Vasteel static dubbing or something worse?

[tf2macross]

I've been a long time turbo fan and the owner of a recent bought duo-rx.  I just got my copy of vasteel and the voice dubbing is just horrible (and I'm not referring to the script/voice actors).  The actual music during the strategy session is ok, but during the intro with the english dub story has  way too much static and distortion.  Does anyone know if this is just the way the game was made with a bad quality transfer?  I can't believe how bad the distortion is and how it got released like this.

I've played audio music cd's, macross 2036, and some other import cd games and the system is not experiencing this problem so I doubt it's the caps. 

Thanks.

[Arkhan]

You got a bad copy, my voices are fine....

try other games using ADPCM samples, like maybe my Insanity demo. its at www.aetherbyte.com

See if the sfx in that go apeshit.

[tf2macross]

Never suspected the copy would be bad. 

[vestcoat]

It's been a long time, but I remember there being little audio explanations of the various units that were terribly compressed.

[SignOfZeta]

I don't have this game, but streaming ADPCM sound is pretty horrible on almost any game.

[spenoza]

Vasteel has a heck of a lot of speech in it and most of it is very, very compressed and sounds minimally intelligible at best.

[Black Tiger]

I had a PCE CD-ROM that started playing adpcm sound all staticy (like track 2 on a PCE CD) and I've heard of it happening to a few other systems (including a Duo) over the years. I would try other games with streaming and samples of adpcm. It stood out most for me with Dracula X since all the sfx are adpcm samples.

Vasteel does have low quality sound for the dialogue by PCE streaming adpcm standards.

[DragonmasterDan]

I don't remember it being poorly compressed, but I do remember the delivery being awful. Easily the worst Working Designs dub ever.

[esteban]

I suppose we should explain that in order to squeeze all that dialogue (+Red Book soundtrack) on the CD, a compromise in audio quality was made. The Red Book music alone eats up a lot of space...

Which reminds me: some of the short voice sample in Ys Book I & II (when you meet Goban, for example), are painfully compressed and sound stinky. This admittedly minor compromise still bugs me, even after all these years.

I suppose that makes me a sad person.

[Arkhan]

Never suspected the copy would be bad. 

I dont know why I said bad copy, I wasnt awake.

I meant you might have a doofed up system.

Do you mean the dialogue in the cutscenes?

Maybe capture what you mean and upload so we know exactly what you are talking about.  The talking on the game from what I hear is dopey voice acting, but isnt garbly.

[Joe Redifer]

I doubt his system or his copy are bad.  He is hearing the digital noise that comes along with compressing voices through that harsh chip.  You hear it a lot in Ys 1, 2 and 3 as well (when CD audio is not being used for the voices).  The chip is very noisy.  That's just the way the thing is.  Some games are worse than others in this regard.

[spenoza]

It isn't the chip, per se. Short sounds play without too much noise. It's simply what happens when you use low quality audio compression. The PCE needs low-bandwidth, low CPU compression for sound clips longer than, oh, sound-effect short, which means low quality results. It's below mono, 8-bit, 11 khz. Lower quality than what an analog phone line transmits.

[Bonknuts]

The ADPCM chip in the CD unit has nothing do with the CPU for playback. It plays back (AD) PCM by itself from it's own ram. It also streams from the CD to it's ram without cpu help (although the cpu flips the ADPCM ram pointer every few seconds from a system card interrupt call). The digital artifacts from the compression can be greater or worse depending on the sample playback speed (8khz or 16khz) and even preprocessing of the stream before converting to ADPCM. I think this is one case where they should have added a filter to the ADPCM output. I would if you could make a decent enough one yourself (system mod).

[SaturdayMorningRobots]

I haven't had the english version of that game for like 14 years (Why oh why did I sell all those Working designs games!?!) But I do vaguely remember the compressed speech sounding pretty damn sketchy. I don't think you have anything wrong.

Anyway The cut scenes in Vasteel are some of the least interesting on the duo and a bit boring anyway Just skip em and enjoy an otherwise awesome game.

[spenoza]

The ADPCM chip in the CD unit has nothing do with the CPU for playback. It plays back (AD) PCM by itself from it's own ram. It also streams from the CD to it's ram without cpu help (although the cpu flips the ADPCM ram pointer every few seconds from a system card interrupt call). The digital artifacts from the compression can be greater or worse depending on the sample playback speed (8khz or 16khz) and even preprocessing of the stream before converting to ADPCM. I think this is one case where they should have added a filter to the ADPCM output. I would if you could make a decent enough one yourself (system mod).

What I meant by low CPU compression was simply audio quality reduction methods rather than encoded stuff like MP3. The ADPCM chip cannot really use advanced encoding methods to reduce the data stream but preserve quality.