Hi all,
After recording all the speech files for a little thingy in AGS I noticed that each time a speech file is played by AGS, there is a distinctive tick at the beginning and end of the speech sound. When you have several lines of text in a dialog, this can get annoying really fast.
I looked at the sound clips and figured they are not properly recorded and that the natural noise of my cheap microphone is the reason, which was true.
So I worked three hours to fade in and out each clip individually and now when I play them in any sound clip playing tool there is no ticks at the beginning and end of the clip.
All happy and excited I placed the files in the proper directory and to my surprise I still heard those ticks, albeit somewhat softer.
I tried several things and after a while I noticed that the ticks did not sound when I was using wav files for the sound clips. They still do sound if I use ogg files or mp3 files.
I thought maybe it has something to do with having to decode the files before playing them but I just checked on my computer and the mp3 files are also ticking with other media playing applications so the only one to blame now is the program that converts the wav files to mp3 or ogg files.
Has anyone encounted this before? I checked with two converting programs and it still happened. I know that when converting to mp3 or ogg you loose data but I never thought it could add ticks :-)
Any suggestion for a convertion program that may solve this problem for me? Using wav files is takes alot of space...
I am under the impression that small mp3 or ogg files create issues. If the dialouges are some secs long then you could be experiencing problems... But I'm not really sure for that.
Try maybe a longer mp3 instead of a dialogue one and see what happens..
Hmm... Are they mouse clicks that it's picking up from when you press record and stop?
What program are you recording with?
You shouldn't fade in and out, you should just CUT the noises out.
I use Audacity, and save each file as ogg as i record them.
My guess is a mismatch between your mic and soundcard might be causing a DC offset. Try recording silence. Does the waveform hover around 0 (the middle) or is it above or below by some amount? Most editing programs have a "DC offset" or "DC removal" function that might help.
Otherwise maybe you should post a couple of these files so we can see ourselves.
modgeulator, there is an offset.
That is why I faded in and out the noise, so at least there wouldn't be that tick and it worked in the wav files. Since the speech is over a background music the noise is not heard at all, but the ticks were heard.
I converted the mp3 back to a wav and compared the source wav with this one and you can clearly see a little tick just around the middle of the fade in and out.
I guess though, I was just patching things, I need to find a way to record without that DC offset and I believe it will solve the problem for mp3s and oggs.
Maybe the offset was because I did not turn of the speakers while recording...
I'm no expert, but if you converted something and it created a sound, when you convert it back, won't it also convert this sound back with it?
If there is then you need to correct the DC offset. I know Sound Forge, Cool Edit and Goldwave have functions that can do this. Many other audio editors do also. I don't think there is a way to fix it at the source short of getting a better microphone/soundcard.
Matt, it did convert the sound back with it, that's how I knew the convertion of the wav to mp3 was the one generating the soft tick.
I looked for a way to remove the offset with Sonar 3 but I still didn't find one. I am sure it has one since it is such a big program. I allso tried recording with the speakers off and it did not change anything. A friend of mine recorded some of her lines in her computer which has a much more advanced sound card and she got it perfect without even knowing the problem so I guess a better sound card is the solution if we want to tackle the source of the problem.
Thanks guys,
I should just record on her computer from now on :-)
Looked it up and it seems Sonar 3 didn't have any DC offset removal function. Although it's probably better to record on your friends computer if she has better stuff, still you might find this useful: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/dcoffset.htm