15.2 Player music

[SpiritusLOTRO]

I've submitted a copy of this to lotrobugs. Let's see what Turbine makes of this.

Good work. It feels like the "snap-pop" issue is one of optimization, and that would jive with your results. I know just enough about the technical end to be dangerous, but not enough to be a source. I'd keep pinging them on this and hopefully they can nail it down.

[Emere]

Seems you are not the only one having sound issues like that
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...67298-No-Sound

[Silmelin]

Seems you are not the only one having sound issues like that
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...67298-No-Sound

Oh! I thought I was the only one getting no sound when logging in sometimes Well, I thought I was alone since I know why it happens for me, but maybe it's not related at all?

I have had this problem happen to me several times, and it has always happened when I have been restless and... Well, normally I calmly hit Esc twice to cut the intro videos to get to the character select, but when I have been kind of restless I've hit Esc a bunch of times superfast before the intro even started properly, out of the wrong belief that it'll go faster if I do that, but that just made LOTRO start with no sound so I'd have to login again

I used to do stuff like that every time something started to load slow or "lag" on my computer in the olden days, and yes, I know that if you bother the computer when it's desperately trying to do stuff, it'll go even slower... but it felt faster so I couldn't help myself

[robbie1435]

Yesterday we attempted to play a borderline overloaded song in our library, Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Spring...

The game became entirely overloaded(More than usual) and lagged the entire band and audience.

The same thing happened when we played Die Moldau, on a lesser scale of course... However, it would seem that the bass creates most of it, as when I dropped my theorbo, the lag lessened, a lot.

[Kirgoin]

Yes, there are bands in LotRO who like the new system. Let them play on Weatherstock. There are tunes that can be played and some tunes do well, but our band don't have the time to rewrite all the tunes every few weeks and then they sound life- or listless compared to before the update.

So we did stop our concerts and our engagement gets less and less.... Dancing became a forgotten pastime and now I have to do a skirmish.... *shudders*. But there are lots of games with battles and skirmishing and PvP, but only a few with RP and this great lore and music. I'm disappointed and will keep up submitting bug-reports, without great hope.
All you testers do a great job defining the problems I did not have the skill to describe so well. Keep it up and I will have a look from time to time if something has been done... I will retire to Thorins Hall for the time being and write some memoirs.

A very sad bard and scholar.....
Kirgoin Steelhammer on Landroval

[Emere]

Yes, there are bands in LotRO who like the new system. Let them play on Weatherstock. There are tunes that can be played and some tunes do well, but our band don't have the time to rewrite all the tunes every few weeks and then they sound life- or listless compared to before the update.

So we did stop our concerts and our engagement gets less and less.... Dancing became a forgotten pastime and now I have to do a skirmish.... *shudders*. But there are lots of games with battles and skirmishing and PvP, but only a few with RP and this great lore and music. I'm disappointed and will keep up submitting bug-reports, without great hope.
All you testers do a great job defining the problems I did not have the skill to describe so well. Keep it up and I will have a look from time to time if something has been done... I will retire to Thorins Hall for the time being and write some memoirs.

A very sad bard and scholar.....
Kirgoin Steelhammer on Landroval

~hugs~
I couldn't agree more with you. I feel like someone just punched me in the gut and took my pie.

[Silmelin]

I really don't want a rollback! It's so nice to finally have in tune instruments!
Still needs some fixing though

If it's at all possible, could you try to fix the twangy lute note, and maybe tweak the Lute volume before U16? Or whatever else the most abc-makers think would be the top problems to fix that could perhaps be done easily/quickly so they might be able to fit it in before U16 It would be of great help



And for after U16: Could you please change the "stereo-effect" on the player music? I don't like that I can hear it from the speaker that is closest to where the band is playing. If I'm at a concert and a friend walks up to, for example my left side, and I turn to the left to wave at him/her, the player music moves to the right speaker since the band is on the right side of my character.
I'd would much rather hear the music properly no matter which way I turn, as long as I'm close enough to the band

[robbie1435]

I really don't want a rollback! It's so nice to finally have in tune instruments!

