Shenmue 2 Full English Xbox Speech mod for Sega Dreamcast

[9646gt]

So this excited me enough to register I am trying to buy the Korean CD-R's that were posted above and have a couple issues. Firstly, the SmartPlus.com link seems to have way cheaper shipping to the US but Even thought I can add other items on the website to my cart, clicking buy or add to cart on the CDs does nothing in either Safari OR Chrome. Anyone else have this issue?

The GMarket site charges $37 to ship to the states. So that option is out unless there is no other choice :( Can someone please try the SmartPlus site and see if it works for you? Thanks guys

[Anthony817]

Agent_Morgan is buying some, when he is done he will tell you what site he got it from. The first site linked for them showed $3 something to ship and like $9 something to buy. I hope you can get it working, $37 to ship is FUCKING RETARDED! You can get them shipped from Asia snail mail for very cheap, but it can take 2-3 months to get to you.

[9646gt]

lol I just need a link to buy them that will not cost a small fortune haha. I can spend the 2 months of waiting replaying the first game ;) Are the Numbers brand discs still ok to use? I found them on TaoBao and there is an english ordering site that can do the order. It's like $4 or so for 10 of them.

[Anthony817]

Hit me with a link for them and I will tell you. For sure the Banana discs and the MediaRange 100min 900mb discs are FUBAR.

[9646gt]

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... t=9#detail

[zaneiken]

For any Aussies on this site, these are the discs that I've been using for the past few years. Taiwanese-made, printable surface, and work beautifully.
http://officeideas.com.au/product.php?prod=100B1551.3

[Anthony817]

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 ... t=9#detail

Hum, never heard about those. I wouldn't buy any that are untested. Just wait for Agent to get back to respond here and he will tell you how he gets on with buying them.

I would hate for you to waste cash on them. I bought from TaoBao before, actually the Dreamcast SD adapter in 2011 and it took ages to get to me.

For any Aussies on this site, these are the discs that I've been using for the past few years. Taiwanese-made, printable surface, and work beautifully.
http://officeideas.com.au/product.php?prod=100B1551.3

Holy shit those are a GREAT price!

Edit: Wait, are those Aussie prices? Fuck those should be significantly less if they do internationally! I remember like 3 years back Aussie and Yank Dollar were damn near the same exchange rate. Surprisingly now it is not so.

[zaneiken]

Holy shit those are a GREAT price!

Edit: Wait, are those Aussie prices? Fuck those should be significantly less if they do internationally! I remember like 3 years back Aussie and Yank Dollar were damn near the same exchange rate. Surprisingly now it is not so.

Prices are in AUD. Even if these guys shipped internationally, Australia Post's rates aren't too crash hot, especially for heavy items like this.

[Anthony817]

Yeah, I got ya. That is fine because I had to pay a lot for the shipping of the 100min 900mb MediaRange discs from the UK so it is interesting to see the shipping prices of these. I am located in Texas and get stuff from all over the world shipped to me so knowing prices helps me and others.

[Nico0020]

So I have tried both the 80min and 99 min release of this and they are both pretty similar audio wise. The 99 min audio is better, but its still more degraded than even the 80min Shenmue undub. Is it just not possible to get the English audio on a 99min CD-R without downgrading the audio a ton? Even though I prefer the JP audio, I'd still love to have a custom English disc version of the game too.

[Agent_Morgan]

Erm. I just ordered it directly from the site that doof_warrior posted. There was only one shipping option for international, so I took the $37 hit. Didn't see any other choice, really.

So I have tried both the 80min and 99 min release of this and they are both pretty similar audio wise. The 99 min audio is better, but its still more degraded than even the 80min Shenmue undub. Is it just not possible to get the English audio on a 99min CD-R without downgrading the audio a ton? Even though I prefer the JP audio, I'd still love to have a custom English disc version of the game too.

I really don't know what you guys want. Did you actually play the 80 minute version through in its entirety? Because that link that doof_warrior posted was a cutscene from Disc 2, which Discs 2 & 3 have the absolute worst audio quality of the 80min set, and I remember distinctly just how horrible Xiuying in particular sounded. The audio in that link sounded nothing like it. The audio speech quality between the two versions is not similar or comparable at all. The only part of the 80 minute version that the audio in that clip is comparable to is Disc 4, which sounded great to my ears, especially coming off of two discs with damn 8bit NES cartridge speech quality. That's not even an exaggeration on Discs 2 & 3. Whatever slight compression is present on what I've heard of the 99min version (Disc 4 & doof's clip) is so negligible it doesn't even really deserve to be acknowledged; not when you have the 80 minute version to compare it to.

[Nico0020]

I have to redact my statement. I had mislabled one of my 80 versions as 99 min. I decided to check again after your post and saw it was the wrong disc. My mistake.

I played around on disc 1 a bit. It seems to depend on the dialog and which NPCs. The 99 min version is far better than the 80 min version, but some NPCs are still a bit robotic, but its quite good. I can handle the 99min version, though I am still curious about my original question.

Is it just not possible to fit the audio without downsampling it? I'm guessing the original xbox files are quite large due to them having a lot of space to work with on DVD at the time?

[Agent_Morgan]

Is it just not possible to fit the audio without downsampling it? I'm guessing the original xbox files are quite large due to them having a lot of space to work with on DVD at the time?

I'm not sure, myself. I know that Shenmue II has a bit of unused and useless assets and whatnot that can be removed without affecting the game at all, and free up some space. James Reiner was working on removing these assets for a new 80 minute dub with better quality, but canned the project because apparently it was just not possible. I don't think anyone's attempted it with the 99 minute version, but something tells me the improvements would be minimal.

[Gebirgskuchen]

I played around on disc 1 a bit. It seems to depend on the dialog and which NPCs. The 99 min version is far better than the 80 min version, but some NPCs are still a bit robotic, but its quite good. I can handle the 99min version, though I am still curious about my original question.

How far did you play?
I played it for a about 30 minutes and all characters I encountered, also characters like Joy sounded like cyborgs.

[Nico0020]

Only for about 30 mintues. I ran around the first area talking to random people. Here is an example of the downsampled audio in the 99 minute version. Please note that not all NPCs sound like this, the free speech seems better than the cutscenes.

phpBB [video]

Sorry for the shakyness, I recorded from my phone, but you can easily hear the audio.