DLC Question?

[McDeezy]

I just thought of something. On the game disc, I'm sure the audio is uncompressed and thats why it sounds so good, but what about DLC? They dont want us downloading 40 megs for a audio everytime do they? Will compression make it sound bad?

[toefer]

I just thought of something. On the game disc, I'm sure the audio is uncompressed and thats why it sounds so good, but what about DLC? They dont want us downloading 40 megs for a audio everytime do they? Will compression make it sound bad?

Good question, though 40mb files won't really bother me. 10gb would get you 250 songs, and I highly highly doubt I'd ever get that many.

[HubbubJub]

I'm sure the audio is compressed on the CD; if it sounds exactly the same to the human ear but can be stored in less space and be read in less time, why wouldn't they?

[tbradshaw]

The audio is definitely compressed. It's a misnomer that compression necessarily causes a percievable degredation of quality. For instance, the first step in most audio compression (including mp3) is to chop of the top and bottom of the wave that is too high or too low for human ears to hear. This causes no percievable loss of quality but saves space.

The songs are split into seven "tracks" that are individually played (guitar, bass, vocal, left hand, right hand, foot, the rest of the band) and so it will be like downloading seven songs in one. However, "blank space" always compresses best and some of these tracks are going to have a lot of gaps.

If I were to throw a guess out there, I would say something like 5 to 6 megs a minute for audio, plus whatever the midi data and other game related data takes (I don't know, a couple megs, tops?).

[McDeezy]

The audio is definitely compressed. It's a misnomer that compression necessarily causes a percievable degredation of quality. For instance, the first step in most audio compression (including mp3) is to chop of the top and bottom of the wave that is too high or too low for human ears to hear. This causes no percievable loss of quality but saves space.

The songs are split into seven "tracks" that are individually played (guitar, bass, vocal, left hand, right hand, foot, the rest of the band) and so it will be like downloading seven songs in one. However, "blank space" always compresses best and some of these tracks are going to have a lot of gaps.

If I were to throw a guess out there, I would say something like 5 to 6 megs a minute for audio, plus whatever the midi data and other game related data takes (I don't know, a couple megs, tops?).

If the compression is under 128kbps, it causes quality degredation. 128 is the bare minimum for cd quality audio. If the games music is encoded at 192kbps, then it will be fine! But I'm pretty sure the audio on GH1 and 2 was uncompressed.

5 to 6 megs a minute??? What KBPS? 320? Even thats a little ridiculous. Generally at 128kbps its 1 meg to 1 minute of music generally. 192kbps is about 1.5 - 2 megs to a minute. They would never need to encode higher than that. 5 to 6 megs a minute is basically uncompress WAV.

[Electric_Zen]

On higher-end digital sound systems, 128kpbs would be a noticeable degradation for many songs. Harmonix cares about the music more than that.

Remember, when we say 128, we are talking about a stereo mix, 64 per track. Harmonix has confirmed that there are five mixed tracks on every song (vocal, guitar, bass, drum, and other)

I would expect something along the lines of 128 VBR per track, or 640 per song. That comes out to nearly 5 meg a minute. For Green Grass and High Tides, you are closing in on 50 megs for the song. For Wave of Mutilation, closer to 12 megs. For a 50 minute album, 250 megs (yikes!)

Anyway, I'm not worried. Harmonix will figure it out.

[McDeezy]

On higher-end digital sound systems, 128kpbs would be a noticeable degradation for many songs. Harmonix cares about the music more than that.

Remember, when we say 128, we are talking about a stereo mix, 64 per track. Harmonix has confirmed that there are five mixed tracks on every song (vocal, guitar, bass, drum, and other)

I would expect something along the lines of 128 VBR per track, or 640 per song. That comes out to nearly 5 meg a minute. For Green Grass and High Tides, you are closing in on 50 megs for the song. For Wave of Mutilation, closer to 12 megs. For a 50 minute album, 250 megs (yikes!)

Anyway, I'm not worried. Harmonix will figure it out.


VBR isnt a set KBPS per say. Thats why it could be 5 to 6 megs. I honestly don't think its going to be compressed.

[toefer]

On higher-end digital sound systems, 128kpbs would be a noticeable degradation for many songs. Harmonix cares about the music more than that.


I was thinking the same thing. The whole 128kbps, I would think, was popularized by MP3s and filesharing, since it greatly reduced the size of WAV files people were ripping off their CDs. On computer speakers, or headphones, it sounds fine, but it is noticeably different than how it sounded when it was laid down in the studio, on high end equipment, even if it was analog. I'm not sure how noticeable the difference will/would be on a decent home theater set up, provided you have it turned up quite loud, but I could imagine there is at least some difference.

[Electric_Zen]

VBR isnt a set KBPS per say. Thats why it could be 5 to 6 megs. I honestly don't think its going to be compressed.

I think you can tell what I'm saying. A VBR stream that averages out to around 128 KPBS.

[mattmoss]

It is compressed.

That is all.

[McDeezy]

It is compressed.

That is all.

In all my years I've never seen someone from the actually team of something confirm something. That is pure badass dude. Thank you. Could you give us some tech info about it? Format, bitrate etc..? :D

[Syko360]

That is all.

The man said that is all. You don't ask a master chef for his recipe. Right?! ;)

[McDeezy]

The man said that is all. You don't ask a master chef for his recipe. Right?! ;)

I was kidding I didn't honestly think he would tell me :P. Thats why I put the smiley. But incase he see's it. I was just kidding :)

[Nilsen31]

The man said that is all. You don't ask a master chef for his recipe. Right?! ;)

unless it's Giada :drool: