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Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

wiki.mumble.info

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Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#21

Post by TheCapn »

nightski wrote: post #12
snvzz wrote: post #9

I'd add "difficult to use" to that list. Difficult even for an engineer to use. Terrible. It works great once you figure it out, but it could use a better user and admin experience.

Interesting, used to be in a clan of over 100 people that used it no problem, very few of which were engineers. Not sure what particular functionality held you up?

The only issue I've ever had with it was that friends couldn't seem to connect to my self-hosted server when I shared the URL in Steam chat. Turns out that when you copy/paste from Steam's chat interface (on the old one at least) it automatically prepended "http://" to the URL which Mumble was upset about.

These were engineers too, and they didn't realize that pasting an http://URL to an IP/Port entry might not jive. So take anecdotes with the grain of salt they deserve because his "engineers", my "engineers" and your "engineers" are all vastly different people.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#22

Post by Hikikomori »

I remember our transition from ventrilo to mumble. Everyone kept talking over each other because of the low latency, we were used to start talking before others finished. Jumped the ship to discord on day 1 though, mostly for the chat features but also different communities you find there and easily can keep track of.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#23

Post by emteycz »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #7

I really appreciate Mumble's dedication to lowering latency. Latency is a silent killer of conversation quality. When it's relatively small, you don't notice it's there, but it makes conversations more stilted because everyone's responses are just a bit less immediate. You chalk it up to the person or situation, rather than the software. I'm not seeing anyone make significant attempts to solve or reduce this problem.…

> To my ears, 2010-era Skype had lower latency than any of the modern VOIP systems in use today (including Skype).

Yeah! What happened?

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#24

Post by toastercat »

I still prefer to use Mumble over Discord for its low latency, low system requirements, simplicity, free software license, and voice activity options / wizard. I created a Discord server to fill the void of a Slack-like chat for our group, but even after we had created the Discord, we still preferred Mumble for VoIP.

We ended up replacing the Discord chat with Riot.im eventually anyway.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#25

Post by ethebubbeth »

I still use mumble with friends for general voice chat.

I really wish more games implemented its MumbleLink API for positional audio between clients. https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link

For example, GW2 implements so people sound relative to where your characters are if they are on the same map. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:MumbleLink

The API has also allowed for other tools such at GW2 Tactical Overlay (http://www.gw2taco.com/) to present additional positional information.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#26

Post by rhn_mk1 »

nightski wrote: post #12
snvzz wrote: post #9

I'd add "difficult to use" to that list. Difficult even for an engineer to use. Terrible. It works great once you figure it out, but it could use a better user and admin experience.

Interesting, used to be in a clan of over 100 people that used it no problem, very few of which were engineers. Not sure what particular functionality held you up?

Setting up the automatic transmission is notoriously causing problems. The lack of echo cancellation and no normalization of audio levels are interfering with discussions as well.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#27

Post by mrguyorama »

emteycz wrote: post #23
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #7

I really appreciate Mumble's dedication to lowering latency. Latency is a silent killer of conversation quality. When it's relatively small, you don't notice it's there, but it makes conversations more stilted because everyone's responses are just a bit less immediate. You chalk it up to the person or situation, rather than the software. I'm not seeing anyone make significant attempts to solve or reduce this problem.…

> To my ears, 2010-era Skype had lower latency than any of the modern VOIP systems in use today (including Skype). Yeah! What happened?

Skype went from point to point systems to routing through a server backend.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#28

Post by Wowfunhappy »

emteycz wrote: post #23
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #7

I really appreciate Mumble's dedication to lowering latency. Latency is a silent killer of conversation quality. When it's relatively small, you don't notice it's there, but it makes conversations more stilted because everyone's responses are just a bit less immediate. You chalk it up to the person or situation, rather than the software. I'm not seeing anyone make significant attempts to solve or reduce this problem.…

> To my ears, 2010-era Skype had lower latency than any of the modern VOIP systems in use today (including Skype). Yeah! What happened?

For Skype specifically, I noticed latency get worse around the same time Microsoft switched from P2P to dedicated servers.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#29

Post by Notorious_BLT »

I've managed to keep a group of friends using Mumble instead of Discord, and I think we've all benefited from it. My privacy-focused friend appreciates the encryption and everyone else appreciates the ability to locally mute people if they walk away with their headset hot-mic'ed. We use discord for text communication, but when people are online for games or just to chat, we use Mumble.

Re: Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software

#30

Post by toastercat »

alyandon wrote: post #20
toastercat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this before, but between myself and nine of my friends who regular a Mumble server, none of us ever had much difficulty using it. I've always thought it was simple and relatively intuitive. What about it do you find difficult as a user?

From what I vaguely recall experimenting with Mumble years ago - my biggest gripe was the lack of support for anything other certificate based user authentication which complicates the common case of "User X would like to be able to access Mumble from multiple machines".

You can export and import certificate files across machines. I've done something like this in the past, and found little issue. I prefer this to something like Discord's centralized account & server system, although I know there should be better alternatives for achieving decentralization.
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