Okay so High Quality Video has been covered, what about High Quality audio?

[soulburner]

I'm a fan of good sounding audio. However, I do not think lossless audio in the game would be beneficial in any way. It would just make the game files bigger and longer to download and possibly consume more RAM. A good sound will sound good, no matter if it's an mp3, ogg, flac or vinyl (unless you purposefully hinder any of them). 

 

An additional soundtrack in FLAC format as an optional download - sure, why not.

 

The only thing "high quality" I would like about the sound of Project Eternity is... dynamics. I hope the game sounds and music is not dynamically over-compressed. Loudness war is bad.

[mstark]

The only thing "high quality" I would like about the sound of Project Eternity is... dynamics. I hope the game sounds and music is not dynamically over-compressed. Loudness war is bad.

You'll be happy to know that Justin Bell, Lead Audio Designer, us well aware of this http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61851-the-importance-of-sound-for-atmosphere/page-2

[soulburner]

Thanks for the link, great information there, makes me very happy and even more anxious to play P:E

[samm]

I found some information on the audio crackling

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/30534-Audio-Crackling-amp-Audio-Source-Volume-Adjustment

 

Hopefully Justin Bell has a read of this.

Hm, while the issue described above is certainly important to be aware of, I'm not sure this is the same one I'm talking about. Mine seems to be related to background (for example I/O) activity somehow. And at least for Expeditions - Conquistador I found a workaround for the reproducible audio stuttering when clicking on buttons in the main menu and/or loading games: When switching to windowed mode (ALT + Enter) in the main menu, the game's music is playing continuously even if pressing buttons or loading a game. However, it switches back to full screen after a game is loaded.

 

I hope that P:E won't have the same symptoms...

Edited July 10, 2013 by samm

[BlackyNoir]

Anything above 160-192 VBR is nigh indistinguishible to the human ear. Unless you are intimately familiar with the track and using very high quality audio equipment, you would not be able to tell compressed from uncompressed, let alone the difference between 160 and 320.

Saying this again and again doesn't make it true.

 

I don't have a good hear, and certainly not a good audio equipment. But lot of people do, and lot of people can distinguished MP3 from FLAC for example.

 

And as was said, providing lossless sound has no downsize. It should definitely be at the very least an option, or even the norm.

 

Audio is as important as graphics.

[agris]

Isn't OGG vorbis open source and not system-intensive to decode? That's lossey, but still good. For lossless, uncompressed Microsoft wave PCM would be overkill. Maybe FLAC would work? I don't believe that's a proprietary format.

 

And regarding the mp3 inferior quality claims: I think much of this has to do with default encoding parameters and the encoding codec itself. If you use an encoding codec that supports all the mp3 encoding flags, you can set a high VBR (120 to 360), remove the 16 kHz haircut (up it to 22.1k for example..), and the encoding of mp3s can be quite good (prove it to yourself with any frequency spectrum analyzer ala Adobe Audition, or just listen to it vs. the original).

 

Oh and...

 

... and my (unfortunately broken) Grado RS-1s

 

I'm about to buy the S80i, I've been eying the Grado line for over 5 years. What broke on your RS-1s that you couldn't get fixed, the cone detach or driver explode?

[Sensuki]

They are modded, and the headband is broken and the soldering on the custom cable has come a bit loose on both drivers. The drivers and housing are both fine.

 

I used to also have an Alessandro MS-Pro. Should never have sold it.

Edited November 4, 2013 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

What Soulburner said.  If you can't tell the difference by listening to it than the "container" is basically meaningless.  Audio quality has just as much to do with your audio set up, the greatest, most hi fidelity sound file in the world will still only sound "ok" through generic 2.1 speakers which is what most PC users have.  If they want some insane perfect quality audio clips they can do it as a separate download for the soundtrack. 

[IRMA]

Why use wav in a game? Transparent lossy compression is good enough. However, yes, why not offer wav as additional download, would do no harm (except to internet traffic )

 

I was already afraid of reading some gibberish about 24bit/96kHz or something like that, so consider me pleasantly surprised by the lack of mention of said snakeoil.

 

What?? There are people who actually want 24bit in games? They are playing in movie theaters I suppose then :D