Audio Quality?

[Shmeh]

I really don't notice sound quality. The only thing I noticed with the sound was that some of the voices sounded a little different. So I guess my problem was that the sound quality wasn't low enough.

[Flo]

As others have pointed out, using headphones tends to bring out the highly compressed frequencies, making especially voices sound tinny and jittery. If you have the option, definitely use speakers.

It's a shame that Telltale doesn't have the resources to compile a higher-quality voice package, either for the DVD release, or as a standalone optional download.

Either way, it still sounds better than those old Lucasarts Talkies

[InfamousDS]

Originally Posted by Flo

As others have pointed out, using headphones tends to bring out the highly compressed frequencies, making especially voices sound tinny and jittery. If you have the option, definitely use speakers.

It's a shame that Telltale doesn't have the resources to compile a higher-quality voice package, either for the DVD release, or as a standalone optional download.

Either way, it still sounds better than those old Lucasarts Talkies

Since when do they not have the resources? Did all of you PC people forget about the second platform which has a definitive size limit, preventing them from making it any better w/o making the game itself less good? Is sound really so important you would sacrifice game length or playability? Because that is the only way you will ever get HD quality sound as long as this is a WiiWare game and the rest of the world other than yourself has at least a chance of being dial-up. As for DVD, it has been quite a bit since the S&M one was released and I'm sure that it will be higher quality.... even though I'm being cheated out of it by Nintendo.....

[Flo]

Originally Posted by InfamousDS

Since when do they not have the resources?

I don't have a link or a quote at hand, but lack of resources was the gist of it when the issue came up during Sam & Max Season 1.

Originally Posted by InfamousDS

Did all of you PC people forget about the second platform which has a definitive size limit, preventing them from making it any better w/o making the game itself less good?

For the PC version, higher-quality audio could be offered as an additional, optional download for those who really care about it, without impacting the Wii version at all. We can assume that higher quality versions of the samples already exist, since it's highly doubtful that the original studio recordings are compressed so badly. But it would take time to edit and package those (hence "resources", since Telltale is a small studio).

[InfamousDS]

I know they can do that, but many of the arguments here is that it be put into the game permanently and not be an additional download.

[Leak]

I don't have a problem with the audio quality per se, but I noticed clipping and a few popping noises in some of Strong Bad's lines - and it's definitely not my audio hardware (Creative X-Fi Platinum) mucking up since those happened always at the same spots and turning down the voice volume in-game didn't help either...

So I guess those must have happened while recording...

[Bobeo]

All I know about the audio quality is that the Chapmans do the voices and thats all I need.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by walter_sobchak

Amazing game, but something is really detracting from my enjoyment

Does anyone else have an issue with the audio quality of the game?

The compression used on the dialog creates some odd audio artifacting, especially with Strong Bad's voice. I understand that better quality audio would significantly add to the download size, and thus cost Telltale Games more money to deliver it to everyone; but I implore you, Telltale, PLEASE offer an audio quality upgrade pack. It's a minor detail that some people don't mind (or they simply put up with it, since they're used to the compression on the Homestar Runner website), but I expected more quality since this is a stand-alone game in it's own engine.

Hey, the TV I always have my wii hooked up to was literally made in the 80's.You don't know what bad audio quality means.

[Sir Lemming]

I actually thought this thread would be PRAISING the audio quality compared to the Sam & Max games. I found that the compression was much less noticeable and I felt the voices sounded especially good, better than in most games, even. (To that end, I must point out that a lot of games probably use this type of voice compression, not just Telltale's downloadable games. It's probably just less noticeable when there's less dialogue and more explosions.)

[tremby]

Originally Posted by Sir Lemming

I felt the voices sounded especially good, better than in most games, even.

i disagree entirely. i didn't play the Sam and Max games, so going by what you said the sound must have been pretty awful in them.

but to bring things up to date, the audio fidelity in Strong Badia the Free is totally fine. looks like the Telltale folks paid attention. thanks, Telltale folks.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Yeah, I've not had any sound issues beyond one or two clipping errors in the intro - which I haven't tested to see if it resurfaced but it hasn't appeared anywhere else. I did notice the volume of the music was a little low during the Cave Girl Squad, because I couldn't seem to make it out, but that may have been due to... I don't know... it being Cave girls instead of Teen girls, and the whole "cave people had simpler music".

But I digress, if that's all that was wrong when I played the game in regards to audio, then I seriously don't see the problem. I'm reminded of people who complained about how the Incredible Hulk had poor graphics compared to the PS3 version. All I had to say to that was "be glad us on the PS2 could even play it."

And like someone else said, all that really matters to me in the voices is that the right people are doing them.

