Audio Compression still not fixed.

[Majestic]

The dialogue sound compression is really, really bad. You can clearly hear it ringing from artifacts. As a sanity check I launched the old game, and its not the case there, though still low quality, the artfacting isn't as apparent.

@nixxes Can you guys maybe add the soundfiles with less compression?

[Outright_Table]

Yeah I just started playing and the audio sounds either really compressed or is heavily clipping. It reminds me of the poor audio quality in Far Cry 3 back in the day.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Outright_Table:

Yeah I just started playing and the audio sounds either really compressed or is heavily clipping. It reminds me of the poor audio quality in Far Cry 3 back in the day.

It can be maybe excused for console to save space, but for PC... atleast have a DLC-like option to increase audio quality. Like they sometimes do for texture packs.

I have Studio monitors and its honestly incredibly grating to listen to this dialogue. Writing aside...

[Mav99]

Strange, I never noticed that. I just checked the pre-rendered videos, where you can listen to the voice-track without any other effects or music. (.bk2 files, audio track 5 for English audio). You can play these with RAD Game Tools.

I only hear "ringing" there in the audio for holographic displays, like general Harris explanation of "The Bad News" that extinction is inevitable. There's quite a bit of distortion and ringing, but I think that's intentional. In other voice tracks, there's some noise, partially due to (artificial) reverb. Other than that, the voices are pretty clear and I didn't notice any compression artifacts there. I didn't notice anything in the rest of the Audio either, but it's harder to hear with all the mixed sounds and music.

I'm using a SoundBlaster AE-5, output set to 32Bit 96KHz, high quality active Monitor-Speakers.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Mav99:

I'm using a SoundBlaster AE-5, output set to 32Bit 96KHz, high quality active Monitor-Speakers.

Setting such high bitdepth and sampling only robs you of needless CPU Cycles. Not sure what "high quality speakers" you're referring to, but it's evident on any of the spoken dialogue that you can hear artifacting/ringing on the higher notes and s-sounds.

The conversation with Varl right when you leave the valley is riddled with them. Just record it and listen to it...

My own setup is a AudioEngine D1 (optical) and two Kali Audio In8's (2nd wave). Which have three seperate drivers and are all seperately amplified. It's much more apparent than on my mono-amped AudioEngine A5+ speakers.

[Overhaze]

There is definitely something wrong with the games audio. It is in general too quiet for one thing. Also I'm still noticing panning issues, like Aloy is on the left of the screen but her voice is coming from the right.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Overhaze:

There is definitely something wrong with the games audio. It is in general too quiet for one thing. Also I'm still noticing panning issues, like Aloy is on the left of the screen but her voice is coming from the right.

How are you connecting your speakers? You could literally have left and right mixed up.

[RodroG]

The whole remaster's audio mix and sound implementation are a mess. The sound is the weakest technical department of the remastered version.

[Overhaze]

Originally posted by Majestic:

Originally posted by Overhaze:

There is definitely something wrong with the games audio. It is in general too quiet for one thing. Also I'm still noticing panning issues, like Aloy is on the left of the screen but her voice is coming from the right.

How are you connecting your speakers? You could literally have left and right mixed up.

My speakers are set up correctly.

[Mav99]

Originally posted by Majestic:

Setting such high bitdepth and sampling only robs you of needless CPU Cycles.

Makes no difference, the soundcard's DSP handles the up-sampling.

Originally posted by Majestic:

Not sure what "high quality speakers" you're referring to, but it's evident on any of the spoken dialogue that you can hear artifacting/ringing on the higher notes and s-sounds.

The speakers are custom built by a friend of mine. He's a classical Musician and made Speakers for himself with a lot of research and a little help from an audio technician. After I heard them, I wanted something like that myself and he was kind enough to build a pair for me as well.
Frequency Response is nearly linear from about 30Hz up to almost 21kHz and only falls off slightly below and above. I can't tell you which drivers or amps he actually used, since he built them almost 30 years ago. But I'm still quite happy with them. :)

I didn't have much time in the last few days but I will check out that conversation you mentioned. Maybe I'll try it with my headphones (AKG K 500).

[cosmic_yip]

All the audio sounds "tinny" and compressed.

Also, when there are loud sounds, it clearly is clipping in the audio mix. It sounds awful, like I'm listening to a blown out phone speaker from 2010.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by cosmic_yip:

All the audio sounds "tinny" and compressed.

Also, when there are loud sounds, it clearly is clipping in the audio mix. It sounds awful, like I'm listening to a blown out phone speaker from 2010.

Yeah exactly, makes sense to do this maybe for a console release. But for a PC release? Why compress the audio this badly, unless they already deleted the original files and only have the compressed files left.

You'd need to re-record all the audio. Not sure if they have Ashley Burch on retainer :)