Good news for you!As for me, somehow the leasing office of my apartment complex has lost the package. I am sorely ticked. Oh well, the post lady stuck a wrong envelope in my box, maybe I will get the package tommorow.

Jim,Did you listen to the demo videos as downloaded files or on-line streaming? There is a difference. I'm not aware of pauses between individual words in the demos. If you haven't heard the downloadable demos visit here http://www.mmmprod.com/radarcontact4.html and have a listen.Cheers,

This thread has a good debate on the issue. And I think that its good for AC4.I can't wait to get my copy. I have never used RC3 before.. One of the dificult things (intimidating for me) is all the radio comm options in IFR. and I think this would help with that. The RC4 team has obviously and correctly focused on the meat and potatos of the matter. The techincaly right way to do ATC unlike the default ATC.But the folks who seem to take issue about the sound are honest and real too. After all they are comparing it to the default ATC sound file and it doesn't sound as good as that.When Bhagawat Gita quoting Oppenheimer and his team exploded the big one in New Mexico, the real secret was out. The real secret was not how to make an atom bomb (thats just a function of time). The real secret (to the rest of the world) was that it CAN be done.So if ATC sound that is constant and smooth can be done by the MS, the expectation is set for AC4 to match it. Forget that MS is a $100 Billion or Trillion corporation. Thats just a small detail.:)

Just have to say I've order my copy already as I found v3 to be a fantastic add-on....as for the voices I can live with the those (and in my opinion they sound absolutely fine given the constraints that people have to work within)in light of the much better ATC experience that is given.Now I don't know if postal rules have changed since I recived v3 but the postman certinly wasn't banging on my door for any additional money.....so I don;t know where this 50-100% comes from unless things have changed!!Now where is that bloomin' postie :-)Ian

Nick, Just have to make a comment about the accent thing. Brother, I spent alot of time in Oklahoma and Kansas, I thought the same thing, "no Accent" until I moved out east. You've got an accent bro. LOL. I, to this day haven't been able to get rid of mine, it comes out full bore when I get mad. LOLDan K

i think as people actually start flying flights, experiencing the experience, and concentrating on doing things right, more comments like yours will surface.thank you for your feedback.we'll work on making it sound better, but equally, we want it to be about the atc. i think we managed the latter, now we'll work on the former.and the fact that everyone can record their own pilot and controller sets, there may be some really bright audio engineers out there that love flight simming. they might produce some aweseom sets. upload and share. rcv4 still's the same atc program.now let me read the email for the day :-)jd

<Hi. I listend to the downloaded files. I'm surprised you would respond that you are not aware of the pauses since there have been so many posts in this thread that refer to them. Such as:<>OR<>Maybe its just different ways to express that same thing. I refer to "pauses" and someone else describes it as "choppyness."In both you demos and FS9..and the computer voices we hear on tech support hot lines etc. there is a "sing song" upward/downward pitch to the voices that are often in appropriate in the context of the sentence being generated. We are all used to that and I imagine that it would be a enourmous challange to generate context sensitive vocal inflections.By "pause" I don't mean long, drawn out gaps. Rather, I mean in natural speach, the sentence "Hi, how are you." is actually spoken as Hihowarya. In your program, it would be spoken as Hi.how.are.you.I don't know if that is sufficiently discriptive but I would guess that most of the posters here who complain of "robotic" speach are not talking about Darth Vader, computer SYNTHESIZED i.e. speach not derived from the spoken words of a human being...because OBVIOUSLY, your dialog was actually recorded by live people. I think that by "robotic" they mean inappropriate vocal inflictions and the "choppiness" or "pauses" as I refer to them as.Please note I am just offering constructive comments and think that from a functionality point of view, RC4 appears GREAT! (I actually bought RC3 and didn't use it due, mostly, to the voices.)I think you are WAY on the right track and as an instrument rated pilot ITRW I think what you are accomplishing is FANTASTIC! I just don't know if I can "live with the voices" throughout an entire flight.Best regards,Jim

>>I snuck down the hall to my wallet and>>slipped it past my wife with no problem.>>Wow, so I'm not the only one...LOL, nope!Back to the subject. I certainly hope they change their mind, because as I said they lost a customer here in Sweden. 700 mb is not an issue for me, not at all.There is another product that I would have owned long ago, but they also do not allow a DL - the MAMM DC3 ... oh well.Ground mail is dead - (please, all you mail folks don't go postal on me).Happy landingsAT

