Electronic Arts MicroTalk

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EA MicroTalk (also UTalk or UTK) is a linear-predictive speech codec used in various games by Electronic Arts. The earliest known game to use it is Beasts & Bumpkins (1997). The codec has a bandwidth of 11.025kHz (sampling rate 22.05kHz) and frame size of 20ms (432 samples) and only supports mono. It is typically encoded at 32 kbit/s.

The codec was reverse-engineered by trass3r on August 05, 2010 and was later analyzed by Andrew D'Addesio on January 12, 2012.

MicroTalk has been seen in several containers, depending on the game:

  • PT/.m10 (Beasts and Bumpkins)
  • Maxis UTK (The Sims Online, SimCity 4)
  • SCxl (FIFA 2001 PS2, FIFA 2002 PS2)

Variants

There are a few variants of MicroTalk:

  • MicroTalk 10:1 (codec_id=0x04 in EA SCxl) and MicroTalk 5:1 (codec_id=0x16) are really the same codec; the encoder simply chooses different compression parameters (reduced_bw is enabled in 10:1 and disabled in 5:1). MicroTalk 10:1 is typically encoded at 32kbit/s; 5:1 is encoded at 64kbit/s.
  • MicroTalk Revision 3 (codec_revision=3 in SCxl) is a variant which supports raw PCM samples.

Huffman tables

Normal model (Table 0):

Huffman code Output command Meaning Next model
0 0 4 Insert one 0.0f MDL_NORMAL
0 1 5 Insert one -1.0f MDL_NORMAL
1 0 6 Insert one +1.0f MDL_NORMAL
1 1 0 0 9 Insert one -2.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 0 1 10 Insert one +2.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 0 0 13 Insert one -3.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 0 1 14 Insert one +3.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 0 0 17 Insert one -4.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 0 1 18 Insert one +4.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 0 0 21 Insert one -5.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 0 1 22 Insert one +5.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 25 Insert one -6.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 26 Insert one +6.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 Insert a pulse with magnitude >= 7.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 Insert between 7 and 70 0.0fs MDL_NORMAL

Large-pulse model (Table 1):

Huffman code Output command Meaning Next model
0 0 4 Insert one 0.0f MDL_NORMAL
0 1 0 7 Insert one -1.0f MDL_NORMAL
0 1 1 8 Insert one +1.0f MDL_NORMAL
1 0 0 11 Insert one -2.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 0 1 12 Insert one +2.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 0 0 15 Insert one -3.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 0 1 16 Insert one +3.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 0 0 19 Insert one -4.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 0 1 20 Insert one +4.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 0 0 23 Insert one -5.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 0 1 24 Insert one +5.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 0 0 27 Insert one -6.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 0 1 28 Insert one +6.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 Insert a pulse with magnitude >= 7.0f MDL_LARGEPULSE
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 Insert between 7 and 70 0.0fs MDL_NORMAL