In tune...

That's debatable...

[Jacinthe]

I am for a rollback too.

Yes...there were a few notes in the old musicsystem which sounded awkward and really needed to be changed.
Yes...there were some instruments missing to fill gaps in instumentation

Despite of that everything was fine for me.

Listen to old recordings. Listen to live-concerts. Listen to your favourite singers and songs ...

Is there every tone accurate and in tune?
Don't you love the raspy sound of a deep horn...humming in your guts?
And what about two instruments, slightly out of tune, tickling your ears and sences by creating a hovering tone...sounding like the voice of angels?
What about unexpected and exciting sounds in a song?

We had all that with the old music-system.

That sound is gone with the new system. The deep frequences are filtert out now. Everything, every band sounds clean and sterile. No depth...no vibration..nothing unexpected and exciting.

For some kind of music that will be fine. Maybe for meditative or hypnotic music.
Do you really want to listen to that kind of music ALL the time?
I don't.

I really tried to work with the new sounds. But I don't like the result. I'm only bored of the new sound. And I don't go to concerts anymore because of it. Every band sounds the same...boring.

These are my two cents to the topic.

Leynael
Transcriber and bandmember of Mondbarden
Belegaer

[Katiepie]

The clarinet has been changed in LOTRO recently. I think the clarinet could benefit from a) A new better quality sample over the entire range or b) Fixes to the following notes: C2 and C#2 sound rather muffled. A muffling or fuzziness is often heard over the range. F2 Has an odd scraping noise. A#2 is also problematic.
C3 to D#3 also issues with muffling and escaping of air noises. E3 and F3 have a very nasty quality in the attack of the note. G#3 has issues also and A3 is soft and muffled. B3 is buzzy. D4 has a delay on the start of the note and is Buzzy too F4 include a small click and pop. From G4 to C5 there is an issue with pitchyness, where the notes are slightly sharp. A#4 suffers a distinct lack of quality compared to the range. C5 is a little muffled. The is also issues with the overall quality of sound having a metallic quality that I would like addressed. I observe that the clarinet and Flute do not blend as well when sharing a melody.

[Ingleton]

Yesterday we attempted to play a borderline overloaded song in our library, Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Spring...

The game became entirely overloaded(More than usual) and lagged the entire band and audience.

The same thing happened when we played Die Moldau, on a lesser scale of course... However, it would seem that the bass creates most of it, as when I dropped my theorbo, the lag lessened, a lot.

How many in your band? Perhaps the number of players affects the overload?

For this iteration of the LoTRo music player I have only transcribed two sets for my 5 piece band (Birds of a Feather) - Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" and Holst's "The Planets" suites.

I played both sets in Bree on "Fireworks Hill" surrounded by festival-goers the other day - not a single problem with overloading at all.

---

With regards towards the rollback/no rollback debate - all I have to say is this:

The instruments may be in tune now, sure - but it's LIFELESS - individual band character is gone. Everyone sounds the same.

One of the biggest cons of the new system is that because of the LIFELESS TIMBRE - everything is now loaded in favor of huge bands with lots of players.
Small bands & bands made of one player and their alts (like mine) that are restricted to fewer members have lost out with this new system.

Using my band (1 player 4 alts) as an example:
In the old system you could make 5 band instruments sound like 10 or more, all because of that timbre.
The new system lacks that timbre and 5 band instruments will now only ever sound like 5 instruments.

What once was a passable if not half decent approximation of an orchestra has been nerfed into a lowly chamber group.

This effect is exacerbated even more by no longer being able to use clarinet/flute (or pipes and horn) together for vocals/strong solo's etc.

In my opinion if instruments being in tune is a pro - there are too many other cons with this new system for me to consider it anything other than a downgrade...

I think that says enough about which way I am leaning on the rollback debate.

[Emere]

The instruments may be in tune now, sure - but it's LIFELESS - individual band character is gone. Everyone sounds the same.

One of the biggest cons of the new system is that because of the LIFELESS TIMBRE - everything is now loaded in favor of huge bands with lots of players.

