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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/fl

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

denimnerd42 8y ago
It's unfortunate because Mumble is great, secure free software with interesting features. I used to be a linux distro package manager for Mumble. Once my friends discovered discord no one wanted to join my mumble anymore. I think the biggest problem was setting the damn thing up on the client side. Murmur server is free though. It even runs great off of a home internet connection if you have the technical know-how to open the ports and set up a dynamic dns service.
- newaccoutnas 8y ago
  We used it for talkback in a video capture project I was doing at a broadcaster (before they built that functionality in natively) worked a treat.
  - eropple 8y ago
    Same here. I used to use Mumble as a way to get a bunch of remote voices into live video. Now I just use WebRTC via vMix Call, where I can mix it straight into my audio panel. Which is a better experience from a production side, but does have marginally more latency to deal with.
- bpye 8y ago
  Yeah, I ran a Mumble server for my group of friends for years. Basically zero maintainance beyond ensuring the package was up to date. The client was fast but as you said, setting it up was less friendly than Discord. Same thing happened, everyone moved to Discord.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Is there a guide or at least a pointer to what the server binary is? I haven't been able to find a headless one on a cursory search.
    - nitrogen 8y ago
      It's called murmur (mentioned elsewhere in the thread)
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        Thank you, once I knew the name, it was pretty much just an apt-get to set up.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  My friends and I used to use Mumble, but setting it up was a pain in the ass. I spent several hours trying and failing to set up a local server before giving up and switching to a service whose bottom-tier servers were free (but also required a fair bit of setup). You had to do some tweaking just to use the client, too. When the service I was on started charging even for their bottom tier, switching to Discord was a no-brainer. It just works right out of the box, at least for most people.
ridgewell 8y ago
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 communications into play. Mumble was really a champion in this space. I find it hard to believe that Discord, in its design, didn't evaluate its competitors at one point and decide to follow Mumble in implementing Opus.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Doesn't Skype also use Opus under the hood?
  - kjetijor 8y ago
    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.
  - amaranth 8y ago
    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.
AWildC182 8y ago
I haven't seen vent in half a decade at least. The milsimers mostly seem to use Arma and Squad, the former basing most it's mods/plugins on TS. Not sure what Squad players use though. The flightsim community is mostly moving over to DCS which has its own self contained mod for VOIP [1] but those staying on FSX/P3D seem to use a plethora of other weird applications with VATSIM. [1] https://github.com/ciribob/DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone/releases https://github.com/ciribob/DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone/release...
- Sebguer 8y ago
  Yep, this is right. Arma players stick to Teamspeak because of TFAR [1] and ACRE [2]. I'm not sure of Squad's actual milsim community... I don't think there's any advanced radio mods for Squad? Squad is also not really built for milsimming. Supposedly the next major release of Teamspeak will be Discord-like, which is somewhat concerning. Discord is apparently also working on a more robust voice API which would allow for some of the same mods to get ported over. [1] http://radio.task-force.ru/en/ http://radio.task-force.ru/en/ [2] https://github.com/IDI-Systems/acre2 https://github.com/IDI-Systems/acre2
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    > Supposedly the next major release of Teamspeak will be Discord-like, which is somewhat concerning. Yea, this could go very badly or be the UI and permissions cleanup that TS desperately needs.
- dharmab 8y ago
  You're right, I got Vent and TS mixed up in my head
wlesieutre 8y ago
Mumble is great when you don't want a persistent chat. I've been invited to like a million different discord groups from friend groups that overlap in various ways, and they always seem to be full of a bunch of people I don't know reposting memes off of reddit in the chat channels. All I wanted was a voice chat with the 5 people who I know and am hopping into Overwatch with. Mumble does that job better, and guzzles less of my RAM to do it.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Of course there’s room for UX improvements, and there’s more work involved in using it since the server is self hosted, but once you have it going it does a thing and does it well. The feature that got us on the mumble train years ago was how well it auto-balances the sound volume coming from different users. Other software we tried at the time you’d have some people much louder than others. This is probably pretty standard by now though. EDIT: missed edit window on my parent comment, but a funny note related to Electron system resource usage. In addition to the RAM thing, it's based on Chromium which means it's using the GPU for rendering. There's an option in the config to disable this, otherwise it makes you exit the Discord client when you install GPU driver updates. Not a huge deal, but it feels real silly when you get that popup. Like "I get that I need to close games to update GPU drivers, but my voice chat? Really?"
  - hobs 8y ago
    They actually update this in the newer builds so you can finally set per-user volume controls, after years of hating on that :)
- Pxtl 8y ago
  > I don't know reposting memes off of reddit in the chat channels. I'd love if that was it. It's when you see horrifying 4chan greentext that I start to cringe.
- orliesaurus 8y ago
