19 ms·

Mumble: Open-Source, Low Latency, High Quality Voice Chat

591 points by danboarder 5y ago

elkos 5y ago
I use mumble with the plumble client when I'm taking the train or just walking at the park when we have voice only meetings at work. It is a very power and bandwidth efficient solution.
Pxtl 5y ago
The audio quality is great and the latency is marvelous but I can't get normies to use it with the tedious setup wizard, poor feedback cancelling from that one person who joins with the laptop speakers and mic, and the labyrinthine security model.
- unicornporn 5y ago
  The feedback cancelling the was the major gripe last time I ran a server. Otherwise very functional software.
  - idlewan 5y ago
    A feedback cancelling solution would probably increase latency however, so it would kill the 'low latency' claim if it was on by default. Definitely something needed to be switched on for problematic setups though, since the disadvantages would be outweighed greatly (not having feedback \ echo is a necessary feature).
    - toxik 5y ago
      It shouldn’t necessarily, you can find out how much of the speaker output ends up in the microphone input and compensate. I’m sure the models are more complicated to deal with echoes and distortion but the same approach should basically work: fit the filter offline, apply it online.
  - theelous3 5y ago
    The major gripe here should be with the monkey who was using speakers in voice comms. People with a speakers setup sound awful on all software. Some kind of headphones or earbuds cost less than 10 quid. The feedback cancelling wasn't the problem. It's a feature that should scarcely even exist. The only time it's ever really good is when there is some sort of interactive one to many setup. A hands on demo from a lecturer where for some reason they can't wear some wireless buds.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      You can make speakers and mic sound good, but you need solid software support and also a really decent mic. I have a friend who does this with a Blue Yeti mic sometimes. If you put it in cardioid mode, have the speakers not too loud, and position the mic so the speakers are behind it, you can't hear feedback on Discord. But people running mic setups this fancy are definitely the minority.
      - theelous3 5y ago
        Sure, but the vast majority of this legwork is being done by a nice mic having directional capability and massive gain control. This is far from a win for discord and audio comp software. This kind of setup can be made to work on mumble too.
- rijoja 5y ago
  How does the latency compare to other solutions?
  - pindab0ter 5y ago
    In all the years I’ve used it I never noticed any latency. In fact, I didn’t even know that could be a ‘thing’. I haven’t used it in the past year, but if I were to guess I’d say it’s in the tens of milliseconds, definitely not higher.
    - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
      I used it (on Android the app was called Plumble) over tor, because of tor latency there were lag spikes at times, but in general, it worked quite well.
  - allarm 5y ago
    The biggest contributor to latency in any VoIP solution is the underlying network latency. Even though Mumble uses modern low-latency codecs such as Opus, it is difficult to compete with Zoom/Webex/others because Zoom and Webex are not only clients, but also the backbone network. If you want to use Mumble (or any other similar service) in an international firm, you'll need to invest in a low-latency network with proper QoS to deliver an experience similar to Zoom/Webex. I guess it would be cheaper to just use Zoom/Webex in this case - we spent millions each year for our 10-20 Mbps MPLS network at one of my prior jobs (not including the cost of the engineers). However, it might work for a smaller company.
    - patentatt 5y ago
      But everyone generally accesses Zoom/Webex/et al over the public internet, right? Do they implement a CDN-like series of endpoints and have some special sauce low latency network in between nodes? Genuinely curious.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      With P2P sound there is no need for expensive slow servers serving free tier users. Scalable! But companies have a hard time letting go of control and 'value add'.
- PBnFlash 5y ago
  Seriously, I ran a community while discord was taking off and I had an infographic for how to install and connect but still spent hours every week walking people through troubleshooting. I tried to make a custom build preloaded with the server even. I understand that connecting to hundreds of servers wasn't a thing in 2015 but it is just so high friction to talk to people about video games.