Hi Jim,<>It's very difficult to precisely describe how someone is hearing a sound. Also, for those who are used to the fluent sounds of the default ATC the RC sounds will, I admit, not sound as fluent but I don't believe they're full of pauses. I suppose each person hears them differently and I accept that.But when you read about the extraordinary lengths Microsoft went to to produce those pilot and controller files that was something RC could not match. For one, we didn't have the luxury of a dedicated recording room where all the sounds would be recorded time and time again until the cadence was perfect. Consider too the number of wavs recorded for each voice. The Microsoft volunteers spent five hours recorded just the airport names! Now with the best will in the world there's no way volunteers for RC are going to accept that level of committment. The 1793 and 1905 wavs for a pilot and controller respectively still represents a mammoth number and stretched us considerably. And whilst Microsoft give you 8 voices we supply around 30 pilot and controllers plus 9 Ai pilot sets which are reprocessed pilot sets.I also processed the controller and chatter pilot sounds to remove most of the lower frequencies so they would sound as though they were being transmitted on a radio. Maybe that has contributed to the 'robotic' sound but I think that makes them sounds more realistic.<>I agree. Speech does contain pauses and because of the nature of ATC commands there are a lot of separate sounds that have to be strung together and played. Where I had a set of quality wav files to work with then I think the sounds are very good. Remember that on the videos not all the sets are played so some of the better sets may have been missed. But unless we change the whole sound generation process it's difficult to improve on what we have now. As technology improves it should be possible to improve the sounds but we are at the mercy of our volunteers and the equipment at their disposal.Let me briefly tell you about one set I had to process. At the end of each recording I could hear a slight click. This has to edited out and on hundreds of wavs. It turned out that the person was using a high-quality non-directional mike. The click was the mouse button being pressed to save the recording and move on to the next one! That perhaps gives you an insight into the time and effort that was spent trying to get the voices as good as possible. We always recommend that volunteers use a good quality headset mike to avoid that kind of problem.If we could have employed the services of a speech expert maybe the inflections could be perfected but again, that is something that requires all the people recording voices to be in one place for consistency.<>I appreciate hearing your thoughts and don't feel you're being negative at all. But things have to be put into context. RC4 is a great ATC program and will look after your flight like no other program on the market and far exceeds the default ATC which I'm sure you will agree with. Remember too that those videos were heavily edited to compress all the comms into a few minutes. In reality you won't hear so much speech in such a short time and should find it more agreeable.I hope you do buy RC4 not because I will make a few dollars from your purchase (I won't) but because you want the most realistic ATC addon currently available.Cheers,

I just ordered it after watching the videos. The voices do sound sorta stilted, but I was more than impressed enough with the massive improvment in phraseology and procedure use to give it a shot.I really really do wish there was a downloadable version of this though. Ultimate Terrain USA is nearly twice RC4's size and that's sold via download. I have a 10Mb/sec line here and can download 700MB in literally 15 or 20 minutes, it's really not a big deal to have huge files downloadable anymore.How long has it taken some of you in the US to get the package from the time you ordered it?

I listened to two of the demos today while I was working on my laptop at work , and just kept repeating them over and over to see how I would react to long periods of listening to the audio. What I noticed was that if the pace of the audio could be somehow sped up a bit, I think it would add alot to the realism, and make the ATC sound more natural. I was wishing I had some way of speeding it up in playback, but I don't at work. Might be something for someone to try, if they have that capability. I bet some optimum speed setting could be found where the perception of smoothness of speech could be balanced with an ATC speed rate that would still give the pilot enough time to fully comprehend the ATC instructions. I am convinced that this speed could be faster, than it presently is. Now back to work :)

Bob,Don't use the videos as a basis for determining if all the voices need speeding up. With the complete set there are some who speak fast enough and some who are quite laid-back. That's human beings for you - always being different to robots! ;-)Once you have got airborne and are enjoying all that RC4 offers you'll soon adapt to the voices and all this discussion will become a distant memory.Cheers,

>Once you have got airborne and are enjoying all that RC4>offers you'll soon adapt to the voices and all this discussion>will become a distant memory.I fully expect that to be the case Ray: I just have to wait on the postman to confirm it. ;-) Unfortunately for RC4 though, there seems to be a significant number who are so put off by the voices that they won't get that far.phil http://www.ireiwa.com/images/lostpicprod.gif

It's more unfortunate for them than for RC4. They'll be missing the best ATC experience ever. Those who choose to listen to the default ATC, with all it's flaws, will, sadly, never know how good it can be.Doug

amen