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Audio quality of the TSL casters voices

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Belano Sweden657 Posts February 04 2010 01:26 GMT #1 As incredibly great the TSL has been so far I've been experiencing some not so optimal audio quality when it comes to the voices of the casters. This is most notable in the casts by Artosis and Tasteless, where you can hear quite some distortion and what not. This leads me to the questions: what software do the TSL caster use to talk trough? And is this relevant to the sound quality of the voices for us viewers during the broadcasts? Chill mentioned Ventrilo before interviewing the winner of a series in the last broadcast. If thats the case, would it perhaps be worth considering switching to Mumble? Mumble is features much better sound quality and the latency is extremely low. My thought is that maybe this can help improve the audio quality a bit. If not, then no biggie. TSL FTW!

Mikilatov United States3897 Posts February 04 2010 01:37 GMT #2 It's not the highest quality in the world, but it's live over the internet and it's not abysmal so I really can't expect much more than that. The current quality doesn't really bother me personally, but I suppose any improvements wouldn't be protested. =) There sometimes is variances in voice volume though, where one caster will be at a different level than the other due to distances from the mic and what have you, which is somewhat annoying to deal with, but yet again not terrible.

Kennigit Canada19447 Posts February 04 2010 01:50 GMT #3 Yeah we've been using Vent and are considering switching to Mumble for the next cast.

Chill Calgary26003 Posts February 04 2010 02:07 GMT #4 We should just all move to Vegas imo.

eXNewB Canada291 Posts February 04 2010 02:33 GMT #5 why not skype?

Ravloo United States145 Posts February 04 2010 03:00 GMT #6 I use a Samson Q1u USB mic for some screencasts & for Skype, works really well as a sound source.

Ack1027 United States7873 Posts February 04 2010 04:15 GMT #7 All options discussed so far are definitely viable, but just wanted to point out that vent is as good as the best mumble server in either latency/quality [ not sure about both together ] so just might need to adjust or upgrade the vent server settings.

Motiva United States1774 Posts February 05 2010 14:19 GMT #8 Should definitely require all the casters go out and buy a $1000 mic and a decent mixing board as well... not really, and imo the casts have sounded great so far, typically the casters aren't in the same room, so regardless of what Medium, it's not ever going to be as good as the live commentary in terms of quality as say, the NBA.

zerotol Belgium508 Posts February 05 2010 14:39 GMT #9 I think it has more to do with their micro then with the ventrilo settings.

DefMatrixUltra Canada1992 Posts February 05 2010 14:51 GMT #10 The sound quality probably has much less to do with the speak service they are using and more to do with mics. Higher quality mics and an 'isolated' environment are what makes good speaking sound quality. Often there are factors in the environment ('exposed' electric/magnetic fields) that can affect sound quality. A fairly common one is the building material used for the surrounding walls (walls that reverberate at a natural frequency due to wind etc.) - mics are actually pretty good at picking things up that a person blocks out and can actually (in rare cases) 'resolve' signals that most people are incapable of hearing. For example, listen to Day[9], then listen to Artosis. I'm almost certain that the fundamental difference there is in the mics. Artosis' mic sounds like an older model mic whereas Day[9]'s mic, though very slightly muffled, is a newer mic.

bmml United Kingdom962 Posts February 05 2010 15:05 GMT #11 Day9 uses a snowball mic, which costs like £90 and is a very good mic - I imagine artosis doesnt have one at his disposal as his sounds nearly as bad as my own, a £3 cheapo inc mic . But yea mumble would be much better during the artosis/tasteless casts and would be most appreciated.

Boundz(DarKo) 5311 Posts February 05 2010 16:39 GMT #12 Skype!

NiGoL 1868 Posts February 05 2010 17:17 GMT #13 Never heard of Mumble? what is that, explain plz.

PangO Chile1870 Posts February 05 2010 17:29 GMT #14 Skype its like the laggiest thing ever

bmml United Kingdom962 Posts February 05 2010 18:30 GMT #15 On February 06 2010 02:17 NiGoL wrote: Never heard of Mumble? what is that, explain plz. A VOIP program akin to the likes of TS2 / Vent but generally known for its higher quality.

AraqirG United States266 Posts February 05 2010 19:24 GMT #16 On February 06 2010 02:17 NiGoL wrote: Never heard of Mumble? what is that, explain plz. ffs, there is a link in the OP to the wikipedia article

Ziph Netherlands970 Posts February 05 2010 20:25 GMT #17 Mumble is just as good as Ventrilo except that its free but also has a TERRIBLE interface. If the quality of the sound on vent sucks its because of the codec being used on the vent server and the microphones of the casters.

dr.shrinker Norway369 Posts February 05 2010 20:40 GMT #18 Yeah, Ziph's correct, most ventriloservers run on codecs that aint as clear as it could be. Mumble aint as delayed as ventrilo is, but i doubt you'll even notice it that much. TS3 is out aswell, never tried it tho, as I'm happy with ventrilo. I think the audio is just fine, if you want really great quality I doubt you can't cast through a microphone on any VOIP-program. Think this is much more a microphone-issue rather than ventrilo being bad compared to mumble.

ColorsOfRainbow Germany354 Posts February 05 2010 23:26 GMT #19 skype has great sound

Dgtl Canada889 Posts February 06 2010 02:51 GMT #20 Skype also takes up a lot of ram/CPU power i hear

Carnac Germany / USA16648 Posts February 06 2010 08:53 GMT #21 Yeah, Skype uses too too much CPU, at least compared to similar programs. I don't think I could run anyting that uses noticeably more than Ventrilo as my CPU load is already really high when the Stream Encoder + BW + Vent are running. We wanted to test stuff with mumble, but I don't think we found the time yet. We also had other problems. Like Qualification Round 3 Day 1, I was stream obs and the sound of Artosis&Tasteless was really bad on stream (was fine on Ventrilo tho). We later found out my onboard sound chip was amplifying everything for no reason. Fixed it by pluggin in an old Soundblaster Live! I still had from years ago. Last weekend, when intrigue was doing stream with Artosis & Tasteless their commentary was sometimes delayed for several seconds, due to the bad connection they had that day

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