MilkmanDan

Which application? I'm pretty good in spoken Thai and fair in written, my wife is a native Thai speaker, and I have Thai students that I can assign "projects" to. So, between all of that I could probably contribute or fully handle a Thai localization.

Using headphones bypasses the audio being piped through the HDMI stuff that introduces the slowdown (as long as the headphones are plugged into your soundcard not the TV), so that should be OK. I use HDMI for video to my TV/monitor, but I use fiber optic out from my motherboard into a 5.1 receiver for audio. Rocksmith doesn't use DTS, so my receiver only outputs stereo with the game -- but it is still nice to have the receiver sending bass to a big subwoofer, that I also use for a footstool. :)

I think with the fancy graphics turned down and some tweaking, you should be able to improve on that amount of lag quite a bit. Look for that ini file and try those tweaks. Hardware wise, you're probably using the best setup (direct audio out of the soundcard) but there is a chance that onboard audio from your motherboard could be lower latency. I'd leave that as a last resort if you can't get much better results with the X-Fi though. Before doing any tweaks to the Rocksmith.ini file, wouldn't hurt to make a backup copy of it. That way if something screws up a lot you can just revert. But I got good results following those steps; I'm guessing my lag went from 250ms or so (on up to pretty close to 500ms if I used HDMI) down to something maybe in the 20s -- not completely lag free like going straight into an amp, but minimal enough that I don't really notice it. The more extensive guide I read said that using the Win32UltraLowLatencyMode option could help also, but that crashed out for me I assume because I'm running Windows 7 x64. Since you have 4 gigs of RAM plus 512+ in your 8800 (I forget the exact stats for that vid card), you're *probably* running a 64 bit Windows (if you aren't, you aren't actually getting full use of your RAM). But if you happen to still be on 32 bit Windows, could be worth trying that option also.

Your timing is better than mine. I need a full percentage point better than you to score the same as you do. I've noticed I need to hit my notes a half second early for perfect registering. Is there some setting I can adjust for this, or is my old computer to blame? Anyone? Do you hear a noticeable delay between when you first hear the unamplified sound coming from your bass strings and then hear that same sound picked up and amplified by Rocksmith/your PC? Try strumming/playing the same single note repeatedly at a fairly fast rate. If it starts to feel hard to keep in time with yourself, that may be because on your bass you are a note or two ahead of the sound coming out of Rocksmith. If you are getting that king of delay/lag, there are ways to minimize it. First big one is, *don't use HDMI for video and audio*. HDMI does some audio signal processing that introduces a good amount of delay, so switching to headphones or standard audio out from your PC will almost certainly be better. From there, things get more complicated if you want to squeeze the lowest-latency possible. Short version is to find your Rocksmith.ini file and tweak 2 settings: LatencyBuffer and MaxOutputBufferSize. If your LatencyBuffer is set to a number over 1 (say, "LatencyBuffer=4" in that ini file), try decreasing it by one, saving, and starting up Rocksmith. If you get weird, artifacty sound during the game startup and game audio in general, you have dropped it too low. The sound is hard to describe, but you'll know it when you hit it. Anyway, keep on subtracting 1, saving, and starting up Rocksmith until either A) you get the weird audio freakyness in-game (in which case you should revert it to the lowest number you can without the weird sound) or B|) you get it down to 1 ("LatencyBuffer=1" in the ini) with no audio weirdness. From there, you do almost the same thing but with the MaxOutputBufferSize variable. However, it will likely be set to a number in the hundreds or thousands, so instead of subtracting 1 try dividing it by 2. If you see "MaxOutputBufferSize=880", change it to 440, save, and start up Rocksmith, again listening for weird audio. Keep going until you get the audio weirdness, and then you can bump it up and feather it a bit to try to find the lowest Buffer Size possible. I've got a relatively beefy PC, but for reference my numbers are: LatencyBuffer=1 MaxOutputBufferSize=160 Those numbers will be dependent on your audio hardware (soundcard or onboard), connection type (HDMI, fiber optic, or standard 1/8" audio jack), etc. If you can't get good/tolerable results with one option, you can change your audio configuration (like switch from using a dedicated soundcard to onboard audio, or a USB soundcard, or whatever) and try again. I've read about some people that assumed Rocksmith would work best with a high-end soundcard like a good SoundBlaster or something, but ended up getting less latency by switching to the simple onboard audio built into their motherboard. So unfortunately, it can take a lot of fiddling and tweaking to find the best possible configuration for your unique setup.

