background-noise
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The Daily Grind: The soundtrack to your virtual life
I can't work without background noise and one of the great things about working from home is that I get to decide what that is. I devour boxsets and films and have endless playlists on iTunes. Recently though I've started listening to music while I play MMOs. You'd think the in-game soundtrack would suffice but I find if I'm doing something like grinding I need specific tracks. I've started listening to music while raiding which is often difficult as I'm also on voice chat talking tactics at the same time. However the music does help, especially when it comes to timed or phase encounters.I'm curious, readers, do you have playlists for raids? What about grinding? Do you find music helps you get through the more boring bits of your game of choice? On the other hand, do you think in-game music is perfect? Do you find yourself listening to other game soundtracks?
The Daily Grind: How important are incidental sounds?
One of the things that many people have raised about Runes of Magic as a reason they won't play it is the lack of incidental sounds in the game. These are the noises that we take for granted in many other games; the noise of mining or gathering, hopping on your mount, running across the ground, the sounds of spells, swords clanging, armor ringing - even things as simple as doors opening and closing. While the Runes of Magic team has assured us that they are working on fleshing out all the sounds in the world, we were a bit surprised just how much we missed them in the first place. Most of us tend to play our own music, but realized we leave incidental noises on and starkly miss their presence. This morning, we thought we'd ask you - how important are incidental, background type noises to you? While you may not pay attention to them (and honestly, you're really not supposed to) do you think your gaming would be missing something if they weren't there? If you've played a game that didn't have them, did you also find you're surprised at how much you miss them? Or do you generally play your music and just turn off all sounds?
Company files patents for tech that "virtually eliminates" cellphone background noise
Cellular-news is reporting that a company called TechnoConcepts has filed a pair of patent applications for technology that is said to " virtually eliminate background noise in cellular and other communications devices, while vividly improving the voice clarity." Basically the technology, which could either be incorporated into handsets as a stand-alone ASIC chip or integrated directly into their digital signal processors, claims to allow users to chat it up in noisy environments by filtering out the audible schwag while enhancing both audio input and output. Great, just what we need, technology that makes it easier for people to annoy the rest of us in public. According to TechnoConcepts, their tech should be available to rude-talkers worldwide sometime next year.
