Singer can't be heard?

[Monkeychow01]

Now I understand there are people that do not WANT to hear the singer....and in this case, there should be an option to disable it.

BUT, I was in a game tonight for the first time, and everyone stated they could not hear me while I was singing. I had to hold down the XBOX live chat button on the controller so they could hear me sing the song. AND it put me half a beat behind suppositally.

I was wondering why this was put in this way? It's bad enough I can't save someone from failing, but why make it that they cannot hear me at all? The song doesn't even sound messed up if I miss a note.

[Monkeychow01]

Anyone have any idea why?

[jq715861]

You answered you own question. You can't hear the singer online and if they did implement an option where you hear the singer it delays the game. Hence, no voice.

[Tender-Surrender]

That is part of the lag patent for online. I don't think it would be possible to project your voice online without lag.. I could be wrong.

[josh3212]

that doesn't make any sense though, people talk over live all the time, 16 player games. Why does it cause lag in rock band so that you can't even hear the person?

[anubis311]

You misunderstand, it wouldn't cause lag it would be lagging behind (your vocals.)

I didn't engineer the game but I speculate that the only way that we're able to play games like RB/GH online is because our own client at home is playing the song along so we can play in time with it, and it and all other clients are simply reporting what notes we hit and what notes we didn't, and reporting to all the other clients, and playing the notes or leaving a gap where we missed.

If it was just bouncing back live, it would never sound right. Even if you were playing with somebody just down the street from you you would likely have a 50-100ms ping that would cause a noticeable delay between other players tracks and make the music sound out of sync--(and likely screw up your own timing)--have you played with somebody who has an open mic and you can hear the guitar clacking away or hear them whacking the drum pads? Its always 1-2 seconds behind and it distracts me to the point that I usually have to take off the headset until the song is over. Believe me, it would probably suck.

Marching bands have enough trouble staying in time together from opposite ends of a football field because of the limits of the speed of sound, TRULY playing music together live from the other side of the country is still just an illusion at this point.

[mike marvel]

So just to confirm, when playing online with bandmates, they will never be able to hear you singing. The only way they know you're there is during the song you're "mic icon" is on the left bar and at the end of the song they see your score.

Sometimes when i sing online, someone will complain saying that "man the singer sucks! we can't even hear him". That kinda irks me. Well at least i know it's not my voice (i thought i was singing too quite) and that it's just a design issue.

[Bakkster]

So just to confirm, when playing online with bandmates, they will never be able to hear you singing. The only way they know you're there is during the song you're "mic icon" is on the left bar and at the end of the song they see your score.

Sometimes when i sing online, someone will complain saying that "man the singer sucks! we can't even hear him". That kinda irks me. Well at least i know it's not my voice (i thought i was singing too quite) and that it's just a design issue.

Yes there will always be lag with online vocals. And it's not a game design issue, it's a result of physics and the design of the internet.

[Abstruse]

If you've played other online games, you'll see the same sort of thing I like to call the "n00b echo". This is where someone has their game turned so that Live Chat voices come through the speakers instead of the headset, then they talk into it. Therefore, the voice goes into the mic, out of the speakers, then into the mic again causing an echo because of the delay.

This delay (which can be up to a full second) would come through during singing as well. This isn't noticeable in most games like FPSes because who cares if you shout "He's got a rocket launcher!" half a second after you blow up instead of just as you blow up? The delay that short doesn't matter. But on a music/rhythm game, it does matter. Want to know how much? Wait until a friend is playing the game, then sing the lyrics to the song a second behind the song itself. Be sure you have something to block thrown items, though, because this gets annoying fast.

[josh3212]

I haven't been able to tell this for sure because no one I play with sings, but it seemed the few times we tried that when they miss the notes, you don't hear the vocals of the singer in the track - just like when you miss guitar notes you hear that awful sqeak sound. Anyone know if this is true?