I had that song in my DLC folder (as a bass dude and big Metallica fan), but I think I've only ever tried it twice. I learned the intro/few opening bars many years ago before Rocksmith was a thing, but didn't get far into the song at all. Anyway, I loaded it up again just to see what would happen. At 75% speed through the whole song, I got 86% accuracy. At full speed, I bet that would drop to 70%ish, but I didn't actually try that yet. :) There are other songs that I might struggle to get 70% accuracy in at full speed, or 85% with RR slowdown. Like some of the Rush stuff, Black Betty is pretty damn hard, Muse Hysteria, etc. But Anesthesia is right up there for hardest sustained difficulty through a whole song of anything that I've ever tried. To me, it is a legit 10. I'm sure someone could argue for it being a 9 by naming songs that are harder. But if anyone wants to try to argue it out of legit Master Class Difficulty of 9-10 ... they are going to have an uphill battle, and I'd LOVE to see them put money where their mouth is and play it while making it look easy. If selected for MC Bass, I hereby predict an over/under accuracy of 96% for the week's winner. B)

Back to business at hand (MC Bass): I'll bet that was 4 misses, so each miss worth .2% accuracy in SA. 100% would be tough, but not completely out of the realm of possibility for me, I think.

Welcome aboard and that's a hell of a first entry! 100% Master Mode B) /stylin'

@@Shiroo -- Update to Exo Politics is nice, felt solid throughout on bass. Should have gone straight to Score Attack: Good fit for advanced, especially with the difficulty 6 rating and therefore exempt from leveling. Release the hounds, full speed ahead, no-holds barred rumble for 100% at Advanced Bass! (and consequence free, no fear of level up)

OK. I'll shut up about it. :)

I like that idea, @@Rodman. MC Bass gets its own little universe: Only MC Bass participants can add songs to the Song Selection List specifically for MC Bass, by adding them in the normal way but noting the bass difficulty as 9-10. Lead or rhythm arrangements are not required for such songs.Difficulty has to be confirmed as legit 9-10 by another MC Bass participant (in the comment columns) before the song is eligible to be chosen.As long as there is at least 1 song that meets those specs in the list, MC Bass for the week is chosen by www.random.org from 1 to the number of suitable songs.If no suitable songs are in the list, revert to default where MC = hardest bass arrangement of the 4 normally selected songs.MC Bass (including me) don't try to fix what isn't broken and/or mess with Advanced, Int, or Beginner selections or difficulty ratings. Hands off. I'd even refrain from boring everyone with my bass difficulty posts. (big ol' pot sweetener right there!)ALL leveling from Advanced to MC Bass is strictly voluntary. Once you're there, you are stuck in it unless you meet the current level down rules about weeks in a row of low accuracy (70% I think?) or complete non-participation (4-5 weeks?). Maybe an additional rule that says if you've *won* an MC Bass selection with an agreed upon difficulty of 9-10, no level-downs for you ever. That seems like it would kill a couple birds with one stone. MC Bass gets to put our money where our mouth is and try to choose full-on hard songs. The Advanced -> MC Bass transition issue (which I feel is NOT *100%* solved by "no level ups for song under class difficulty") gets a potentially better solution -- but that should be subject to confirmation by Advanced/Int/Beginner participants. Basically no additional work is added to Mortalo and other organizer's dockets; selecting the MC Bass song would be on the shoulders of those participants only. And last but not least, maybe we avoid some of the weekly drama (sorry for contributing to it) about this.

