The ability for you band members to hear your voice over live

[Phiromos]

I reall hope this is in the game...and if you dont want it you'd be able to turn it off...but id rather have my bandmates hear my voice rather than the actual singers, becuase i will not sound exactly like them, and its a waste of singing talent to go unheard

[lorddavid]

Agreed, not for my singing... 'cause EVERYONE would turn me off, lol, but because I think if we're gonna be playing with others in a band... we should hear the entire band, not just our own playing.

tho' thinking about it... in a sense, the singer is the only part in the game which could (If there's a non-point scoring section) go their own way with the singing, and do it their own way... the other parts are restricted purely to drumming the notes specifically, and strumming the right notes with no variation. Even with point scoring, the singing will sound different depending on the singer, the guitars will really only sound different depending on how badly the player stuffs it up. lol

[Coldplayer]

I reall hope this is in the game...and if you dont want it you'd be able to turn it off...but id rather have my bandmates hear my voice rather than the actual singers, becuase i will not sound exactly like them, and its a waste of singing talent to go unheard

I'm pretty sure that you hear the singers voice over live. Everything else would'nt make sense, I mean, you create a band live and this is a big part of the game (and accordingly of the band). That "feature" (or let's say implicitness) has to be in the game.

[Phiromos]

lol that is true...thats why i love being a singer..it gives you much more freedom in this game than the other instruments..and all the other instruments have to have a prerecording for their part..they will always sound the same..but the singer will always be different...depending on his mood, if hes tired, if its a boy or girl, and each time they sing the song it'll sound different..thats why it would be awesome to hear the singer over live...make it work like the headset or whatever

[Phiromos]

I'm pretty sure that you hear the singers voice over live. Everything else would'nt make sense, I mean, you create a band live and this is a big part of the game (and accordingly of the band). That "feature" (or let's say implicitness) has to be in the game.

that is true, and a very good point

[finsfan]

I hope we can hear the singer over XBL. Like Lord David said it's always different hearing someone sing. I think however they wouldnt give to much bandwith to the voice quality. it would probably stick to headset quality like that everything remains in snyc. Then again... I like to be proven wrong now and then!!

Alex

[lorddavid]

Thing is, in regards to bandwith for it... I don't really feel there's going to be much bandwith used for other stuff... no video has to go over it, nothing really except a "button press has happened" command really, to activate on the other user' consoles, meaning that the singing could be given a good quality to it, as that would really be all that was being sent 'cept for the buttons needing to be registered.

[Phiromos]

true the bandwith for the button pressing is really not very high...and singing is the only instrument where it uses more to judge pitch and vowels and words and such, so the sound quality is bound to be better on the mic...at least i hope so

[espher]

Having used plenty of voicecomm software, you're going to run into latency issues when doing it online, so, depending on what sort of fix they've implemented, that could be a problem.

[Xzyliac]

I doubt it'd be that difficult.

But let it be known Phir that from this day on we have an eternal grudge as to who has the best job. :P I love singing but if all I did was sing I'd be asleep pretty fast.

Alas to each his own. Can't wait to hear you sing Main Offender.

[Electric_Zen]

I will bow down before the technical gods at Harmonix if they can pull it off, but I just don't see how.

You don't want scratchy headset quality sound for this sort of thing, it totally defeats the purpose.

So you're talking about real-time compression of the voice to something about the quality of a 128kbps MP3 file. Now you're streaming at 12.5 Kbps. There are a number of internet users out there that don't even have 12.5 Kbps upload on their connection.

Try playing a quality audio stream off of WMP or RealPlayer. How does it work? That's right, it starts off with Buffering... to make sure it doesn't cut out every time there is a hiccup in the connection. So it's a delayed stream.

Try talking to each other over your low-fidelity XBox Live headsets. Even there, there is a small delay. Not enough to mess up conversations, but certainly enough to be a problem in a music game.

When you combine the need for real-time compression, the requirements for a 12.5 Kbps pipe available for all parties, and the inherent latency associated with media streaming, I just don't think we're going to see it.

[Phiromos]

I doubt it'd be that difficult.

