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Topic: Speech Sound Quality Clean Up Mod (Read 4118 times)
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RealityHacker
Zebranky food
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Posts: 8
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Hiya!
I've really liked playing UQM so far - it's awesome! One thing that have bothered me though is the sound quality of the voice acting, of which most (but not all) is very good. After doing some testing with the files to improve the quality (reducing 11050Hz noise and other static, reducing overtones, restoring clips and removing clips etc.), I've come to the conclusion that it's viable to moderately (sometimes greatly) enhance the sound. This without compromising the original sounds or boosting current file sizes. The idea, of course, would be to eliminate elements of the sound that interfere with the actual content to bring forth the *juicy* parts. However, in dealing with over 2100 individual sound files, this is potentially a rather daunting project (but hurray to the wonders of sound processing automation!).
Now I have some questions:
1. Is there any similar project in the works (not counting music remixes and such)? I have not found any searching the forums.
2. Is there uncompressed versions of the speech or is the OGG files compressed in a completely lossless manner? Wouldn't be clever to start out with files that already have been reduced in quality, now would it?
3. Would you who happen to read this be interested in listening to processed sound and give feedback so that I can concentrate on processing?
That's all!
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RealityHacker
Zebranky food
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Posts: 8
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1. Cool.
2. It's not likely the 3DO files were lossless as these methods wasn't that common back then and the space and performance requirements were kinda harsh. The repacked files (lossy) are OGG Vorbis, 16 Kbps bitrate (which is very low and might introduce some issues), mono with a sampling rate of 11050 Hz. As for the extracted files, I'm not sure how to compile the tool and then extract the data (I also don't have the original 3DO CD). If someone could help me out with this, it'd be great! And rewarding!
3. Of course.
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RealityHacker
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 8
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Here are some examples, featuring Captain Fwiffo:
http://drop.io/uqmvoiceremaster
Note that the "after" versions of these files are based on the compressed OGG files shipped in the UQM voice pack. This means that the "after" versions are rerepacked versions of the original sound files (which isn't a good thing). The "after" versions uses the aoTuVb OGG codec which gives better results than the standard at low bitrates, which is something I doubt that the usual OGGs do.
Also note that while the removal of noise, clips, clicks together with frequency balancing, loudness maximizing etcetera makes the sound clearer that also enhances other issues, such as microphone plosives (puffs) as well as the occasional bad acting.
When listening, please turn off any equalizers in your media player and amplifier.
Feedback is appreciated!  I might try my luck on another voice as well (just to test - it's a lot of work) but in order to get this done proper I'd need the .wav extracts from the original 3DO CD. Unfortunately, I have not been able to figure out how to do that. Any volunteers? I know you want to!
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Megagun
Enlightened
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Gender: 
Posts: 580
Moo
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Wow, these sound a lot nicer and crisper than the "before" ones. Good job. 
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RealityHacker
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 8
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Why, thanks (to both of you). 
I have downloaded the audio files - just was I was looking for! I'll get back to you when progress has been made. I think that the best way to go about this is to do the clean up incrementally, one voice at a time, as they need quite a lot of individual tweeking. By releasing them in the drop (above) and notify in the thread, perhaps people will give the files a listen and give feedback. One could of course also do a Mod pack even though not all voices are included.
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Razorback
Frungy champion
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Gender:
Posts: 99
We are all *happy campers*
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What kind of media playback device handles .OGG files?
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RealityHacker
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 8
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Hi again.
I've been fiddling a bit with this lately and wanted to know what you think the optimal export format would be. The current one is very low (and also uses an outdated encoder):
Format : Vorbis
Bit rate : 16.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 11.025 KHz
Writing library : libVorbis 1.0 (UTC 2002-07-17)
My suggestion is:
Format : Vorbis
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 48.0 Kbps or 32.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 32.0 KHz or at least 22.5 KHz
Writing library : aoTuV b5c (UTC 2008-12-15) or later (it rocks at low-rate encoding)
If this format would cause a major performance hit or cause too large a download, maybe it isn't a good idea to up it this much. However, not going a bit higher in quality than the current level would in practice undo most of the work (it would just sound blurred, possibly static or garbled).
Input, anyone?
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AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller
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Gender:
Posts: 304
A paranoid android.
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Hey, I agree about these sounding a lot crisper. Keep up the good work!
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