this way...
No you're not, I didn't notice it either. At first I thought the dialogue was too quiet but then I just altered the levels in the options and everything was fine.
I also heard a few things in the Game.
For Example: In the Intro with the Water when the Names change (Lucasarts, Telltale) you
can hear that the Audio is cutted a bit.
Comments
Well said, EvilMulder. Your thoughtfulness has eclipsed your evilness... this time, at least.
Guybrush's voice was good enough, but the voice of eg. the newspaper guy sounded awfully compressed.
The voices absolutely did not sound as bad as Wallace & Gromit, though.
I'm normally a real stickler for quality. I can tell the difference in MP3 audio, and prefer everything in 320kbps.
Here, I noticed no issues. With balance or quality. I'm with the "maybe try a little troubleshooting" crowd if you're getting clicking/popping etc. It may not be your sound card or speakers, it could be something else like the codecs you're using on your PC.
But I agree, "just because I can't hear it doesn't mean it isn't there".
Then again I can hear massive differences between low bit rate and high bit rate mp3s I've got so I imagine if the whole of the game was done in high-fidelity audio without compression it would sound markedly different/better and noticeable. But I was indeed more focused on the gameplay and the content of what they were saying rather than listening out for their dynamic range...
I hope they continue to improve, but at the moment I think what they have to use is OK - it's obviously due to the download size issues and for the console versions of the game (they mentioned on Strong Bad for Wii people didn't want to download it because it was too big for their feeble Wii storage until they fixed that). Maybe they can allow their games to be bigger downloads, but then there are those people that argue about "what about all those people on dial-up". Well, it would take them longer to download it, but they'd still be able to download it eventually and maybe they'd like the better quality?
confirmed.
I still can't use headphones, the onyl thing I can try is with earphones, but it's not brillant anyway.
30megs for the voice package... it's ridiculous. Audio compression is just like graphic compression (except you don't see that in screenshots
Yes, I'm disappointed, because I started a thread in 2006 about the first Sam&Max season. And almost all the points the community asked were solved, except that one (and for ToMI, the point and click issue).
Of course I find this first episode an incredible game. But the sound is crappy. Poor Jared's studio, with that performance, it's easy to belive that they just record with skype microphones ^^
What I will say though, on this subject, is that most people do not hear the difference between heavily compressed music, and high-bitrate or uncompressed music. I've done tests with my friends, using uncompressed wav and 128 mp3s, and you'd be surprised to hear that most couldn't hear the difference, and a lot of them actually preferred the 128 versions. I can only speculate that it might that they have become used to the murky sound.
Anyway, to those who say you have no problems, try this out: http://mp3ornot.com/
If you can't hear the difference there, you certainly won't hear anything wrong in the game either.
However that doesn't mean that it couldn't be way better. More dynamics and panned effects could really enhance everything. And having the music dynamically change volume (quiet during talking, heighten during drama, etc) would be really effective.
Thank goodness! I picked the correct answer and identified the 320kbps sound. I was beginning to think other people's ears were more picky than mine!
Well, even if your test is interesting, there is a whole difference between the "small" gap you have here (two mp3 files played through a flash player, so, no real quality difference and that's totally normal, and a 128kbps is a high bitrate for only speaking voice in a game), and the incredible compressed sound of the game... it's more a gap between a 128kbps mp3 and let's say a 56kbps mp3 here.
We're in a time where we sell incredibly precise displays, come one, full HD and more, and we sell also incredible sound products (for blu-ray for example) where we use DTS MA, format that blows away Dobly Digital and DTS. We're in a time where even a 50$ cheap headphone can let you make a difference between a 128kb mp3 and a 256kb AAC. We are not speaking about thousand bucks hifi configurations ! but 100$ ones ! And we're dealing here with voices compressed at a very very low rate !
I'm quite sure it's decent when you got low quality speakers, but I'm talking about good quality speakers (100$ 2.1 and more) AND headphones (in my case, it's about headphones, I can't use speakers for some reasons).
In a few days now, we will be able to download SoMI:SE, and i'm curious about the voice quality, but I'm quite sure, even if it's also a game made for downloading, that we won't have a mutilated Armato.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this was my test; this was just something I googled up to support my theory and show people that a lot of them will not be able to identify the difference, whilst one should be able to hear it, even in that test, quite clearly on even decent equipment.