I like this! But, I think that there tend to be more players here that see lead guitar as the main event, and more participants in the guitar side in general. So, even if bass was the "primary" path for song selection one out of every 3-4 weeks instead of half of the time, I still think that could be a good change. Maybe even throw Rhythm into the rotation, to make sure there is a suitable Advanced and MC Rhythm selection some weeks (focus on filling those). Like: Week 1 - Select for primary being lead. Suitable MC, Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner all chosen for lead. Rhythm gets whatever songs fit for as many as are available (rhythm arrangement not required, so could potentially be nothing). Bass arrangements are required, but we follow the current system of hardest of the 4 = MC, on down to easiest being Beginner. Week 2 - Select to prioritize the Rhythm paths with the most participants (probably Advanced and MC). Choose 2 songs that fit those difficulty levels, and then try to fill in 4 levels of lead as secondary goal, but MC lead may end up just being hardest of the 4 and so on. Bass arrangements still required, but again just set hardest = MC and on down. Week 3 - Repeat week 1 format. Week 4 - Select first 2 songs to prioritize suitable selections for MC and Advanced Bass (most popular bass divisions). Fill 4 levels of lead from there, hardest = MC. Int and Beginner bass get best matches available. ...? -> Repeat -> Profit

@@then3verend - Here's how I think about bass difficulty. We've got the classes defined by a name, and a difficulty range tied to that name: Beginner = 1-3, Intermediate = 4-6, Advanced = 7-8, Master Class = 9-10. Rocksmith is a good tool, even for absolute beginners. So to me, Beginner should really range down to absolute beginner. I've actually put my bass (and guitar) into the hands of people who have never picked up either instrument before and seen how they handle Rocksmith. In an hour or so, they can usually plunk out some of the basslines that I would rate as a "1" on difficulty, to a decent degree of accuracy (80%+), although by that point they've probably near butchered their fingers. Still, given a week, they'd be getting accuracies in the 90's. "Intermediate" is harder to nail down, but I picture that as someone who has a grasp of the instrument, understands all the basics, and can pull off all of the basic techniques like slides and HoPos (and at least power chords for lead guitar, or a decent array of real chords for rhythm) given enough attempts. Depending on how much practice they get, a person might have been playing for a year or more but still fit here. To me "Advanced" suggests the same thing as intermediate, but combined with the ability to sight-read and play songs to a reasonably high degree of accuracy on first playthroughs. I wouldn't have fit in my definition of advanced when I started playing Rocksmith about a year ago, but intermediate would be fair. At some point, without even really knowing it was happening, I went from what I'd call intermediate to advanced. I remember early on, I tried to play Burnin' For You by Blue Oyster Cult. First try I got somewhere in the low 60's for accuracy, and decided "whoa, that song is way out of my league". Never tried it again for 4-5 months, then loaded it up and got a pretty easy 95+. Now, that song seems "dead easy" to me ... but I can still remember the time when it was just plain beyond my skills. Master Class kind of suffers from just being "better than Advanced, you'll know it when you see it", which I'll admit that in my rating system leaves quite a bit of space for just 2 numbers on the scale (difficulty 9-10). I guess that I feel like my time with Rocksmith developed me into a shoestring MC participant (and I'm happy and comfortable with that) -- you, Blazi, and frippchen are the definite real deal. Still we all need to keep in mind that what seems easy to us might very well be a good and appropriate challenge for those in the Advanced/Int/Beginner groups. I think it is completely fair to say that bass, on average, tends to be easier than guitar. There are plenty of bass parts that require a LOT of skill, and plenty of bassists with really amazing skills at their instrument. But, on average, a lot of bass parts in songs are just not as hard as their guitar parts. Even Cliff Burton, Geddy Lee, etc. ride the root sometimes. So, we're going to have a hard time finding a song every week that fits legitimately into that 9-10 difficulty spot. 20% or 50% like in your earlier post seem like pretty close to as good as we can hope for. And that was only a 20 week sample, and the Championship is now up to week 69. I guess what I'm saying is, I hope we can find some more stuff to legitimately hit that 9-10 rating too -- but it isn't going to happen every week. Even if we selected 1 song per week as "designated MC bass", without needing to have guitar parts, I think it would be pretty tough to fill a cherry-picked 20 week sample set with only CDLC or default Rocksmith 2014 songlist selections...