- daptaq 5y ago
  I've managed to convince my friends to use Mumble just as the pandemic started. The initial suggestion was to use Discord, but I luckly averted that. I think that the wizard and the defaults in general can be improved, but it is not unmanagable. The only thing that can confuse people is the certificate security system, where a friend of mine complained they couldn't connect, but it was just a "Do you want to accept this certificate" popup that was in the way. That is an issue of general technical illiteracy, that Mumble cannot address.
  - ctas 5y ago
    > The initial suggestion was to use Discord, but I luckly averted that. Why is Discord not a good choice in your opinion?
    - toxik 5y ago
      If not for anything else, then because Discord is a service owned by somebody, Mumble isn’t. The free and open web depends on people using the Mumble model.
    - vifon 5y ago
      For starters it's not free (as in freedom).
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      It's a centralized, non-free service that feeds on people's data. That's horrible enough, but i'm guessing i can't even use it with a Tor browser? Mumble works plenty fine on the Tor network.
      - paulcarroty 5y ago
        > can't even use it with a Tor browser? You can, but it will be painful with captcha and email submit links for your new IPs.
        southerntofu 5y ago
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  I tried to switch a community I once hosted to mumble. Previously teamspeak 2 was used which showed its age through high latency and low quality. TS3 was not available yet. There were so many complaints about the client that people voted to switch back to ts2. When ts3 came along they switched to that, but I already passed on the admin job by then so don't know any details about how it went. While it's not open source you can at least self host...
- j1elo 5y ago
  I have to agree that the security model is horrendous. It's that kind of thing that when you come up with it and program it in your own code, it looks so obvious and easy to use right? Well... no. The way one configures users and permissions in Mumble clearly didn't pass the mom test. I have similar qualms with how users identify. "What? are you telling me that there are these weird files that are called <certificates> and that if I want to move between my PC, laptop, or phone, I need to hunt for this file and copy it into all my devices?" (obviously at this point people started logging in as "Joe2", "Joe3", etc. in my server)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Causality1 5y ago
  Oh yeah. I love Mumble as long as it's been set up by someone else. Trying to get a server running on your PC with correct security settings and then over a phone walk non-technical people through connecting to it? Nightmare, or at least it was a few years ago when I tried.
- tsjq 5y ago
  thanks for that heads-up !
andrewzah 5y ago
Great software, poor UX. I have difficulty getting people to use it over zoom or discord.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Whereby used to be excellent: No login no plugin. I’d happily give them the $4 a month per employee they were requesting at the beginning for WebRTC, but they keep jacking up their prices, currently at $12, increasing by $2 every 6 months… …and now they present login as if it is mandatory, even if we pay for it on our side, which is annoying for customers/applicants.
- rijoja 5y ago
  Since this is a client server architecture wouldn't there be alternative clients?
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  Poor UX seems to be a recurring theme with open source projects. Anyone knows why?
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Many reasons: * Code is more interesting to the author than user experience * High familiarity with a tool, as authors gain by working on a tool, will normalize bad UX * Free software (specifically) often attracts a type of person that has very non-mainstream UX tastes
    - bombcar 5y ago
      And by the time anyone's developing for the project, they're already entirely familiar with all the quirks and UI decisions. It takes real top-down leadership (or a one-man project) to be able to change those things.
      - jimmySixDOF 5y ago
Justsignedup 5y ago
Mumble sucks. Security problems. Barely maintained. Some pretty major os bugs. Most people can't get it to work first try. I have to say, my game group uses it instead of guided or discord and it is genuinely annoying.
- 22c 5y ago
  >Security problems. What security problems?
- rijoja 5y ago
  If you prefer closed source solutions geared towards non-technical people maybe HN isn't the forum for you.