But let it be known Phir that from this day on we have an eternal grudge as to who has the best job. :P I love singing but if all I did was sing I'd be asleep pretty fast.

Alas to each his own. Can't wait to hear you sing Main Offender.

lol alright...grudge it is..i love to sing so i wont get bored...but my voice may get worn out after 50 or 60 songs in a row...lol

[PurpleHaze]

I will bow down before the technical gods at Harmonix if they can pull it off, but I just don't see how.

You don't want scratchy headset quality sound for this sort of thing, it totally defeats the purpose.

So you're talking about real-time compression of the voice to something about the quality of a 128kbps MP3 file. Now you're streaming at 12.5 Kbps. There are a number of internet users out there that don't even have 12.5 Kbps upload on their connection.

Try playing a quality audio stream off of WMP or RealPlayer. How does it work? That's right, it starts off with Buffering... to make sure it doesn't cut out every time there is a hiccup in the connection. So it's a delayed stream.

Try talking to each other over your low-fidelity XBox Live headsets. Even there, there is a small delay. Not enough to mess up conversations, but certainly enough to be a problem in a music game.

When you combine the need for real-time compression, the requirements for a 12.5 Kbps pipe available for all parties, and the inherent latency associated with media streaming, I just don't think we're going to see it.Agreed. I'd really like to see some more details on the online functionality, as there are some technical hurdles involved here that seem almost insurmountable. So far all I've heard is that they have a "great solution", but no real details at all - and whilst I'm sure they do, I also have a feeling it might not work quite the way some people are hoping, and that some of the expectations are maybe a little unrealistic.

On the other hand, I'd be more than happy for Harmonix to prove me completely wrong ;)

[bbcued]

I will bow down before the technical gods at Harmonix if they can pull it off, but I just don't see how.

Firstly, the vocals will be monaural, so cut your industry-standard-almost-CD-quality stereo MP3 down to 64kbps. Also note that the human voice is limited in range, and therefore more compressible than a full band or similar recording; I'd say 32kbps would be of perfectly acceptable quality, especially given an efficient audio codec.

To combat the latency issue, I would hazard a guess that every player syncs with the singer. In other words, the singer's console commences the song in real-time, but the game imposes an artificial delay on the other players' song start until a small buffer is created. On reasonably low latency connections (less than 300ms) this would all feel instantaneous, and as if everyone is playing in sync. The inevitable downside is that when a guitarist or drummer screws up, the other players would not hear the exact wrong notes, but instead those played correctly 100 odd ms later would sound and appear to have been missed. The game would have to "assume correct" in all cases where it doesn't receive a right/wrong note response, otherwise the singer would always begin a song hearing no drums, guitar and bass.

In the event of the buffer running out (singer has packet loss/ping spike/drops out etc.), you would hear no user vocals until connection is restored and a sufficient buffer can be re-established.

[sa_nick]

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6482087.html

I still think this is how they're doing it all. Which would mean that it would not be possible to hear the singers voice via online play. Unless the singer was playing several seconds before all other players... Which is possible... Okay, it could work, lol.

[lithiumkc]

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6482087.html

I still think this is how they're doing it all. Which would mean that it would not be possible to hear the singers voice via online play. Unless the singer was playing several seconds before all other players... Which is possible... Okay, it could work, lol.

That patent i understand.

First off, bbcued was right in saying that it will generate random misses. Over the course of 8 beats [say it averages your score every 8 beats, if a drummer misses 2, the computer will represent this on every other persons screen over the network as 2 random notes out of those 8 being missed [Because whichever 2 of the 8 it doesn't matter]

It also says that it will record your pitch when you sing solos, and run it through a series of tools basically that will represent the solo you sang on everybody elses screen visually and audibly. It will not be your voice, but it will be a very close representation of the solo you just sang [Or drummed, etc]. Also you will be able to see visual representations of how the other players are doing in realtime.

Its a smart way to combat lag.

Plus in another part of that patent it says there will be 8 tracks shown at once.. with the bottom track being the users [yours] which says to me that you'll be able to see all 7 of the other people playing [2 bands.. possibly]. But i may be mistaken on that one.