I don't have any issue with the specific number values of the bonus. I think that it is a good idea to encourage Master Mode, and the numbers you suggested sound like a good way to do that. ...I just know that I personally won't be doing it -- I'm happy with using Rocksmith as a sightread tool. If I get less lazy and decide to set a personal goal of trying to do some songs on Master Mode, it would definitely be on dead easy beginner songs. And I honestly think I'm probably too lazy to even go for that ... kind of like my goal to "work on using fingers more", which is perpetually stuck in 1st gear. :)

Personally, Master Mode does not coincide with my own goals. So, I'm tempted to vote no. BUT, the reality is that having bonus for MM scores wouldn't negatively affect my own personal goals either, and it might be more in the spirit of the Championship. As a result, I'll abstain from voting. If others want it, that's fine with me. If not, that's OK too.

I fear you can´t - you will only have the scores of the 100% runs Yup, noticed that problem.

(wrote this about 8 hours ago, power outage before I finished, been off all day and just back now) About Master Mode scoring: Instead of a flat percent bonus to accuracy, or bonus based on song difficulty, why not use the function of Rocksmith that already gives a bonus for Master Mode: Score Attack scores. Say that instead of accuracy (down to hundredths of a percent) being the PRIMARY/1st way to determine rank, what if we stepped down the importance of that by counting all accuracies rounded down to the nearest 1 percent or half percent as being equal. So, anything in 99-100%, or 99.5-100% accuracy would be a tie. Remove streak as a tiebreaking factor, and then determine ranks by whoever has the highest SA Score. Example: A gets 99.2% Accuracy, but MM Score Attack score of 2,100,000 B gets 99.9% Accuracy, but plays in SA Hard and scores 1,700,000 C gets 100% Accuracy, but only in Learn A Song. D gets 98.8% Accuracy, SA Hard 1,400,000 With 1 percent stepped "pools", 99-100% accuracies are all equal and then ranked by score. So, A > B > C > D. With .5 percent stepped "pools", 99-99.49 are equal, 99.5-100 are equal, then rank by score. So, B > C > A > D. With pools set to the right size, I think that this would 1) encourage/reward Master Mode entries, 2) make phantom misses less important (although at the high end those are still going to factor into your Score Attack score), 3) discourage Learn a Song entries (which can be gamed/faked easier than SA scores), and 4) place a slight premium on timing AND accuracy over sheer accuracy as it is now. I think that would accomplish most of the positive things about encouraging Master Mode, but would feel a little bit less artificial than just giving a flat or graduated bonus to accuracy for MM runs. Score Attack already rewards a pretty significantly higher score for a decent MM run over a perfect or near-perfect run on Hard. So, as long as the pools were set to some fair number that everybody was OK with, it seems like that might be a good way to handle things. I should look back through the leaderboard for past weeks and see if that change would have frequently resulted in different rankings, and if the times it would have been different seem justified.

Big props to you guys doing anything, even the Beginner songs, in Master Mode. Even on the songs that I have played the most (Jeremy and Black by Pearl Jam both have 20+ plays in my current profile, but More Than A Feeling by Boston I think is my all-time max including before my profile corrupted), I go full-on deer in the headlights in Master Mode. Hopeless. It actually pisses me off so much that I turned MM off in the options. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could learn some songs to where I could play them without the visual prompts... But in the time that it took me to do that for 1 song, I could get good at maybe 20+ songs with using Rocksmith to sightread. I think I have more fun with option B ... but I should try to do option A at least a little. So again, big /tiphat to anyone working on that at any song level -respect!

One issue I'm considering is that for the past 3 weeks, we've had songs that we consider a "true Advanced" by difficulty rating ... they have just been pegged as the MC songs because they have been the hardest of the 4. Part of me thinks that if we're really being fair with the difficulty ratings, the advanced players could/should be doing those songs. They don't need to be in direct competition with the MC players, but if the song is really right for their level then why not let them play those songs with their scores competing only with the other Advanced players? That also puts a more rigorous test on the fairness of the difficulty ratings, and the level up system. Rather than just "nobody has to level up this week because the song isn't hard enough", which just disguises/ignores level-up system problems, they'd be more out in the open. That may very well NOT be what the advanced participants want to do, though... So take it with a big big grain of salt.