  - haunter 5y ago
    Why? I have an open source project and we run it on Discord with 500 people on the server because it's just better than anything else available. Yes I wish there were an open source alternative but there isn't really when you don't want to self host or manage servers like with TS or Mumble (and those are utterly lack any contribution or chat features). Just voice chat alone doesn't cut it and Mumble not even that good as some people make it out to be Element is the closest but the fact that it's paid already a huge turn off for a lot of users https://element.io/ https://element.io/
    - mouldysammich 5y ago
      Element isnt paid? It has paid hosted options if you want your own synapse server, but the free version has always been there and if you're using discord why care that you dont have your own domain for your matrix community
      - im3w1l 5y ago
        On discord, communities (or as they call it servers) will typically have many different channels. From my understanding you'd need your own domain to replicate that on element. Eg. #memes:ultimatefrisbee.pt
a254613e 5y ago
Being open source, low latency, and having high quality audio doesn't do much when the clients are absolutely horrible, everything has horrible UX, and absolutely zero echo cancelation.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Maybe there is potential for Mumble to improve going forward ?
  - foxpurple 5y ago
    It’s almost impossible for them to compete with discord at this point. Discord is so good it has raised the bar far beyond what foss developers can make in their free time.
    - calpaterson 5y ago
      As an occasional user of discord I cannot understand that at all. It is one of the most confusing UIs I have ever used, everything from finding the settings to joining or telling what channel you are connected to is done in a "unique UI paradigm". Quality of calls is good but the app is mental
      - trampypizza 5y ago
        In my experience, discord was better than the previous options for a few reasons. A) it's free, as opposed to a vent or TS server, which while they are not expensive, it's still a barrier to setting one up. B) the free tier has quite a lot of functionality without paying for servers, even for a lot of players (like a World of Warcraft guild). C) it merged voice Comms with a community hub where people could communicate and share things relevant to their game (to use the WoW scenario again, raid organising, upcoming patch discussion, guides and other helpful information) in an organised and central location. I recognise there is a bunch of issues with discord, I've had it have complete melt downs when the voice systems have broken, it can be a real resource hog, and don't get me started on the security and privacy (it's not great), however because of the additional functionality I still think it's a great bit of software. I'm so glad I don't have to be in Warcraft guild Facebook groups anymore!
SCUSKU 5y ago
I used this back in 2014-2015 in high school to chat with friends while playing Minecraft. I had a good experience with it then, can't speak for it now though.
Datagenerator 5y ago
Running Mumble server for my coworkers and instantly switching between channels is very effective. Where in Teams people are occupied to one meeting we can quickly help each other. Also created many one-on-one channels so you can talk privately if needed. It's free, very fast and low latency, scales to hundreds of clients on single server instance has text-to-speech notifications and multiple clients on Windows, Linux, Android and so on. The server can be very secure and private, if you combine Wireguard with Mumble and only bind to the WG0 interface it's encrypted twice. No centralized eavesdropping like is possible with Zoom, Teams. The attack on private conversations is real, see the freenode saga or Skype being bought by the mother of all telemetry etc.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  For clarity, you can switch audio/video meetings in Teams. When you switch to another one the current one is just put on 'hold', and it's a one button click to re-join. Not that I'm advocating Teams here, far from it, I think of all the remote-meeting platforms it's one of the worst, but it's MS, so regardless how bad it is, it'll maintain it's significant market penetration.
  - summm 5y ago
    but it always takes some seconds to actually switch to the other Teams meeting. On mumble this is instantaneous.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Not just maintain, probably grow market share significantly now that they're adding it as a built-in app in Windows 11.
0x0 5y ago
Security seems to have taken a backseat, by the looks of the attitude towards outdated openssl versions displayed here. https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/4001 https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/4001
- SirCypher 5y ago
  This is only the case for the static binaries and not for the official Ubuntu/Debian/... releases. At least they put a warning on their release page: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/releases https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/releases But releasing a vulnerable version of Mumble is still bad. They should either fix it or not release a static binary at all.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  Nothing in that thread backs up what you are saying. There's some rude commentary by an angry individual but the devs clearly explain the reasoning and make it known to end-users on the actual download page. Also just update your version if you are really so concerned? This doesn't affect me at all on linux and the current development snapshot for windows is using an updated openssl lib.