  Overwatch has voice in-built that is very good both for public games, parties and teams - why need Mumble at this point?
greymeister 8y ago
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.
- mostlysimilar 8y ago
  I felt similarly until I re-framed my expectations. I think of it as speaking in public -- even if I'm in a direct message with a single other user, I imagine it's like sitting next to them in a coffee shop. Probably nobody is listening to me speak, but I won't be surprised if I'm overheard by people. Not a perfect analogy but eh. For hanging out with people and just having casual conversations I think it's fine. Don't say anything you want kept private. I do think it's unfortunate that people don't consider where their data is going or how it's used on a broader scale, but for those of us who use technology more intimately I think we can afford to make these sorts of decisions. I'm happy with the convenience and the interface and I'm okay knowing that the communications are likely going to end up in the hands of some big marketing company some day.
  - cbzbc 8y ago
    "Probably nobody is listening to me speak, but I won't be surprised if I'm overheard by people. Not a perfect analogy but eh." Which is fine, except the analogy in this case is someone who is always sitting next to you and has access to all your conversational history - which may be public in isolation but private in aggregate.
    - AWildC182 8y ago
      Yea, the person sitting next to you doesn't have your entire chat history and a server farm to de-anonymize you.
- reificator 8y ago
  Their model is to sell video games, and that has been clear for years before properly announced. That doesn't mean they can't also sell your data, but if your root concern is where they're getting their revenue, game sales is where.
belorn 8y ago
Discord merged the voice channels of Teamspeak/Ventrilo with the text chat system of Slack. Therefore what I have seen is people leaving both Slack and Ventrilo in order to put it all on Discord. As someone who managed a gaming guild since 2005, I have seen many iterations. In the beginning it was all Skype, then we switched to Ventrilo and PhpBB, then many went to FB for text, then to Teamspeak for voice, then to Slack for text again, and now Discord for both text and voice. The needs of the community didn't really change. They wanted persistent chat for text and images, put up announcements to guide new players, have votes/elections, and use team voice chats during play sessions. Each combination above solved those problems, each with its own unique benefits and drawbacks. Mumble's use case is exclusively on the team voice chats but it lacks any direct support for anything else which is likely why we never used it, even after I provided a server for free. Nowadays I use my Mumble server for cooperative remote work, a job which it works perfectly for.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Would you believe it if I told you: there's a few game groups out there that use both. My milsim group uses discord for general chat, recruiting, linksharing and planning for our weekly weekend missions. I think there's one voice channel. For us, the Discord is the public facing entity where you'll find members from the group interacting with people who just hang out and chat and aren't enrolled in the roster. But our TeamSpeak server has 20 something channels, there are plugins written by community members that integrate with ARMA. And any other general group gaming that requires actual voice comms, it's Teamspeak or bust. It was quite something to behold when I first joined the group, I had grown used to groups using one, the other, but not both. This group does it really well.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Indeed, I remember going from PhpBB and other forums a lot in early days, alongside Ventrilo. We then moved to Mumble and Slack, but now it's just 100% Discord is most communities. It's really hard to beat the free aspect for most people, and it doesn't help that most Mumble/Vent providers charged ridiculous prices (10$/month for ~25 people).
- labmixz 8y ago
zamalek 8y ago
What Mumble did that was great was getting people to use certificates. I never actually checked the thumbprint of the certificate, but it was a big step forward. I think it could have succeeded with "minimal" changes: * Have you ever tried to self-host a server, especially on your own Windows machine? Setting it up is a confusing mess, especially the documentation. I couldn't get DBus working the first time I attempted it, so I gave up and paid for TS. Would it have been so hard to include a Murmur configuration dialog in Mumble? * Ice? Why couldn't a simple HTTP interface work? Just look at all this troubleshooting overhead: https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Ice https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Ice * UX/UI matters.
waddlesworth 8y ago
I really like Mumble, and I never use the audio channels in Discord because of the horrible quality. With that said, I never use it. I use TeamSpeak for audio and Discord for persistent chat. My biggest problem, and the reason I think a lot of people are discounting, is purely the aesthetics of the UI - Discord just looks nicer than Mumble. The programmer-art style of user interface seems all too common among open source software, and I don't really understand why.
- redskull 8y ago
  You are right it is a bit sad...but with a few easy moments you could have Mumble lookin' like this https://puu.sh/CG0tv/add34e27ef.png https://puu.sh/CG0tv/add34e27ef.png which I think is sleep & clean. Download the Mumble Beta can you choose the window color...also able to mute / change volume of each individual person now. Mumble also only uses 16,000K of resources where discord is about 170,000K

denimnerd42 8y ago

It's unfortunate because Mumble is great, secure free software with interesting features. I used to be a linux distro package manager for Mumble. Once my friends discovered discord no one wanted to join my mumble anymore. I think the biggest problem was setting the damn thing up on the client side. Murmur server is free though. It even runs great off of a home internet connection if you have the technical know-how to open the ports and set up a dynamic dns service.