You're playing the wrong instrument! ;) I lol'ed on that one -- you're 100% right! :D

Honestly, I agree that leveling up on *1* 100% can be problematic. Especially for bass. 10 weeks in a row of 100's would be pretty extreme though... I think that sets the bar so high that nobody would ever transition. Give the last 10 weeks of Advanced songs to then3verend, Blazikiller, and frippchen and I think it would be a pretty tough challenge for them to hit 100% in ALL of them. BUT, considering that MC Bass is frequently a 100% shootout, I think that nothing would be wrong with that happening in other tiers than MC also. That is already the case if the song selection for the week is lower than the difficulty range of the class -- which apparently applies this week. So, you and Rodman and everybody else could all get 100's this week and all stay Advanced. It would be nice if that didn't rely on the song being (perhaps artificially) given a difficulty rating lower than what it might deserve, though. I think the general goal of the rules is to make sure that nobody is unfairly dominating their class when they should/could be facing competition more at their level in a higher class. The rules are trying to accomplish that, and I think they work pretty well for guitar (from what I can tell). I 100% agree that they are more problematic for bass. Nobody stays in Beginner bass for more than a few weeks. Pretty close to the same for Intermediate. Advanced sticks out as a problem also. I don't know how to fix them in a way that doesn't put a lot more work onto the organizers. The nerd in me says that it should be stats based... If your accuracy rating / score is more than 1-1.5 standard deviations above the mean of the participants in your class for 3 out of 5 weeks or something, you level up. That way, if everyone is getting 100's, it is fine. You only level up if most of the participants are getting 97s and you get 99s-100s for a few consistent weeks. BUT, that would be kind of a bitch to calculate, and the organizers already have a LOT to do with picking 4 songs and matching them to 4 tiers in 3 paths. Maybe the focus on difficulty ratings and level up exemptions for songs under the class difficulty will be a good-enough solution long term. I think we should give that a shot for a while more before doing anything drastic... That's my vote (which should count for less since I'm not actually in Advanced). Sorry.

Oh no! Chords! Gonna need some riff repeating to get ... less "subpar" on that. -EDIT- Played through all the way at 60% speed, then one more time at full speed: That helped! Went from 66% to 85% (86% was from try 2 at 60% speed). Still need practice though.

Sounds fine to me -- fair and makes it easier on the record keeping. So I'll /second it -- good idea.

First Tries (except for Beg and Int) on bass: Beginner: Bob Marley - Stir It Up Yeah, so ... lowest accuracy score of the week for me on the beginner song. This was technically my 2nd attempt on it, but 1st this week. I had 1 play with accuracy in the 60% range, which made me wonder what was up (hadn't played the song in a long while, couldn't remember). Well, there's one specific note in the main riff that Rocksmith just does NOT want to detect for me. Miss or Late every time, even if I am 100% sure that I'm nailing it. I'm thinking that happened the first time I tried the song also, and annoyed me enough that I quit about halfway through the song, hence my accuracy in the 60s from that first try. I need to try it with my other bass, see if there is just a weird intonation spot with my 4 string or something. Aside from that issue (which seems to just affect me), it is an easyish and fun song. Enough string skipping and shifting that I'd be tempted to rate it a 3 though. Probably 2-3. Intermediate: Jerry C - Canon Rock Had quite a few plays of this on my profile before it got corrupted some months back, so I knew this was possible. Wasn't really expecting it on my first try this week though. Not tough for pick-using bass players like me. Bit harder for fingers, but it isn't so fast as to be impossible that way. Easier with fingers than the Dragonforce song a couple weeks ago, I'd imagine. Given the speed, relatively static frethand position, but small number of slides and other techs... I'll say difficulty 4. Maybe 5. Good fit for Int. Advanced: Muse - Exo Politics Muse is pretty hit or miss for me. This one hit, big time! Great sounding song, very fun to play. Definitely going to do some more plays on this one, and keep it in the DLC folder after the week is done. Difficulty wise, I think the aforementioned 6 sounds fair and solid, but I should confirm with some more playthroughs. MC: Megadeth - Super Collider I haven't listened to much new Megadeth, but this one makes me think I should. Good song, fun to play, challenging but not HARD. I should be able to get 99%+ personally, and I forsee a logjam at 100% amongst the MC pros... For a difficulty rating... I'm thinking 7-8, slightly tending more towards the 7? I would be interested in seeing how Advanced Bass players do on it, because that would help me peg down if my new efforts at difficulty ratings are in the ballpark that I'm shooting for. Basically, what I'm saying is that I think that getting a 100% on this song OR a 99.5% on songs of this difficulty or higher would actually be a pretty legit bar to hurdle to transition from Advanced to MC class. But I wouldn't want anybody to level up when they didn't want to just because I want to collect data... So if and Advanced folks do want to try the song keep that in mind. Technically I think the rules say that if you post a screenshot for more than one class, the highest difficulty one is your entry for the week, although it seems like that generally isn't enforced. But if you're advanced and want to try the song, to be on the safe side you could just post your thoughts on difficulty rather that a screenshot entry. Unless @@Mortalo would like to clarify the rules, maybe my interpretation is wrong on that.