  - SirCypher 5y ago
    It does not affect you, but it affected me. I wanted to run the newest version of the Mumble server "murmur". Easiest way to do this is to use the static binary. (At that time there was no warning on the release page yet.) But of course this ran with an outdated OpenSSL. I don't want to run a server with unpatched known security holes so I had to scrap that idea. "Just update your version" is also not possible because the newest static build still contains old OpenSSL. In the end I had to get the newest murmur package from Debian Unstable. It's fine, it works for me (TM), but then why did the static build exist at all? They should just remove the outdated static binary build if they aren't going to fix it.
eximius 5y ago
I miss Mumble. My friends all migrated to Discord, which replaced Mumble + phpBB.
matkaguessing 5y ago
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simondotau 5y ago
While this is likely common knowledge in this community, Mumble uses the Opus codec, which is a significant factor[1] in Mumble audio being both high quality and very low latency. Prior to Opus, Mumble used CELT.[2] This was a precursor to the Opus codec developed by Xiph.org, makers of the very well known Ogg container format and Vorbis audio codec. [1] https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CELT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CELT
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  Most calls on the web are using it. It’s the webrtc default
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Right. As you would desire and hopefully expect, even if it might be technically possible to squeeze out slightly better compression with some non-free technology, it's very attractive for everybody to agree on the free things instead. The FSF even offers this as one of the few reasons you wouldn't use Copyleft. It actually would be better for society if everybody copy-pastes the Opus code and refuses to let you see their source code, than for them to use a proprietary codec instead.
- LinAGKar 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure it used to use Speex
  - delusional 5y ago
    Isn't that Ventrilo?
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      Mumble did use Speex too. I4ve heard the "This is an example of Speex" voice line spinning around my head too many times every time I set up mumble.
romseb 5y ago
I was looking for an alternative to Google Meet for a constantly open meeting room where we can share ideas and screens and spend the lunch break. Ideally, this would've been Slack with discord-like voice channels where you can drop in and out and see if a participant is online. They promised this feature [1] last year, but it did not land. What we tried and their pros and cons: 1. Google Meet: * ○ Excellent noise suppression only if you are on one of their higher paid plans like Enterprise or Business Plus * + Statistics on participant activity (how often did they enable their mic/camera, bitrate, etc.) * - Overheating on MacBooks * - Room will be deleted if nobody is joined for X days * - Real full screen for screen sharing not possible * - Proprietary, needs a paid plan * - Forget about privacy 2.Zoom: * - Proprietary, no privacy, security vulnerabilities 3. Teamviewer: * - Needs a separate software (otherwise a worthy competitor to Google Meet) 4. Mumble: * - Others in this thread have already laid out why it is not being used more: UX, setup wizard, no echo suppression, finicky push-to-talk 5. Discord: * - No privacy * - No encryption * - Focused on gaming * + Interesting feature for screen sharing: You can select if you want readability and low frame rate or high frame rate and low readability * + Voice channels 6. We now ended up with a self-hosted k8s instance of Jitsi Meet (they host their own at [2]) which works great: * + Open source * + Latency and call quality is phenomenal * + sharing screens of multiple participants works like a charm. Sharing a screen in Google Meet takes 5 seconds or so, in Jitsi Meet, it is immediately. * ○ Echo suppression is not as good as Google Meet's * + Unique features like synchronized Youtube player (which automatically mutes all participants) * + End-to-end encryption * + Recordings [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21505519/slack-instagram-stories-push-to-talk-audio-calls-new-features https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21505519/slack-instagram-... [2] https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/
- omk 5y ago
  What is the minimum spec required for running Jitsi for upto 5 participants?
  - romseb 5y ago
    I don't know exactly, but it must be pretty low considering my home server can handle it without much of an impact to CPU/RAM.
chmod775 5y ago
Quite popular in the EVE: Online community, where alliances and corps run mumble servers with tens of hundreds of people each.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  It was quite popular back when I played WoW.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    WoW is pretty much 100% discord now. My guild only moved on from Mumble because we couldn't get pick-up players in voice.
