ATC Voice

[Guest Steve Keating]

If i may just jump in here, the thing I find most annoying is in the clearances, as in "You are cleared to "THE" XXX "Airport"" or "You are cleared for approach on "THE" runway XX".It has been a long time since I flew in the States but in Europe the clearance is usually"You are cleared to destination via flightplan route"Or"You are cleared to XXX" (Copenhagen or Brussels for example)The words "THE" and "AIRPORT" are redundant and do not need to be used in these contexts.I am sure that by removeing them the number of waves the sentence could be reduced and the phrasing would flow more realistically, and also reduce the amount of RT chatter at busy airports.Steve

[aerdt 0]

Yep. I have noticed the "THE" as well. It would have been better to omit "the airport". I am not sure what phrase is used, if there is no voicefile for the destination airport, but a phrase like "You're cleared to {airport}" could have been re-used to "You're cleared to your destination airport {or WXYZ ICAO)".Cheers.

[PeteP 2]

>If i may just jump in here, the thing I find most annoying is in the clearances, as in "You are cleared to "THE" XXX "Airport"" or "You are cleared for approach on "THE" runway >XX".Yep, you and me both, Steve! x(The good news is that in version 4, you will be cleared to London Heathrow airport, for example, and not THE London Heathrow airport. Unfortunately, that aberrant definite article still appears in other places in v4. Try as we might, neither Ray (Proudfoot) nor I could persuade our American colleagues that it was unnecessary - but, rest assured, we'll keep working on them. With luck we may have it sorted by the time we get to version 8! ;-) :) BestTHE Pete

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Dickwu,If by background noise you mean hiss I'm not aware of any on the wavs in RC4. We have changed pitch and speed slightly for the chatter pilot sets to make them sound different (but not too much) from their parent sets. I'm using a good quality product - Sound Forge - which is more than capable when processing good quality recordings. The key to all this is the quality of the recordings which I mentioned earlier.I've had a look at Adobe Audition but it seems to do the same things as Sound Forge.Cheers,

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Adeym,The spoken ATC in RC4 on the whole blends in very nicely. There are occasional rogue wavs but amongst the 73000 recorded that represents a very small percentage. I don't think anyone would expect us to listen to every wav but I did listen to many thousand to ensure we got the best quality we could.As I said in another reply the key to good quality playback is good quality recordings and we are very much at the mercy of our volunteers. Processing a good set is very straight-forward. It's the poor quality sets that give us headaches.We could just include 1-2 pilots and 2-3 controllers but I suspect folk might complain there wasn't enough variety but when you're asking someone to sit down and record nearly 2000 wavs in a single session you aren't exactly flooded with volunteers.If you do buy v4 and want to record a pilot or controller set we'd be very pleased to hear from you.Cheers,

[Guest Adeym]

>Hi Adeym,>>The spoken ATC in RC4 on the whole blends in very nicely.>There are occasional rogue wavs but amongst the 73000 recorded>that represents a very small percentage. I don't think anyone>would expect us to listen to every wav but I did listen to>many thousand to ensure we got the best quality we could.>>As I said in another reply the key to good quality playback is>good quality recordings and we are very much at the mercy of>our volunteers. Processing a good set is very>straight-forward. It's the poor quality sets that give us>headaches.>>We could just include 1-2 pilots and 2-3 controllers but I>suspect folk might complain there wasn't enough variety but>when you're asking someone to sit down and record nearly 2000>wavs in a single session you aren't exactly flooded with>volunteers.>>If you do buy v4 and want to record a pilot or controller set>we'd be very pleased to hear from you.>>Cheers,Thanks Ray for your reply,I am still very tempeted, but perhaps I need to see a few more video's to tip me over the edge. I'd love to record you a voice set as I have a great London accent, not cockney, not posh... just right! Maybe I can get my girlfriend to do one too with her Northern Irish accent!

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Adeym,We'd love to have a controller set from both of you but especially from your girlfriend. We only have one lady controller. We need to have a break from sound recording for reasons of sanity retention but come February please contact us either here or at the support address if you are tempted to part with your hard-earned cash! :-beerchugWe'll be making a London Heathrow - Paris flight available for download very soon. Watch the forum. That might just tip it for you.Cheers,

[Slick9 24]

I just listened to the download - the voices actually sound great. What I think would even make them better is if we could somehow speed them up like Edit Voice Pack does, I think someone hear had suggested that before. Wouldn't it be theoretically possible to do this by editing each wave right within Win XP and speeding them up there?

[aerdt 0]

You can easily speed up the files while preserving the pitch in SoundForge with a batch job to speed up all the files in a voiceset (folder).

[Slick9 24]

Excellent!!! Would it be possible Ray et al, to maybe load a version of the files with the faster waves for us to download from the RC website??

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Whilst I understand where you're coming from I suggest you all wait until you have the CD and have installed it. Everyone has a different opinion on what sounds good and if we tried to keep you all happy ... well, it would never happen.You've only heard some of the available sets anyway. It's quite easy to enable / disable individual sets.Cheers,

[Guest Adeym]

Ray,I've just watched the newest and I'm more impressed, however the gaps between the frequency numbers really need to be a lot shorter so that the numbers are read closer together to make it sound seemless. Other then that I think its more or less spot on.With regards to recording some sets for you, mine wont be a problem to do, however my girlfriend has a hectic life as an architect so it will be a while before she can do one. I'll contact you soon, perhaps once the money has burned a hole in my pocket... we'll see!

[Slick9 24]

""Whilst I understand where you're coming from I suggest you all wait until you have the CD and have installed it. Everyone has a different opinion on what sounds good and if we tried to keep you all happy ... well, it would never happen.You've only heard some of the available sets anyway. It's quite easy to enable / disable individual sets.""Point taken Ray :-)

[Ricardo41 5,959]

I just crossed RC 4 of my list of addons I was looking forward to. The voices even in the downloadable versions sound horribly robotic. Much, much worse than the default FS9 ones. I do not doubt the immense added functionality that RC4 is going to offer, but I'm getting headaches just listening to the robots. Didn't anyone check the quality of these recordings? They all sounded like they were pieced together on some ancient 1971 mix board. I had high hopes for this. ricardo

[Guest nowhining]

Hmmmm... Maybe if the VOLUNTEERS who recorded the voice sets had access to the voice studio that MS used, then they'd sound better. Maybe you'd like to contribute some of that money you put into your e-peen, which you must be proud of to post in your sig, and provide better facilities for the VOLUNTEERS. If not, then drop your condescending attitude and say to yourself, "You know what, the voices just aren't what I was expecting." No need to moan on the boards about how you're not going to buy it. No one cares, really.