LP Update/Comment Thread

[IskatuMesk]

No, this is all e-mail. The costs for phoning would be really high to a US number. I used their help desk on the site and that went to e-mail. But yeah, that is what otherwise would have happened.

Also, I have partially synced some changes to the thread (notably banner images that link to full splashes). Progress on the site steadily continues. I usually try to get 1-3 LP's updated/ported over a day.

So far no bugs from the matrix change on a 6 hour Civ 5 video.

[IskatuMesk]

Alright. So it's the end of September.

I have done some more data arrangements. For starters, the League and Heroes HTML directories are going to be deprecated, because the Gameproc page for them is a copy paste of them. Now the thread index link will point to that page, and they have been removed from the compilations section of the thread. This will probably be the only major exception to the mirror rule, and only because they were using HTML directories.

To that end, I am in the process of uploading and adding roughly 20-30 games to the heroes section of that page. This completely catches me up to that particular portion of my workload and is a good way to end September.

The donate page is now up, linked to in the beginning of About on Gameproc. Just remember I still have no way to predict if or when Paypal will decide to lock out my account, but two donations have gone through without issue so far. I'll worry about Patreon once I get Gameproc finished.

On that note, Gameproc is fully synced up to Generation Two, minus a few reviews which need to be processed for some gen1 recordings from youtube rips and Wangs of Liberty, which I've opted to hold off on uploading due to risk of being fined for hitting my bandwidth cap.

As the subsidies have given us the finger this month and Granny spent a large portion of our money on get rich quick schemes and "look 30 years younger in 4 weeks" plans involving spinning and butter the month will be rough but, thanks to aforementioned donations, I have an emergency fund to fall back on in case the cat has issues.

I will be making a coffee hour in the near future to reminisce about 6 years of public video production. Horray for being not very consistent at any point throughout it all.

/edit

All current Heroes work is done.

I have completed recordings of the second civ5 game.

My focus is now catching up on editing work.

[KnoutOut]

eeeeyyyy, let's get this thing going!

[recalrico]

Well, patreon got shanked and a bunch of infos was taken. I guess you were lucky.

[IskatuMesk]

Yep. They had a full source of the server and such on public domain. It's likely all their encryption keys and everything are in the wild, now. I have to change a few pw's but that's it. Some MS guy was going on about it all. It's a pretty huge leak. Even if the encryption keys aren't out there, a huge amount of data is.

I don't really want to do business with a company that incompetent, to be quite honest. If I had my SIN et all on their form it all would be compromised right now.

/e

Also, this, if true, is even more hysterical.

[recalrico]

I wouldn't blame you if you decide not to go with them. Seems like this shit is happening more often these days. Having good security is too 'expensive' for some companies. They all thought the NSA reardoor would keep them safe.

[IskatuMesk]

I mean, paypal's probably been compromised dozens of times and they'll just never say a thing. But it's pretty bad when someone has to step out and say "oh yeah... we told you about this XDDDD"

[IskatuMesk]

God. So much crap to catch up on. But, here we go for today's trickle-down lard.

1.) I have added the first Civ 5 game to the Extras section on Gameproc. http://www.gameproc.com/index.php?id=extras

Make note, this section is gonna be changed a lot. The GW2 videos will be FTP'd and dropped into the Compilations section where they belong in the future. The heroes 6 stuff currently in the Compilations section will be moved to the Melee Runs section. Consistency! The thread doesn't have Civ5 and won't have it until I finish Gameproc and get to my sync process for reasons like this - I need to revamp how the thread is organized and there's no point half-cocking stuff like this kind of re-organization, though as I created and translate banner assets to the site I will gradually update the LP listing on the thread to copy paste this, then bring over my major updates all at once later on. I also need to make images and shit for all this content. It's a big project.

If you have a better name for stuff like Civ5/Heroes games than "Melee Runs" by all means. I struggled with that one for a while. Game 2 will be verified and uploaded sometime this month then I won't bother with civ5 for a while (if ever again).