- Bombthecat 5y ago
  I play eve, most are on discord now. Only a few "hardcore" corps are still running mumble
- remram 5y ago
  > tens of hundreds Thousands?
baohwang 5y ago
How is this different from a VoIP WebRTC implementation?
- hytdstd 5y ago
  For one, it's native rather than web.
- vetrom 5y ago
  Native vs yet another Electron app, customizable in pretty much every fashion, and it has inbuilt support for positional audio chat (so you can manually move entities in relation to each other, or use one of many available plugins to feed positional data from something else!) see: https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games
Lammy 5y ago
I like https://umurmur.net/ https://umurmur.net/ since it can run totally headless at the cost of some of Murmur's features. Mainline Murmur (the Mumble server) requires QT5 and mDNSResponder and various DB drivers and even D-Bus if you look at it crossways
- broodbucket 5y ago
  umurmur good. I never did anything fancy with my server but I never noticed anything that umurmur didn't have, meanwhile it used virtually zero resources.
- zxzax 5y ago
  The D-Bus RPC is considered deprecated in favor of Ice and can be compiled out.
n4bz0r 5y ago
I doubt Mumble/Team Speak are ever going to be as popular as they were before. But boy do I wish they would. - Native UI: everything happens instantly - Lightweight client - The ability to host your own server Even initial setup difficulties had an upside. More often than not, those who weren't capable of properly setting things up also weren't the right fit to play seriously/competitively. Such little barriers were a great initial filter for toxic wannabes with short attention span.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- superkuh 5y ago
  It's too bad Teamspeak stopped existing as the excellence it was in the Teamspeak 2/3 era. By the end of TS3 they had already implemented nagware that would kill TS3 servers every $x months unless you reinstalled $latest. And now with Teamspeak 5 it's just Matrix. And Matrix is a super heavy protocol. You can't just spin up a matrix server on some random low end VPS with 512 MB of ram.
  - justaj 5y ago
    > And Matrix is a super heavy protocol. You can't just spin up a matrix server on some random low end VPS with 512 MB of ram. That's not the fault of the "heavy" protocol, but the implementation of it. As of now there's only 1 reference server implementation which is written in Python (Synapse), but https://conduit.rs/ https://conduit.rs/ and Dendrite are making good progress to be able to run on embedded devices.
  - Avi0n 5y ago
    TS5 is matrix? I’ve been using the TS5 beta client for over a year and I’ve been able to connect to my old TS3 server with no problems, both audio and text. I wasn’t aware there was a new TS5 server either, I thought they were going to keep the current one.
ArsenArsen 5y ago
They also support RNNoise, and everyone who knows me knows I love RNNoise! :)
southerntofu 5y ago
I'd like to point out that Mumble is one of those rare solutions that works just fine on the Tor network, for everyone's privacy. Why would it be normal for a voice server to know where you reside in order to take part in a discussion? In the age of everything WebRTC that only works with JavaScript and countless invasive browser "standards", Mumble is very refreshing. (Yes you can technically tunnel WebRTC through Tor by using firefox/chromium instead of Tor Browser, but by doing so you will leak your IP!)
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "Mumble is one of those rare solutions that works just fine on the Tor network" How do you even set it up to use TOR? It'd be nice if it just had a "Connect through TOR" checkbox in its preferences, but I have a feeling it's not even remotely so easy, is it?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's not so easy no, but it's not so hard either. You need to use a SOCKS5 proxy with localhost:9050 (where tor usually runs). Then you need to connect using TCP not UDP. I believe it's as straightforward as that, but to be honest i haven't fired up a network log to check that Mumble wasn't sending IP addresses or other "private" information over there.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      "where tor usually runs" So you have to set up tor too. The average person's not going to know (or even want to know) how to do that. It needs to be made as simple as a "connect over tor" button, and everything should be done for you, including setting up tor... anything requiring more interaction or knowledge is going to lose a lot of users.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        Not that i disagree with your point, but that's not exactly part of tor's threat model that it would be setup by a random application trying to leverage it. Usually, you set it up once on your system then apps access it. Auto-setup may be easier if you're targeting a certain platforms, for example on Android you can keep a local copy of the F-Droid PGP key, download the latest installer, set it up, and from there enable Guardian Project repository and setup Orbot (tor for Android). On Debian, you could just run "apt install tor" (acquiring privileges on the go) from your program and then start proxying through localhost:9050. But if you're targeting many systems the problem becomes hairier. If you have better suggestions about how to ease this process, i'm sure folks from the Tor community will be very interested! :)
omk 5y ago
Since the pandemic, have been using a mumble setup for our team to have seamless interactions with each other. It is a lot easier to ask a query over PTT than typing away in a chat window. People can easily deafen themselves when busy or in focus more. It just brings the office space back to life.