newaccoutnas 8y ago
We used it for talkback in a video capture project I was doing at a broadcaster (before they built that functionality in natively) worked a treat.
- eropple 8y ago
  Same here. I used to use Mumble as a way to get a bunch of remote voices into live video. Now I just use WebRTC via vMix Call, where I can mix it straight into my audio panel. Which is a better experience from a production side, but does have marginally more latency to deal with.
bpye 8y ago
Yeah, I ran a Mumble server for my group of friends for years. Basically zero maintainance beyond ensuring the package was up to date. The client was fast but as you said, setting it up was less friendly than Discord. Same thing happened, everyone moved to Discord.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Is there a guide or at least a pointer to what the server binary is? I haven't been able to find a headless one on a cursory search.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    It's called murmur (mentioned elsewhere in the thread)
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Thank you, once I knew the name, it was pretty much just an apt-get to set up.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
My friends and I used to use Mumble, but setting it up was a pain in the ass. I spent several hours trying and failing to set up a local server before giving up and switching to a service whose bottom-tier servers were free (but also required a fair bit of setup). You had to do some tweaking just to use the client, too. When the service I was on started charging even for their bottom tier, switching to Discord was a no-brainer. It just works right out of the box, at least for most people.

ridgewell 8y ago

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 communications into play. Mumble was really a champion in this space. I find it hard to believe that Discord, in its design, didn't evaluate its competitors at one point and decide to follow Mumble in implementing Opus.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Doesn't Skype also use Opus under the hood?
- kjetijor 8y ago
  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.
- amaranth 8y ago
  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.

AWildC182 8y ago

I haven't seen vent in half a decade at least. The milsimers mostly seem to use Arma and Squad, the former basing most it's mods/plugins on TS. Not sure what Squad players use though. The flightsim community is mostly moving over to DCS which has its own self contained mod for VOIP [1] but those staying on FSX/P3D seem to use a plethora of other weird applications with VATSIM. [1] https://github.com/ciribob/DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone/releases https://github.com/ciribob/DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone/release...

Sebguer 8y ago
Yep, this is right. Arma players stick to Teamspeak because of TFAR [1] and ACRE [2]. I'm not sure of Squad's actual milsim community... I don't think there's any advanced radio mods for Squad? Squad is also not really built for milsimming. Supposedly the next major release of Teamspeak will be Discord-like, which is somewhat concerning. Discord is apparently also working on a more robust voice API which would allow for some of the same mods to get ported over. [1] http://radio.task-force.ru/en/ http://radio.task-force.ru/en/ [2] https://github.com/IDI-Systems/acre2 https://github.com/IDI-Systems/acre2
- AWildC182 8y ago
  > Supposedly the next major release of Teamspeak will be Discord-like, which is somewhat concerning. Yea, this could go very badly or be the UI and permissions cleanup that TS desperately needs.
dharmab 8y ago
You're right, I got Vent and TS mixed up in my head

wlesieutre 8y ago

Mumble is great when you don't want a persistent chat. I've been invited to like a million different discord groups from friend groups that overlap in various ways, and they always seem to be full of a bunch of people I don't know reposting memes off of reddit in the chat channels. All I wanted was a voice chat with the 5 people who I know and am hopping into Overwatch with. Mumble does that job better, and guzzles less of my RAM to do it.

wlesieutre 8y ago
Of course there’s room for UX improvements, and there’s more work involved in using it since the server is self hosted, but once you have it going it does a thing and does it well. The feature that got us on the mumble train years ago was how well it auto-balances the sound volume coming from different users. Other software we tried at the time you’d have some people much louder than others. This is probably pretty standard by now though. EDIT: missed edit window on my parent comment, but a funny note related to Electron system resource usage. In addition to the RAM thing, it's based on Chromium which means it's using the GPU for rendering. There's an option in the config to disable this, otherwise it makes you exit the Discord client when you install GPU driver updates. Not a huge deal, but it feels real silly when you get that popup. Like "I get that I need to close games to update GPU drivers, but my voice chat? Really?"
- hobs 8y ago
  They actually update this in the newer builds so you can finally set per-user volume controls, after years of hating on that :)
Pxtl 8y ago
> I don't know reposting memes off of reddit in the chat channels. I'd love if that was it. It's when you see horrifying 4chan greentext that I start to cringe.
orliesaurus 8y ago
Overwatch has voice in-built that is very good both for public games, parties and teams - why need Mumble at this point?