2.) New coffee hour. I talk about gameproc, my current workload, lay the lowdown on donations and Patreon, look back a bit on the last 5-6 years, and some of the muddy subjects inbetween it all. Coffee Hour is mostly composited in Vegas (much like Divinity and Gauntlet) which uses a different compressor than my videos. Its settings are super, super limited. Let me know if the one I use in this CH is better than the last two.

/edit

I have discovered that Youtube allows one to download (only) their entire account's worth of, allegedly, youtube source files pre-conversion.

If this is true, it will allow me to recover the SC AI demo video someone requested on youtube a while ago as well as any other stuff that was once destined for youtube I otherwise lost the source to, including the remainder of the XXE THE REVENGE series that is currently not on the FTP.

The main caveat is the bandwidth cost for this operation, especially given the limited availability of the archives, may be more than my monthly allowance offers in its entirety.

[Mucky]

If you have a better name for stuff like Civ5/Heroes games than "Melee Runs" by all means. I struggled with that one for a while. Game 2 will be verified and uploaded sometime this month then I won't bother with civ5 for a while (if ever again).

For individual games, I usually just go by nation + victory condition I'm planning for + map size, e.g. Shoshone Domination Huge.

[IskatuMesk]

That's a good idea.

I have deleted roughly 70-80% of my youtube content (that was hidden anyways) so the download won't be as large. I am forced to use Chrome since the links send palemoon into an infinite loop. Chrome is... hideous. Anyways, the download is "merely" 78gb or something now.

If this contains untouched source files I'll be able to restore all XXE the revenge. I've also found some non-revenge videos that are worth uploading, so I'll probably upload those, too. I'll also be able to finally restore the SC AI video someone asked for a while ago.

/e

Google refused to give me the files I wanted. If a file has any claim on it, even just ad revenue claims, you can't ever access the source files again. God I hate this company.

/e 2

I have ripped the AI demo videos off of youtube. The audio doesn't seem to be censored on the some parts anymore. Setting them up was a real pain in the ass because the formats were all different and nothing wanted to open the webm container or yank the ogg files out of it. Nonetheless, the quality is acceptable for a BW video.

I have ripped XXE 7 from youtube and will be FTP'ing it as-is once I verify it works.

/e 3

The scaidemo is now in the Developer Extras portion of Content Extras in the thread. I'll re-organize this section more cleanly when the Gameproc sync project happens.

/e 4

Okay, now the thread has XXE the revenge 7 from youtube and an old era XXE 7 I apparently never publicated for some reason. Maybe because the quality is abhorrent.

Uploaded XXE the revenge 1, 2, 4 and 8. That nearly completes the entire THE REVENGE series so far for the FTP!

Enjoy some DDL versions of content from my more muddy of years.

[IskatuMesk]

In the vein of my old coffee hours, I shall talk a bit about some of my experiences with hardware today.

Notably, Headphones.

For most of my life I've used speakers exclusively. This is because in my youth I was subjected to some kind of multi-thousand dollar "hearing fix" program in which I wore headphones and heard slightly distorted sounds for an hour or two. I distinctly remember this peculiar child experience. As I had never used headphones after that for many years, and only earbuds, I was universally met with negative experiences in the hardware reinforced by my peer's refusal to acquire me anything of the nature. That was, until, I came into possession of a pair of very old, very heavy headphones from an associate, and casually used them to listen to my own music in 2004-2006ish. I came to depend on those headphones to really hear the depth of the music until I had decent speakers.

Once I had a pair of Klipsch 2.1 speakers I never saw the need to get headphones again... until I began doing casting. As many of my earlier casts show, the feedback problem quickly became a real thing, and I decided to try out headphones for the sake of clean recording.

Steelseries Siberia v2

One of the more common and well-known "Gaming Headphones". The Siberia ran me around 100 dollars on both occasions iirc.

The Siberia are a notable improvement over my older headphones when I compared them side by side. But one particular thing about the Siberia always bothered me - artificial bass boosting. While not a super severe problem, I find any kind of artificial frequency manipulation extremely undesirable. That said, these are the only headphones I ever bought twice, with my first pair lasting around 4-5 years. The second pair lasted just over a year.