fingerguns 5y ago
Mumble has been one of the if not the best additions to FiveM[1] It has allowed for so many cool in game features, like the ability to have DSP audio filters on channels so we can do RadioFX audio effects in game without any external applications. [1] https://github.com/citizenfx/fivem/tree/b959f174803a972cf8c7a2daee5d64299295a5c0/code/components/voip-mumble https://github.com/citizenfx/fivem/tree/b959f174803a972cf8c7...
lu4p 5y ago
I think the mumble/ teamspeak ship has sailed a long time ago the UI/ UX of discord is just better. I would like a open source solution similar to discord, I think the closest thing we currently have are Signal group calls. Current features of Signal calls: - peer to peer no need for a central server which sells your data (Discord) or needs to be setup rented, maintained (teamspeak, mumble) - end to end encryption - video calls - Screen sharing - large group sizes for text chats (1000) Wanted features: - adjust the volume of individual participants - multiple voice/ text "channels" for a group (something similar to discord servers) - usernames so that not everybody needs to know my phone number - more participants in a single group call (currently maximum 8), I think 10-15 should be enough for most use cases, with more voice participants voice chat breaks down regardless, because of people constantly interrupting each other - the UI for group calls is still a little confusing
- gizmo385 5y ago
  > no need for a central server which sells your data (Discord) Discord doesn't sell your information: https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy FTA: > "The Company is not in the business of selling your information"
beshrkayali 5y ago
FWIW Linux Unplugged[1](one of the best linux discussion podcast) still uses mumble[2] to connect and communicate with their community. 1: https://linuxunplugged.com/ https://linuxunplugged.com/ 2: https://linuxunplugged.com/mumble https://linuxunplugged.com/mumble
bartwe 5y ago
Mumble is fun, we have a positional audio plugin for mumble in our game.
j1elo 5y ago
I think Mumble as an OSS voice chat project has had its success and has brought some net positives to the ecosystem since its inception. But nowadays, especially since pandemic times, the focus of the technology has moved and newer systems are in place which bring very powerful possibilities to the audio/video conference field. WebRTC has seen an incredible push and if you only wanted Mumble for its open-sourceness and its use of the Opus codec for low latency, you might be better off by joining a Jitsi room with your friends and enjoying the immense effort that the web browser already brings in matter of echo cancellation and other shenanigans related to conferencing apps, plus the better UI that these kind of projects offer for end users (Mumble's bad UI is a common topic). On the other hand there is Discord, but it plays in a different league because it is closed-source, VC-backed, and uses some advanced technology like AI-based noise cancelling.