[Till]

Originally Posted by Dangerzone

BUT, I do agree that at the end of the season, when (and if) they release the season on disc. The hard copy should contain higher quality audio, simply because download size is not an issue with hard copies.

Continuing to include the subpar audio in the hard copies is just wrong, and them not taking the time to perform the necessary updates makes me wonder if they even have the ability to record uncompressed sound at all (but i know they do, and thats what makes it even more unprofessional... it makes them look just plain lazy).

The really frustrating thing about this is that it should be so freaking simple. Take your uncompressed speech files, pack them with decent-quality Vorbis like you do with the music and sound effects already, and replace the lame Speex-compressed files. It should only take a few hours to do an entire season. Odds are the engine can already handle different sound formats transparently. I see they're now using FMOD for Strong Bad, so I *know* that's true.

Oh, and the other frustrating part is that TTG suggested they might do it for the Sam & Max Season 1 DVD. They didn't. And they still haven't explained why, though if pressed I expect you'll get an answer along the lines of "well, only a few people are actually on the forums complaining about it." Nevermind that it's the only technical issue people complain about. And that it would be ridiculously easy to satisfy those people.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Till

Oh, and the other frustrating part is that TTG suggested they might do it for the Sam & Max Season 1 DVD. They didn't. And they still haven't explained why, though if pressed I expect you'll get an answer along the lines of "well, only a few people are actually on the forums complaining about it." Nevermind that it's the only technical issue people complain about. And that it would be ridiculously easy to satisfy those people.

We've said it quite a few times, actually. Unfortunately, with both Seasons One and Two, over the months of production, the master audio database of wav files, and the database of compressed dialog files ended up slowly drifting out of sync, where some words would get trimmed from a file, or some processing would be done to voice coming through a microphone, but because it was often done last minute during pre-ship clean-up, someone would quickly make the change and compress the file, but not ensure that the change was reflected in the master database as well. This meant that if we went back to the master files, we would be introducing a lot of hard(er than you think) to track down bugs.

With Strong Bad, now that we have moved to FMOD, we have changed how our audio pipeline works so that there aren't two separate databases to go out of sync, so we could, in the future, pack up the game with higher quality voice at some point if we desired. We'll see! Not only do you just "flip a switch" and send it off into the world, or whatever people think you do. Once you recompress and repack all of the audio, you'd want to (you'd have to) have the QA department re-test every line of dialog in the entire five- or six-episode season. That's not an instant process by any means.

So, as before, it's something we'd like to do and have talked about a lot, and we have improved our toolset towards that goal, but we're still not making any guarantees, despite how easy it sounds in a forum post.


PS: Your hyperbole doesn't do you much credit, man. Saying it's the "only technical issue people complain about" is patently false (as much as I wish people only had one issue to complain about, sadly that is not the case -- they have found dozens or hundreds over the past four years). Also saying that we have never explained why the DVD went out with compressed audio, when the boards, which are well trafficked by frankly very forthcoming Telltale employees, have been around for four years and you have posted on them seven times, doesn't lend that remark the air of a well-researched factual statement.

[Laffer]

I just used the "Get free episode of your choise" that came with purchase of TOMI preorder to get Strong Bad's first episode. I like the humor and the overall game so far but the audio quality is horrible, Homestar specially sounds bad, this game makes Monkey Island sound like some high definition stuff and it ain't perfect either.

Sad to say this but the bad audio quality alone turns me away from buying more Telltale games.

(and you don't need to start telling me about bandwidth stuff, I've heard about that 1000 times allready)

[bigdondoo]

Originally Posted by walter_sobchak

Does anyone else have an issue with the audio quality of the game?

Yeah, it's better then normal for homestarrunner.com. (Who, I've heard, use a microphone in their parent's basement.)

[LuigiHann]

Originally Posted by bigdondoo

Yeah, it's better then normal for homestarrunner.com. (Who, I've heard, use a microphone in their parent's basement.)

Sure that's how they started, but they've long since moved up (and moved out)

[Sight]

SBCG4AP is the one TTG game where the sound didn't bug me (can't speak for ToMI yet though). In Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit I cringe every time any character with a remotely high pitch voice has to make an "s" sound.

[WDeranged]

To be honest Strongbad has the finest audio quality (I've got the PC version) of any Telltale game, Sam and Max is not so good, Wallace and Gromit is terrible but thankfully Monkey Island is OK, not great, just OK.

[MarcCrombie]

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

Sure that's how they started, but they've long since moved up (and moved out)

The Brothers Chaps have stated multiple times that they never produced cartoons in their parents' basement. They were working in an apartment in the early days.

[bigdondoo]

Originally Posted by MarcCrombie

The Brothers Chaps have stated multiple times that they never produced cartoons in their parents' basement. They were working in an apartment in the early days.

Congrats on your first post. It was a joke.