greymeister 8y ago

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.

mostlysimilar 8y ago
I felt similarly until I re-framed my expectations. I think of it as speaking in public -- even if I'm in a direct message with a single other user, I imagine it's like sitting next to them in a coffee shop. Probably nobody is listening to me speak, but I won't be surprised if I'm overheard by people. Not a perfect analogy but eh. For hanging out with people and just having casual conversations I think it's fine. Don't say anything you want kept private. I do think it's unfortunate that people don't consider where their data is going or how it's used on a broader scale, but for those of us who use technology more intimately I think we can afford to make these sorts of decisions. I'm happy with the convenience and the interface and I'm okay knowing that the communications are likely going to end up in the hands of some big marketing company some day.
- cbzbc 8y ago
  "Probably nobody is listening to me speak, but I won't be surprised if I'm overheard by people. Not a perfect analogy but eh." Which is fine, except the analogy in this case is someone who is always sitting next to you and has access to all your conversational history - which may be public in isolation but private in aggregate.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    Yea, the person sitting next to you doesn't have your entire chat history and a server farm to de-anonymize you.
reificator 8y ago
Their model is to sell video games, and that has been clear for years before properly announced. That doesn't mean they can't also sell your data, but if your root concern is where they're getting their revenue, game sales is where.

belorn 8y ago

Discord merged the voice channels of Teamspeak/Ventrilo with the text chat system of Slack. Therefore what I have seen is people leaving both Slack and Ventrilo in order to put it all on Discord. As someone who managed a gaming guild since 2005, I have seen many iterations. In the beginning it was all Skype, then we switched to Ventrilo and PhpBB, then many went to FB for text, then to Teamspeak for voice, then to Slack for text again, and now Discord for both text and voice. The needs of the community didn't really change. They wanted persistent chat for text and images, put up announcements to guide new players, have votes/elections, and use team voice chats during play sessions. Each combination above solved those problems, each with its own unique benefits and drawbacks. Mumble's use case is exclusively on the team voice chats but it lacks any direct support for anything else which is likely why we never used it, even after I provided a server for free. Nowadays I use my Mumble server for cooperative remote work, a job which it works perfectly for.

dvtrn 8y ago
Would you believe it if I told you: there's a few game groups out there that use both. My milsim group uses discord for general chat, recruiting, linksharing and planning for our weekly weekend missions. I think there's one voice channel. For us, the Discord is the public facing entity where you'll find members from the group interacting with people who just hang out and chat and aren't enrolled in the roster. But our TeamSpeak server has 20 something channels, there are plugins written by community members that integrate with ARMA. And any other general group gaming that requires actual voice comms, it's Teamspeak or bust. It was quite something to behold when I first joined the group, I had grown used to groups using one, the other, but not both. This group does it really well.
ehsankia 8y ago
Indeed, I remember going from PhpBB and other forums a lot in early days, alongside Ventrilo. We then moved to Mumble and Slack, but now it's just 100% Discord is most communities. It's really hard to beat the free aspect for most people, and it doesn't help that most Mumble/Vent providers charged ridiculous prices (10$/month for ~25 people).
labmixz 8y ago

zamalek 8y ago

What Mumble did that was great was getting people to use certificates. I never actually checked the thumbprint of the certificate, but it was a big step forward. I think it could have succeeded with "minimal" changes: * Have you ever tried to self-host a server, especially on your own Windows machine? Setting it up is a confusing mess, especially the documentation. I couldn't get DBus working the first time I attempted it, so I gave up and paid for TS. Would it have been so hard to include a Murmur configuration dialog in Mumble? * Ice? Why couldn't a simple HTTP interface work? Just look at all this troubleshooting overhead: https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Ice https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Ice * UX/UI matters.

waddlesworth 8y ago

I really like Mumble, and I never use the audio channels in Discord because of the horrible quality. With that said, I never use it. I use TeamSpeak for audio and Discord for persistent chat. My biggest problem, and the reason I think a lot of people are discounting, is purely the aesthetics of the UI - Discord just looks nicer than Mumble. The programmer-art style of user interface seems all too common among open source software, and I don't really understand why.

redskull 8y ago
You are right it is a bit sad...but with a few easy moments you could have Mumble lookin' like this https://puu.sh/CG0tv/add34e27ef.png https://puu.sh/CG0tv/add34e27ef.png which I think is sleep & clean. Download the Mumble Beta can you choose the window color...also able to mute / change volume of each individual person now. Mumble also only uses 16,000K of resources where discord is about 170,000K