The Siberia are known for their comfort. Their unique headband is overvalued and doesn't offer anything over the other headphones I've used so far. The main issues with them is their cords and connectors are very frail and easily damaged, and their high range isn't so spectacular.

I wear headphones for an extremely long period of time - any time I am awake - as I no longer use my speakers for anything besides having a secondary volume boost by plugging the headphones into them. That way I don't need to fuck with my recording volumes if I need to adjust my overall levels (though the speaker wiring is heavily damaged and tends to fuck with channels a lot when you touch the volume knob, so I don't make it a habit). The Siberia very commonly made my ears sweat a lot, which lead to buildup of irritation around the area between the upper ear and my head. The main issue was not necessarily circulation, since with a fan beside my head the draft would go in, but rather their covering conducted heat very well. In summer this made them particularly irritating. Also, they were a bit too small for my ears, so fitting them in entirely was not very comfortable. The first wear and tear for the headphones was generally the inside of the cups, where my ears slowly chiseled black foam out that eventually went into my ears and further gave me problems.

A critical thing I look for in my headphones is noise cancellation. They need to block out outside sound as much as possible so fans, cats, screaming kids, and yappy white dogs don't distract me or prevent me from hearing my work. The Siberia is what I'll consider the entry range for this. With the Siberia I could hear reasonable amounts of audio with my medium grade fan on high at a distance, but anything more or closer and it quickly became impossible.

As far as audio quality, I don't have a big enough sample size to really say. I'll say they have a lot better mid and high than the Klipsch 2.1's, but the bass tended to muddy out, especially in my audio engineering. It wouldn't be until I got the Sony MDR-V6 that I really had a comparison to make.

Sony MDR-v6

Supposedly a very old model, these headphones were recommended to me by a user on the mapster IRC. They are about the same price as the Siberia. A lot of reviews negatively reviewed these headphones because they didn't have bass boost like Beats by Dre... I saw those reviews as shining, positive marks in the product's favor more than any other.

The MDR-V6 are much lighter than the Siberia and fit far more comfortably. I'd say they're the most comfortable headphones I've worn so far. They fit my ears very well. They don't have space for airflow like the Siberia do - they're entirely sealed on the back. However, the covering is more cloth like. Unfortunately, the covering wore off in about 1-2 months. That said, unlike the foam on the Siberia, the under-cover foam on the MDR-V6 never degraded during my use and was just as comfortable, if not more, against my skin, so I just peeled the rest of the surface off and left it as it is. I also felt this improved the air circulation very dramatically, since fan air would pass through the foam very easily. Although smaller of frame than the Siberia, they feel more solid to handle. It is worth noting I've never damaged headphones or similar hardware from dropping them or moving them around or anything. I may get violent but I don't damage my hardware, so I can't tell you how resilient they are against abuse.

The sound is very, very different. The MDR-V6 is void of the bass boost the Siberia have. This took me a very long time to get used to, and I didn't think I would come to like them as a result. However, a few weeks in and I had adapted to their sound and really came to enjoy their more moderate lows. The lows don't have a lot of definition in the super low range but this is not really a negative in most cases. I would describe the MDR-V6, compared to the Siberia, as having a pronounced upper-mid range and pleasant mids and lows, while having a slightly airy presence.

The stereo presence of the MDR-V6 is vastly superior to the Siberia's. Sounds feel much more present and have more depth to them. Not necessarily a big deal in my videos, but pretty significant in my various soundtracks and Black Sun: Retribution. This stereo presence, plus the more defined mids and highs, makes these headphones feel more alive than the Siberia. But, going from headphone to headphone, it was clear that the two can't be sonically compared because they are very different in intended function.

The smaller body of the MDR-V6 impacts their sound isolation when compared to the Siberia, but not by as much as you might believe. Their back being sealed means that they stop quite a bit of sound noise. However, the back also deflects sound from the fans, so it's a double-edged sword. The medium grade fan on speed 2 at close range prohibited me from hearing most things, and the high grade fan on lowest at a distance rendered hearing anything nearly impossible. I'd say the Siberia probably were better in sound isolation, but not by much.