@@Mortalo @All - .... :) we have to go over that again ... We have to stick to the rules - or change it!!! As long as Muse Bass stays a 6 we should be leveled up at 99.5 Or we agree on a personal no-vote option against auto-level up (the classmates should still be able to push you ;) ) {snip} -EDIT- Sorry, made mostly redundant by Mortalo's response above. I got sidetracked and came back, posted this late. @@Mortalo will have to chime in, but as I understand it: Difficulty classes are as follows: 1-3 Beginner / 4-6 Intermediate / 7-8 Advanced / 9-10 MC If the final difficulty rating for the song in your path is lower than that designated range, your accuracy does not count towards the auto-level up rules, either with a 100% one-off, or the 3 weeks of whatever (those specific numbers are different for lead/rhythm vs. bass). So, if the song is really rated as a 6 difficulty, nobody will be leveled up with a high accuracy or a 100% battle on it, because 6 is technically a high-end intermediate level song. ...This rule is what prompted me to (try to) get more serious about suggesting fair difficulty ratings for Mortalo to consider -- particularly because that transition from Advanced to MC Bass tends to be brutal on people. Looking back on past leaderboards, I think there is plenty of evidence that people have been leveled up there, lost heart and enjoyment with the big shift in competition, and ended up not sticking around very long after that. I think that is too bad -- I really enjoy a more active Championship like we've got going now, compared to the times when it has been a bit more sparse. I don't mind not winning, as long as I'm legitimately in the ballpark of being competitive with the class. But I think that in the past, staying competitive in Advanced (or Int when we had 3 classes only) pretty much forced the level up to MC (just because a LOT of Int/Advanced players were getting 100% runs or weeks of 99%+), well before people were actually ready to be competitive there. Hopefully being a bit more brutal with the difficulty ratings plus removing level-ups for accuracy on a song lower than class difficulty range will help.

Shit! After I followed Motive's instructions on converting that 12\1 slide into an unpitched slide, I completely forgot about updating the file. If you're not massively annoyed by the mere thought of playing the song again, you can try version 2.1 with that (single) change: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrScnViTnNyQ0dtbmM/view?usp=sharing Sorry, can't believe I brain farted and forgot that. I think there is a good chance that will help, because the way I had it charted before (12 to 1 slide) might convince Rocksmith that it NEEDS to hear the pitch at the beginning AND end of the slide. Whereas with the tech note / unpitched slide, it at least shows up on screen as "yeah, just slide down some amount that feels right". Not 100% sure it will change how it registers, but seems like it might. How's the sync feel throughout? Sorry you guys ended up being guinea pigs, but I think it is at least better synced than the original... :) At the end of the week I'll contact the author of the original and see if he would like to merge in my bass arrangement.