Substandard voice quality due to overcompression

[HooblaDGN]

Originally Posted by Laokin

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.

PS. I think the trex is better now.

[Black Patriot]

Well it seems like Episode 3 has the same problems as the previous two, at least on my end.

@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.

[RMJ1984]

Yeah i know, its starting to sound like a broken record, it really is.

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?

[gamer247]

Originally Posted by RMJ1984

Yeah i know, its starting to sound like a broken record, it really is.

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?

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/...ad.php?t=21583
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.

[Kamagawa]

The voices cut out near the end for a few seconds for me.

[eraser]

Originally Posted by Kamagawa

The voices cut out near the end for a few seconds for me.

I have the same issue here, i also have some graphic issues on Emmett's car.

[Lucas80]

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

[Felai]

This does NOT sound like RAW audio.

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.

[huyche]

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.

[Lucas80]

So i revived a dead thread boo hoo

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

[Zek16]

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 .