The most notable issue with the MDR-V6 is, unlike the Siberia, they pick up significant electronic interference. You only notice this when you're not listening to anything, though. HD access, monitor information transmissions, just about anything from the motherboard makes it to the headphones even though they're plugged into speakers. No other headphone I used prior to these had that issue.

I would recommend these headphones over the Siberia for this price range, but be prepared to see significant wear on the pads very quickly if you use them in a high heat and high humidity environment like Western Canada.

The headphones lasted around a year, year and a half before the "heavy-duty and durable" coiled cable broke its internal wiring against a pillow of all things. Ever since then I had to wrestle unendingly with it trying to get power back to the left speaker.

Audio Technica ATH-M50X

The ATH-M50X is a step higher in price range from my previous purchases. These headphones would have been too costly for me under normal circumstances, but I got a fair discount and free shipping, so I shaved off over $50 or so.

Without anyone super knowledgeable in headphones to rely on, I merely asked for subjective opinions and went from there. Unfortunately, even the commercial audio engineers I talked to had few definitive or helpful opinions on the matter.

I originally planned to get wireless headphones, but after realizing they had latency amongst other possible concerns, and the price hike for the wireless features, I opted against it. I'll simply need a new strategy for managing cords. This comes with 3 separate cords.

I was also originally going to get Sennheiser, but they didn't have any convincingly peer-reviewed models in my price range. Bose was also recommended but, again, they were pricey and hard to find serious review material for.

I know little about Audio Technica, but they're Taiwan-based. Taiwan is also home to the highest performance and most reliable hard drives. So, I trusted in that. Their reviews are universally good across the board. I decided to take the risk on behalf of reading primarily about their accuracy over other features. As a caster and reviewer accuracy is evidently super important. The MDR-V6 were good, but I knew they weren't entirely accurate. So, I took the plunge with an unfamiliar company and here we are, a half-day later since I first put them on.

Physically speaking, the M50X are larger than the Siberia and MDR-V6 but really aren't too much heavier. The headband is thicker than the MDR-V6 but is still basically unnoticeable when being worn. The pads are much "harder" and have a more leathery material to them, so they aren't quite as comfortable on my ears, and feel a bit "boxed in" even though they entirely consume my ears without issue. I suspect once I get some wear into them they'll loosen up and feel just as good as the MDR-V6 in a month or two. If not, I can always get replacement pads later down the line. But that's not realistic for my budget for now. It's enough to not have to fuck with them for 10-15 minutes every time I move.

From the getgo it was obvious these headphones would require a break-in period like the MDR-V6. At first listen they sound a bit more muddy in the mid-high and high range than the MDR-V6, but the fidelity is actually there. What is happening is the low range is more pronounced again - sort of a cross between the Siberia and the MDR-V6 - and my ears are no longer accustomed to that sound at all. Playing Heroes and Warframe, the speakers sound nearly identical to the MDR-V6 except they lack the upper range "peaking" behavior on the V6, which I felt gave it a bit of an airy sound. To me this makes the M50X sound a bit more accurate to the sound. Ideally, the frequency levels should be all completely level in a speaker and not diverge from the source audio whatsoever. The low bass frequencies, while more dominant than in the Sony headphones, actually have a level of fidelity to them I haven't heard in headphones yet. It's rather subtle, but I can definitely make out super low-range frequency differences in the bases that otherwise get turned into just a sea of noise in most speakers. The MDR-V6 subdued the volume of those frequencies but they were audible. You just tended to lose them amidst the mid-range, which was the sure strength of that hardware. The M50X high range is still quite spacious as well, so I didn't lose anything by filling out the buttocks.

