Voice editing!

[Guest Boxjump]

I was trying out the Saerileth mod and was wondering how to edit voices. Her voices are too loud. The Saerileth forum is locked for some reason so I couldn't ask there.

 

I tried making the two voice files lower and saved the file, but when I go to test in-game, the voice didn't change at all. What gives?

[Guest Boxjump]

Ahh nevermind, you have to edit the .wav files not the .oggs

[Gorilym]

The Saerileth forum is locked for some reason so I couldn't ask there.

 

That would be the archived forum - the current one is not locked.

[Smoketest]

This is an ongoing problem with voiced NPC mods; they're almost always too loud in the final release. (Sometimes the music is also too loud; see Tashia for example.) I usually put up with it at first to decide if I want to keep the mod or not, then I use Creative Wave Studio (provided free with Creative sound cards) to edit the WAVs. There are other freeware editors out there, but I prefer the simplicity of CWS in the case of editing volume/amplitude. (In the few mods I've tried, all were made roughly equal to other NPCs in perceived volume by adjusting their volume down by 40%.)

 

If you edit the WAVs, don't re-OGG them. OGG is a lossy format (like JPG but for sound) that throws away data to achieve high compression ratios. The more you use it on an audio file, the lower the sound quality will be. I hate lossy compression systems but I tolerate them (to a degree) in online-available mods. (I'll never use OGG or TISpack for my personal work.)

[WizWom]

This is an ongoing problem with voiced NPC mods; they're almost always too loud in the final release.

I have specifically been making my WAVs to have a defined maximum loudness, -2 dB is what I'm using, which makes him about the same loudness as the bioware NPCs. I think most people use a 0 dB loudness, which would be quite noticeably louder. 0dB, of course, gets used because it uses the full range of the format for the sound.