Are there any cases of digital dls having reduced audio bitrate vs hard copies?

[Anarchist420]

Just wondering. I haven't bought a hard copy of a game in ages, but I know that sometimes GOG.com compresses the CDDA of older games to oggvorbis, which REALLY SUCKS. DMC4 for the PC used ogg vorbis and the dynamic range was so flat it was really kind of ridiculous, and ogg vorbis is considered the best thing ever invented to most people.

I know that when games were released on CD and DVD, the DVD version would have higher audio bit rate (the euro versions of ubi soft games and Quake IV Special Ed were on DVD and they had higher bitrates).

Higher bitrate with a lossy codec usually isn't good enough though. Devs and distributors need to quit using MP3s and vorbis especially considering they used to be raw uncompressed (when CD ROM first took off in the 90s) and the fact that we now have lossless compression.

Once someone tells you it's not lossless, then you can definitely tell what you're missing. Lossless versions of things I like don't start to sound stale, while lossy ones eventually start to sound stale. iTunes really start to sound stale after awhile.

 

[aigomorla]

uhhhh....

Mp3 compresses the audio file by a shit ton.

U have no idea how big the compression truely is unless u were on the guys who were playing with Mp3 when it was still new.

were talking roughly 60-70meg audio file compressed to roughly 4-5 megs.
Also a file format which is FAST in uncompression.

Sorry id rather have Mp3 then high quality digital sounds if it will mean the game being roughly 3/5ths of the size.

Games already can get 8-9gigs.. u want them to be as big as bluerays?

 

[Absolution75]

Depends on how they encoded the ogg/mp3, but seriously

VBR Mp3 > 256 a vorbis bitrate of > 128 is generally quite good unless your speakers are over $2000 or something ridiculous.

You say that you start to notice that they are lossy once you know they aren't lossless, sounds like the placebo effect to me.

 

[SonicIce]

I know that when games were released on CD and DVD, the DVD version would have higher audio bit rate (the euro versions of ubi soft games and Quake IV Special Ed were on DVD and they had higher bitrates).

are you sure? i think quake 4 cd-rom was on 4 discs

 

[Anarchist420]

are you sure? i think quake 4 cd-rom was on 4 discs

4 CD is still only slightly >1/2 the size of a SL-DVD.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Depends on how they encoded the ogg/mp3, but seriously

VBR Mp3 > 256 a vorbis bitrate of > 128 is generally quite good unless your speakers are over $2000 or something ridiculous.

You say that you start to notice that they are lossy once you know they aren't lossless, sounds like the placebo effect to me.

Yeah. Most people on Head-Fi don't even try to claim they can hear the difference between 320kbps and FLAC. And those people buy $2000 power cables.

But if you're complaining that they've compressed the audio down to 64 kbps or something stupid, I agree that that's terrible.

 

[Aluvus]

Once someone tells you it's not lossless, then you can definitely tell what you're missing. Lossless versions of things I like don't start to sound stale, while lossy ones eventually start to sound stale. iTunes really start to sound stale after awhile.

If you can't tell the difference until someone tells you it's lossy compression, then you can't tell the difference.

"Stale" is the kind of vague term often associated with people convincing themselves that they can detect differences that are pretty much all in their heads. Give them a proper A/B test, and suddenly the difference disappears. It is interesting how easily we fool ourselves.

 

[SonicIce]

4 CD is still only slightly >1/2 the size of a SL-DVD.

for the record my quake 4 dvd is 2.7gb so i don't think the CD copy has lower bitrate audio.

 

[Ross Ridge]

Only old games that used CD-Audio for their music tracks would have uncompressed audio. Since then every game has used compressed formats for music, like MP3 or Ogg. It's highly unlikely anyone is going to go through the trouble recompressing the music files at a lower bit rate for a download version. They typically don't use high bit rates to start with so there isn't much they can save and the sound track doesn't take up a lot of space in most games these day anyways.

 

[darkswordsman17]

If you can't tell the difference until someone tells you it's lossy compression, then you can't tell the difference.

"Stale" is the kind of vague term often associated with people convincing themselves that they can detect differences that are pretty much all in their heads. Give them a proper A/B test, and suddenly the difference disappears. It is interesting how easily we fool ourselves.

Yeah.

Sorry, OP, but becomes stale after a while?

I would like to see them offer uncompressed audio packs like has started to become popular with textures.

You could always try and substitute your own. Maybe if there's a gun sound you like from a certain game, you could possibly use it in another.

 

[Barfo]

Yeah.

Sorry, OP, but becomes stale after a while?

The gnomes inside your computer get tired of playing their instruments after a while.

 

[Blurry]

Not helpful I know but sorry I lol'ed at the stale part.

This is not bread my friend...

 

[aigomorla]

The gnomes inside your computer get tired of playing their instruments after a while.

pish my gnomes were upgraded to smurfs... :biggrin:

 

[Anarchist420]

If you can't tell the difference until someone tells you it's lossy compression, then you can't tell the difference.

"Stale" is the kind of vague term often associated with people convincing themselves that they can detect differences that are pretty much all in their heads. Give them a proper A/B test, and suddenly the difference disappears. It is interesting how easily we fool ourselves.

I can tell a huge difference between the itune versions and lossless of one of my favorite songs, "Let Go", by Frou Frou and I'm only using Behringer MS20s at the moment. Also, you can certainly tell that DMC4's dynamic range is super compressed and that uses ogg vorbis. If it's music that I really like I'll be able to tell the difference. I often can't tell the difference if it's something I don't really like listening to or if I've been listening to it for awhile.

Only old games that used CD-Audio for their music tracks would have uncompressed audio. Since then every game has used compressed formats for music, like MP3 or Ogg. It's highly unlikely anyone is going to go through the trouble recompressing the music files at a lower bit rate for a download version. They typically don't use high bit rates to start with so there isn't much they can save and the sound track doesn't take up a lot of space in most games these day anyways.

GoG.com sometimes compresses games that used CDDA tracks to ogg vorbis. And the steam version of AVP uses mp3s instead of lossless (the original release used CDDA for music).

Yeah.

Sorry, OP, but becomes stale after a while?

I would like to see them offer uncompressed audio packs like has started to become popular with textures.

You could always try and substitute your own. Maybe if there's a gun sound you like from a certain game, you could possibly use it in another.

That's true, but what if there is a gun sound that sound great "artwise", but you can't find it in good technical quality?

But yeah, after I listen to the itunes versions of music I like once it starts to sound like shit; it's not something I like to listen to over and over again. It takes a long time for me tire of lossless versions of music that I like. I do eventually tire of most lossless tracks after I've heard them a hundred times, but my point is that if a game has music that I really like, and it's in a lossy format, I'm going to pissed. I've had to hunt down OSTs (in FLAC or on CD), because the actual games' lossy version sucks.

 

[Anarchist420]

for the record my quake 4 dvd is 2.7gb so i don't think the CD copy has lower bitrate audio.

You could be right. I read though (don't remember where), that the DVD version had higher bit rate audio, but what I read could've been wrong.

 

[vshah]

a bigger problem than bitrate is remastered releases with the audio compressed (not in a storage sense, but in a dynamic range sense) to all hell. look on youtube, you'll find several examples.

 

[gorcorps]

a bigger problem than bitrate is remastered releases with the audio compressed (not in a storage sense, but in a dynamic range sense) to all hell. look on youtube, you'll find several examples.

"the loudness wars"

But what is happening to music isn't what's happening in video games so I'm a little confused as to why this was mentioned.

 

[Craig234]

gog.com on old games: I don't want the pc speaker beeps compressed dammit!