Trust me when I say, its not just small bands. Les Beaux Chapeaux has been testing 7-12 part songs for the last few weeks. Even the large ones sound flat and lifeless. ~hugs~

[Lolorndinfey]

Had to chime in. We're a three piece band and played a 16 song set this weekend on 8 servers. The crowd reception was pretty enthusiastic to date. From lore correct to rock ballads. We also had extra songs and had to dive into the encore segment. I guess opinions differ, and that's from the audience. There were a lot accumulated that we didn't get to all the songs transcribed so far. We normally play 9 and had to drop one of the servers because we were out of time.

I'm just curious. When you say lifeless. Do you just mean just the lower registers or the upper also? Just going over the concert list and most are polyphonic with bass and/or drum support. Maybe that's the difference? Maybe we can arrange a time to play again on the server of your choosing that we tour on? IDK. Just offering.

Roll back? Only one of us in the group thinks we should roll back. It's not perfect by far, but it's manageable. We have a rocket launch like checklist now prior to each concert, and now have added in a warm-up segment just to make sure everything is playing properly on each server. U15.3 is certainly higher maintenance, but we're adapting and managing so far. Fingers crossed. Since we're going by subjective opinion here...

P.S. Oh, these are all written and tested for U15.3, minimizing salt shaker on drums and multi-chords per instrument. Only one song delayed on a busy riff/chorus segment. Snap-pop? Yes, but sporatic and maybe 5 per song at most? Not the crackle like when we had multiple audio devices enabled on "Sound". Like I said. Not perfect by far.

[Iliander]

Roll back the music system ... PLEASE

For those who like the new system, creat new instruments with the new sound (for horn a saxophone, for lute a mandoline etc) as a compromise between the two opinions.

Ok, with the new music system the instruments sounds more clear ... but without soul, feelings, resonance, volume and timbre ... as a well-trained child.
The old system was like David Garrett play his violin, full soul and emotion.

Hard rock, metal, punk ... all music is sounding now like children rmusic.

Since half a year we have the dilemma with the changing music systems. There is no rest in our hobby.
I will not change all of my great-sounding songs, not degrade the songs ... that means I will not play my songs with the Mondbarden as long as the new music system consists solely.
Without music gives me the game nothing and so I'm not going to invest more money in Lotro.

Tunvil Wintermond
transcriber and bandmember of Mondbarden
server Belegaer

[Vyvyanne]

It is not feasible to roll back the system at this point as too many adjustments have been made.

We will address some of the note issues reported in the next few bug fix patches as we can and other reported issues including the potential of adding new instruments.

I am sorry not all of you are happy with the changes. We gathered feedback and made tweaks where we could for many months and the consensus in checking internally as well as with many of the music community was that the new system was better than the old and the preference was for getting it out before the festival season so that bands could prepare properly.

We will continue to incorporate your feedback on the new system as we move forward.

[SpiritusLOTRO]

It is not feasible to roll back the system at this point as too many adjustments have been made.

We will address some of the note issues reported in the next few bug fix patches as we can and other reported issues including the potential of adding new instruments.

I am sorry not all of you are happy with the changes. We gathered feedback and made tweaks where we could for many months and the consensus in checking internally as well as with many of the music community was that the new system was better than the old and the preference was for getting it out before the festival season so that bands could prepare properly.

We will continue to incorporate your feedback on the new system as we move forward.

It's useful to have that forwardness. It makes people's decisions on their future interactions with the game easier.

While I cannot speak to your internal discussions, I think perhaps there was a misread in the attitude of the music community. The general consensus I observed was the community saw potential for a better music system with more work, but since the product was released with 15.3 instead of U16 as was previously projected, it came out with timbre issues and technical limitations (snop-pop issue/3D directional issues) that severely cripples its usability compared to the old system. Not to mention the fairly vocal majority that spoke up in beta on disliking the new lute sample. The system desperately needed one more beta pass before release. And since all of the focus was on fixing technical issues like note-dropping -- an important thing to address for sure -- there wasn't time to address "second tier" issues like timbre. And I say "second tier" because bad sounding samples aren't game breaking from a technical standpoint, but not any less important from a product quality standpoint. And since the technical issues that needed fixing were a product of the change and not the old system, one cannot look to those fixes as an upgrade from the previous system -- and still includes technical issues that weren't previously observed (snap-pop frequency is debatable, 3D directional problems are not).

