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

wiki.mumble.info

121–130 of 222 posts

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

#121

We live and die by Mumble in Eve Online. The hierarchical chat room setup is essential for large fleets.

When I tried to get into Eve, I applied to a couple corps, and they both used discord. Maybe because they were newbie-focused?

Lots of corps use discord, but at an alliance level you'll often end up with mumble for comms. Another 'dead' open source software that's used is Jabber (XMPP) for 'pings' aka broadcasts to tell people there's a fleet up.

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

#122
post #3

Discord has pretty much completely eaten Mumble's market. Free servers and a way better chat system ate Mumble's use case. TeamSpeak is still used by milsim/flightsim communities because it support plugins which integrate the in-sim radios with the VoIP system. EDIT: Got Vent and TS mixed up

I refuse to use Discord because I don't know how or to whom they are going to sell my data yet. It's possible they go to a subscription model but I doubt it, it seems more likely they'll be acquired by one of the big data brokers at some point.

They have a subscription model (Reddit gold style) and also sell games.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. In example, you've got your "logisitics" wing; in this context that's your healers. A commander ("logi-FC") within the channel issues orders to the sub-channel members, and no one outside the channel hears that. All members can still hear the parent channel. In fights with 20-50 on each side particularly, it's really something to have the "pulse of the fight" because as a healer you can tell how well that's…

That really sounds like an indispensible feature. Is Mumble the only voice chat system that provides this kind of hierarchical linking of channels, or is it available on other systems as well? If it's not available on, say, Discord, why is that? Do people just somehow make do without it? Or is there some other compensating feature?

Teamspeak does it too, but it scales a lot less.

Discord only allows you to be a membere of one channel at a time.

It is not an uncommon set-up for fleets to have the important people have their own channel talking about secret stuff and another one for the rest of the fleet.

Then the ones from the secret channel have two buttons set up, one to talk just to them and one to talk with the entire fleet.

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

#124
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really sounds like an indispensible feature. Is Mumble the only voice chat system that provides this kind of hierarchical linking of channels, or is it available on other systems as well? If it's not available on, say, Discord, why is that? Do people just somehow make do without it? Or is there some other compensating feature?

It's a niche, rather than indispensable feature - most games don't require dozens of people to voice-communicate in real time. Eve is a bit of a holdover but the trend has been away from giant mobs of chattering users. Apex Legends (a popular new multiplayer game) is getting a lot of praise for reducing the need for teammates to actually talk to each other to about zero.

In large eve fleets, it's not a chattering mob, you couldn't run things if it's like that. Things are normally quite terse with a small number of people, scouts, FCs, logi talking while most people get on with the important business of pressing F1.

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

#125
One of my favorite features that Mumble has that Discord doesn't is the ability to suppress a keypress you're using for push-to-talk. For example, I use Caps Lock for my PTT, as it is right there and not used in most games anyways. With Mumble Caps Lock will not toggle at all with that option, allowing me to type or do other things fine.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think the Mumble project is awesome for what it is, but it's always never had the same design goals and simply doesn't have the ease of use (whether through lack of capacity/will or through it's server-based structure versus Discord's centralized server platform) of Discord. Where I think Mumble particularly shined was being one of the first to broadly introduce the Opus codec which really set low latency c…

Doesn't Skype also use Opus under the hood?

It might. Using Opus does not equate to low audio latency. (I don't actually know Opus, but I have passing familiarity with it's predecessor speex). Assuming Opus has the same design goals as speex, Opus gives you the tools necessary to implement a low-latency audio application. As in - the audio codec piece is "solved", now you need to do the engineering work around client/server/framing/network etc. to actually get to your latency goals.

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

#127
post #66
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Planned_Features#Video Posted in 2011, lol. I wouldn't hold your breath.

"However, I don't really want to know what a 2mbit/s commercial hosting is going to cost. I doubt it's cheap." reading on that page is like time traveling :)

Unless you live in about 80% of the US where ISP monopolies still only get you 2-3mb upload at best.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think the Mumble project is awesome for what it is, but it's always never had the same design goals and simply doesn't have the ease of use (whether through lack of capacity/will or through it's server-based structure versus Discord's centralized server platform) of Discord. Where I think Mumble particularly shined was being one of the first to broadly introduce the Opus codec which really set low latency c…

Doesn't Skype also use Opus under the hood?

I'd hope so, considering they were a part of the group standardizing it. Opus, in broad strokes, is Skype's SILK codec for low bitrates, Xiph's CELT for high bitrates, and a mode that is a blend of both codecs for the middle.

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

#129
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a niche, rather than indispensable feature - most games don't require dozens of people to voice-communicate in real time. Eve is a bit of a holdover but the trend has been away from giant mobs of chattering users. Apex Legends (a popular new multiplayer game) is getting a lot of praise for reducing the need for teammates to actually talk to each other to about zero.

In large eve fleets, it's not a chattering mob, you couldn't run things if it's like that. Things are normally quite terse with a small number of people, scouts, FCs, logi talking while most people get on with the important business of pressing F1.

it's not a chattering mob

I'm going to need a number crunch on that.

More seriously, my point was not (heaven help me) that Eve players are disorganized but that 'massive raid requiring structured multi-party voice comms' is not a common problem gamers in the current market find themselves needing to solve.

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

#130
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.

You click next a few times, speak while looking at a colored bar and move 2 sliders.

You’re arguing against someone’s subjective lived experience. Stop that. You could, instead, ask about exactly what part of the “next” clicks and sliders were difficult, but you can’t argue with what someone think they have experienced.
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