My test involved cds versus an mp3-player playing 128kb over a very high end stereo set-up. But all this is besides the point. What I was trying to say is that most people due to a combo of less-than-stellar equipment and the lack of training in audio fidelity won't be able to hear the problems.
Now, as I said, I only briefly noticed them, but I was rather caught up in the game, and I'm sure I'd hear it a lot more if I went back and listened for it. Certainly it's not as bad as previous games, where the compression would just jump out at you, oftentimes taking you completly out of the game.
edit:
Honestly, I don't see why they don't give us uncompressed voices as an optional download. I assume they have all the voices gathered in one voice file anyway; wouldn't be too hard to compile one in flac or something. There's aren't that many lines in there. Probably a few hundred megs at the most, which objectively is nothing, when most people can do several gigs an hour these days.
I hope they put more effort to the sound quality in the future, since it really doesn't make sense to compress the sounds so much. I would rather download a 1GB episode with great sounds than a 200MB with "crappy" sounds. If there really are people still with some dial up connections they can buy the physical copy of the game.
Yeah, it's not as bad as Sam and Max Season One. But it's still noticible. Alas, this is a concession to keep download sizes small. I wish they had higher quality audio on the disc version or an alternate download for people with big boy internet.
So I can sense someone bringing up the "bandwidth cost" issue of offering huge downloads... well, a gigabyte of bandwidth is likely around $0.10 - $0.75 depending on volume, and I would gladly pay that to have, for example, 128kb audio instead of what is even being called here "dialup friendly".
Hey, now I can sense someone bringing up the "managing multiple sets of thousands of audio files" issue. Well, there are plenty of automated batch converters that could convert even tens of thousands of original sound clips into whatever quality levels are desired with the click of a mouse button.
Many people don't care. Many people simply can't tell the difference, or don't see anything wrong even if they did hear the difference. Many people simply don't have sound systems capable of making it possible to hear the difference. Many people can't tell the difference between ordinary Dolby Digital and Dolby TruHD on Blu-ray.
I am, however, not one of those people and audio quality is one of my highest priorities in home theater and even my computer system. On that A/B test I clicked on the right answer even before the low-quality clip was 1/4 of the way through.
I'm not saying that if you can't hear or don't care about the problem that you SHOULD. However it is unfair for anyone to tell those of us that DO care that we SHOULDN'T, just because it's not of concern to you.
This audio quality issue is as old as Telltale themselves. It's saddening that so little progress has been made, despite the fact that the solution is so simple to implement.
You guys are being really brutal with your criticisms. Adventure games these days are very low-budget compared to the shooting/fighting/sports games that dominate in sales.
The Myst games were the only adventure series that sold enough copies to allow for profitable high-budget sequels. Other adventure/puzzle game makers went under when they made high-budget games that didn't sell millions (i.e. Trilobyte collapsed after making 11th Hour, even though 7th Guest was one of the most popular PC games of the early 90s.) This is why Lucas Arts and Sierra stopped making adventure games altogether. Costs were too high and profits too low because the market for adventure games is relatively small.
I work in the same building as a video game company. They spent 4 years with over 100 employees making one game. That's what it takes to make a cutting edge game these days. That game has sold over a million copies but they are still barely making a profit. Adventure games can't afford this business model.
The only way adventure games will survive is if we accept this new format of episodic games with relatively low production values. Besides, I think Tales of Monkey Island is still fantastic despite its modest budget. Graphics and sound are still pretty good. Puzzles and humor are exactly right for a Monkey Island game. And Guybrush's voice acting remains among the best of ANY game out there. I think Telltale nailed it! I'm so sorry if you're not enjoying it as much as I am.
It's a great game and it didn't bother me that much, but at the same time, if they could accommodate audiophiles for minimal extra effort, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
Again budget has basicly nothing to do with this, apart from some minor bandwidth costs? Its not like we are saying Le Chuck needs a 1 million dollar voice actor.
When you rip a cd to mp3 format, does it cost you any more to make a 320kbs version than a 96kbs one?
You won't hear me complaining about ToMI's audio if they continue this way...
Ditto. I (and others) asked if they would increase the bitrate after the disappointing Sam & Max audio quality, and they have done!
No you're not, I didn't notice it either. At first I thought the dialogue was too quiet but then I just altered the levels in the options and everything was fine.
For Example: In the Intro with the Water when the Names change (Lucasarts, Telltale) you
can hear that the Audio is cutted a bit.