An anime I watched using the MDR-V6, being Knights of Sidonia, tended to have very overcompressed sound effects, which lead to bursts of often times unpleasant to plainly painful volumes. These sections are significantly less pronounced in the M50X and are much easier on my hearing. This is possibly from the MDR-V6 pronouncing certain areas of the mid range a bit higher than they should have been but, again, without real sample data to build an opinion from, this gets into theorycraft territory. Other anime, like Fate/Zero and Yamato 2199, sounded fairly similar to what I recall, but with more balanced volume ranges. The heightened base I notice a lot in music doesn't really effect general video that much at all.

Some more super early, subjective tests I ran.

Earthbound - Onette 2 - The bass line is a lot cleaner and more defined than I remember it being. On some Earthbound tracks it really brings out this particular rip is 128kbps in ways I haven't really heard before (distortion on mid-high holds in particular).

Earthbound - Peaceful Rest Valley - Very similar to the MDR-V6 but the bass sounds slightly more relaxed.

Dragon's Dogma Soundtrack - The music sounds a bit muddy in general I feel. At least, the version I have does. This muddiness sounds a bit more mushed with the bass boost on these headphones. This is something that will need some ear adaptation to fix up I think.

Captain Planet RPG Nerd Bay Theme - The bass instruments are higher in emphasis for sure, but the other instruments sound nearly identical to the MDR-V6 if not slightly more distant due to the larger speakers.

Toshihiko Sahashi - Black Blood Brothers - Jouka - Sounds a lot more full in the rear now. Like Goff got that much harder. The horn is a lot more defined and the strings have superior presence. As a track with fair stereo presence this is very much alive.

Yuki Kajiura - The World - The base in the main body of this track is a lot louder than the MDR-V6 since it hits the deep bass region. Not unlike the Siberia from what I recall. Still clear enough to hear the individual guitar and string notes on an mp3 track of all things. Quite solid.

Zebda - Goota ma différence - A bit more punchy due to the higher bass emphasis but very clean despite this. Perfectly fine.

God of War II - Main Titles - The bass boost is non-existent here except near the busier end section, and it's rather subdued. Sounds perfectly like I remember with slightly more punch.

Panjabi Hit Squad - Hasdi Hasdi - The hits in this track are significantly more defined than with the MDR-V6 but it's not unpleasant.

Ashkan&Kooshan - Bargard Pisham Dobareh (Original Mix) - I used this track to test bass differences between the Siberia and MDR-V6 when I first got the Sony headphones. It features repeating, high-volume basey beats from the land of camels and skirts. This track on the Siberia was unpleasant to listen to due to the bass boost. It quickly eroded my fully-adapted ears and gave me headaches. However, the MDR-V6 dulled out the bass too much in this track. With the M50X, I feel like the balance is nearly perfect. The bass is quite strong but not painful to behold.

Gundam Wing - Rhythm Emotion - Another track I used for headphone comparison in the past. Not the best quality version out there (sub-100kbps ogg vbr). Nonetheless, it does still sound quite good on these. I am mostly interested in how the high and mids mix. The MDVR-V6 at first sounded a bit muddy here but improved with adaptation. This already sounds pretty good, so I look forward to hearing it more when my ears get used to it. Just Communication sounds pretty much identical.

Kamelot - Mourning Star - The repeating guitar has notably more base than previous. Enough to be distracting. Probably need FLAC for this. Mp3 hits the ranges that this sort of stuff needs to be fleshed out quite hard.

Ghost in the Shell Innocence - Kugutsuuta Aratayo ni Kamutsudo Hite - An AAC file in lower bit rates. The high ranges sound similar to the MDR-V6 to the point I can't make an objective statement about them, but the lows definitely are handled a lot more cleanly. No real evidence of base boosting here, just exactly what I expected it to sound like.

Wada Kaoru - Record Of Lodoss War - Kokui Ni Idomu Konketsu - As a track with mostly mid-low drumming this features very little to no noticeable bass reinforcement. Perfect.

P3x08 - Magic's Ass Ambient Radio - Same as above. This Apex H track along with most of the other similar Jazzy themes sounds very similar to the MDR-V6, with memorable differences in mid-upper and lower regions. Clean and simple. Good.

