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]

Originally Posted by 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!

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]

Originally Posted by ADavidson

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]

Originally Posted by Pegglef

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]

Originally Posted by Dameon2k

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]

Originally Posted by Pegglef

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]

Originally Posted by Caruu

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]

Originally Posted by Caruu

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]

Originally Posted by Caruu

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.