There is still promise with time, but without some sort of solid timeline -- which I know will not be divulged if even known -- it puts everyone in a bit of a bind. I suppose the more time one has to invest in testing and re-testing, the less of a hurdle it becomes, but for many of us that can't easily increase our playing time, it is a daunting prospect. The only options without increasing time investment is to cut performance lengths or cut performance frequency.

My biggest concern still remains that the readily observable waning music community will result in an overall downgrade in the development priority of the music system when passed through a simple cost-benefit analysis.

[Northwoods]

I am sorry not all of you are happy with the changes.

Not everyone will be happy until it's perfect.
It'll never be perfect.
Even if it COULD be perfect, not everyone would agree on what "perfect" means.

As I see it, the system was given a lot of love, the changes were well planned out, and you haven't stopped listening.
That tells me the appropriate response is, "Great job so far and thanks to the team for all their hard work."

[XinaLotRO]

We will address some of the note issues reported in the next few bug fix patches as we can and other reported issues including the potential of adding new instruments.

Thank you for the good news. There are a fair number of musicians who don't want to roll back. We just need to know that the remaining issues will be fixed, hopefully sooner than later so that we don't spend hours editing ABC files.

I know it wouldn't be perfect, but I'd be able to get by for now with just a few note fixes and the volume balancing because LUTES ARE TOO LOUD. Heh.

[Katiepie]

I have read through this thread, and try as best as I can to keep my ear against the musical community wall.

If you can work out the notes and timbre issues maybe the system can be played by some. I am playing some music this weekend and then in May I have a concert. This for me will be a deciding point in my lotro musical career.

What is important to me is the quality of the sound. I don't think this new system is quality - I hope it will become bareable. I also feel that we are in a state of limbo - I will see what fixes do to the system.

Personally I am sad to see so many bands playing less, or not at all now. My Community Events post on a fan site is much shorter now than it was.

I am not looking for perfection, if I was I would not be messing with midi at all.

[Pfeifenkraut]

edit: The reason for my post has been removed

[Orlor]

I check Dev Tracker daily. I was very surprised to see it aim me towards a racist post, today. Very disappointed.

I know Iliander and she is a friend. She is also German and her command of the English language is not so good. Don't be so thinned skinned about it.

[Emere]

I check Dev Tracker daily. I was very surprised to see it aim me towards a racist post, today. Very disappointed.

Oh for crying out loud. Your post is making my temper short like a hobbit who just had his pie stolen...

[Iliander]

I apologize myself. It should not be a racist remark. It was just a poorly chosen metaphor to express what I mean ... I changed it.

My English is really very bad and Google-translater my 'best friend'.

[Summer_Beor]

Not everyone will be happy until it's perfect.
It'll never be perfect.
Even if it COULD be perfect, not everyone would agree on what "perfect" means.

As I see it, the system was given a lot of love, the changes were well planned out, and you haven't stopped listening.
That tells me the appropriate response is, "Great job so far and thanks to the team for all their hard work."

Thank you! I couldn't have put it better myself!

[SchorschiSchrumpf]

So,

lets see .. to get horn and lute to a comparable volume they have to play at a difference of 3(+/- 1) lotro volume levels now - that is almost half of the available dynamic range of the game - this is the most basic adjustment a music system must have if it's for group music playing: equal volumes on all instruments

Instead of converting tunes and trying to make them sound, our music arranging has to focus now on compensating the new bugs of the music system.
It does not matter if some folks like the new system - from an objective point of view, just by looking at volume balances this new music system is worse than before.

So give us another really complete overhole of the volumes, and please get some automatic tool to fix that for you - touching 300+ tones by hand can't work out.

And after that we still have to talk about the digital sound quality of the filtered instruments! But getting the volumes right should have been the basis before continuing.