Civilization 5 Game 2 Seg 1 - My voice definitely sounds slightly more distant and a bit more basey. Some of the AI civ speech sounds quieter. The music is fine and stereo presence on the SFX seems reasonable. This mostly reflects the frequency ranges and the size of the speakers more than anything, I think. These headphones bring out some of the inconsistency of the game's sounds in terms of their stereo presence and frequency range. hue

Black Sun: Retribution - Given an audio project I had a lot of time with, I have a good memory how a lot of it sounded. The main thing that makes itself prominent is I can hear the reverb effects I had on most innate SFX a lot more clearly. The entire intro piece sounds a lot cleaner. Adjak's voice, despite the slight trebel boost I gave it, is notably more prominent in the sages of the lower. The Warlord intro sounds are still notably crisp and defined if not a little moreso. Most noticeable about this is, since I didn't do much manual stereoscoping, most of the production musically sounds very central channel. Moreso than I would have liked, to be honest. But I don't think I could really have done anything about that. I don't think this was so noticeable on the Sony headphones because they were smaller/closer. This probably sounds like a mess on 7.1. A lot of low-frequency sounds in certain areas, like the hum in the Khendarva Fortress sequence, are way louder than I remember them being on the previous headphones. The Emperor engine sounds way better. That one is a huge difference. There are some high frequency jitters in the ECS voice I don't remember even knowing about before. The Emperor Prelude wind/music sounds a lot cleaner. The Pride is basically identical to the MDR-V6, although the growly aspect sounds a bit more distant and more manly. Overall, I am quite pleased with what I am hearing here.

I have very sensitive ears, and require a few short breaks from the headphones during listening to music, due to how different the sound is. I suspect as my ears and brain adapt to the headphones they will grow more on me, as was the case with all the others I used. But these are particularly tough to use right off the bat due to the sudden bass presence that makes my ears rather sore even at lowish volume.

The sound isolation seems a lot better in these headphones than my other ones, but it may also be an adaptation thing. Only time will tell with this, since I don't run fans. However, I commonly can't hear smokey crying at the door anymore. One of the main reasons I bought the headphones is for the cable that detaches at the cup, something also featured by the Blue headphones (though they were well beyond reasonable pricing) and probably other, similar gear.

My biggest concerns between switching headphones was losing that stereo presence I gained in the previous switch, as it helped give a lot more to my music, and really helped me review audio work in games since it was a lot easier for me to pick apart individual sounds in it. It seems I have no reason to worry, and I have actually gained a bit of fidelity in the process. As to be expected from the differing price ranges.

When I first plugged in the headphones I heard telltale electronic interference. Less than the Sony headphones but still there. I don't hear it anymore. At least not right now. Kind of weird.

Well. It ain't much. But there's my thoughts on the hardware thus far.

[nu1x]

That's a lot of info.

I have Audio-technica ATH-AD500 (old model), and I have only good things to say about this company, I had HD 598 Sennheisers before and I consider A-T "better", at least for me (sound quality is almost the same (they are open-ear type, with Sennheiser putting more emphasis on highs), plus A-T seems more durable so far). A-T are a bit cheaper to boot.

The more important things are actually good sound card with decent Digital-Analog converter, plus a solid amp, all isolated from electric interference.
Good headphones can be properly heard when everything else is in order. Good (not best, just decent) quality costs money, though.

/opinion

[IskatuMesk]

The Asus Xonar D2 is "supposed" to be a good card (I certainly paid premium shekels for it) but given how poorly it performs at just about everything (not even registering as ASIO compatible for Pro Tools) I doubt it constitutes as being good.

Supposedly these headphones don't need an amp, but don't my speakers with external power constitute as an amp? I suspect they may be worsening the quality... but... so much as touching the cables on the sound card usually bsod's me. Yeah. I've wanted to get rid of this for a looong time.

[IskatuMesk]

XXE 17 is now available!

Trying to force myself through Alice is giving me HIV.

I'm glad I saved right before that crash, though!

[KnoutOut]

That's why you always wear protection when playing EA games.


p.s.: watching the civ game, the wrath of the camel shall strike down all.