LinuxBender 5y ago
UX issues aside, one plus for Mumble/Murmur is privacy. Should Discord some day be purchased by one of the big players, I would expect them to follow the path of Zoom and add voice transcription thus allowing them to not only save text chats forever, but also save everything that everyone says. Their user-base are already asking for it [1] One would have more control over this on a Murmur Mumble server. In my experience, people are more relaxed with things they say vs. things they type. There is the assumption that only the people visible in the channel are listening. It is only a matter of time before voice transcription is standard on all the large platforms and I am not confident that this data will be protected properly. [1] - https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360063450132-Text-transcription-live-captioning-on-voice-chat https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600634...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I would expect them to follow the path of Zoom and add voice transcription thus allowing them to not only save text chats forever, but also save everything that everyone says" It might not be transcribed, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't already save everything that everyone said (in audio format). Some of it is probably already transcribed too. It's just that doing it for every possible accent and language is not easy without training, so they probably don't have everything transcribed, but some of it probably is and the rest is just waiting in archives for when they want to give it more attention.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
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hyperionplays 5y ago
Intergrating Mumble with Mattermost would be amazing. Then I'd be able to convince people to switch.
pixelmonkey 5y ago
Is there something like Mumble, but for async voice communication? Of the style of yac.com, or of the style of "voice recordings" you see in WhatsApp or Telegram? I think that would be really nice for 1:1 and group chats in a work/friend context, especially spanning timezones, and where the point isn't to game or socialize in real-time, but instead around busy work/life schedules.
alfg 5y ago
I've always been a fan of Mumble (and murmur server) and its high quality, open source software. I made https://guildbit.com https://guildbit.com years ago for gamers that want to just quickly spin up a free temporary server with their friends. I still operate it today since there's still a few users out there. I realize most are using Discord now. I still think it would be great if someone were to create an open source Discord clone using Mumble/murmur as a backend. I'm sure it's possible, but not too sure if there's still a sizable audience willing to use Mumble over Discord these days.
keb_ 5y ago
Mumble is great. I've personally used it with friends for about ten years now. The main client, while not as intuitive as Discord, is pretty easy to use and get used to. Many of my friends are non-technical and never had problems using Mumble aside from the occasional microphone issue (which happens to me regardless of VoIP software.)
antattack 5y ago
Mumble...what a horrible name for a project that offers low latency and high quality voice chat.
hadlock 5y ago
We ran a mumble server for a 3,500 user, paid/paying, video game server community (Battlefield 3, circa 2010). We typically had 200+ users on, with 30-50 users per channel (three servers, two channels per server) plus a handful of regulars in the hangout channel. People would stream the same video on netflix and chat with eachother. It was quite the community. The server ran on a "free-tier" server that the hosting company gave us for free, since we were renting three of their top-tier gaming servers. It used, at peak, 5-7% cpu, and 250mb memory, if I remember correctly. Normally it was closer to 2% cpu and 100mb memory. This was with all the settings jacked up to "ultra" or the equivalent. Audio quality, and latency were amazing. It's really disappointing to use video chat like Google Meet, or Zoom after a product like Mumble. My servers & mumble server finally got retired, but some of the regulars started their own server, and occasionally I'll login still and a bunch of them are still hanging out. Mumble is an incredible, extremely stable product. Highly recommend.
matkaguessing 5y ago
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591 points by danboarder 5y ago

I use mumble with the plumble client when I'm taking the train or just walking at the park when we have voice only meetings at work. It is a very power and bandwidth efficient solution.

Pxtl 5y ago

The audio quality is great and the latency is marvelous but I can't get normies to use it with the tedious setup wizard, poor feedback cancelling from that one person who joins with the laptop speakers and mic, and the labyrinthine security model.

unicornporn 5y ago
The feedback cancelling the was the major gripe last time I ran a server. Otherwise very functional software.
- idlewan 5y ago
  A feedback cancelling solution would probably increase latency however, so it would kill the 'low latency' claim if it was on by default. Definitely something needed to be switched on for problematic setups though, since the disadvantages would be outweighed greatly (not having feedback \ echo is a necessary feature).
  - toxik 5y ago
    It shouldn’t necessarily, you can find out how much of the speaker output ends up in the microphone input and compensate. I’m sure the models are more complicated to deal with echoes and distortion but the same approach should basically work: fit the filter offline, apply it online.
- theelous3 5y ago
  The major gripe here should be with the monkey who was using speakers in voice comms. People with a speakers setup sound awful on all software. Some kind of headphones or earbuds cost less than 10 quid. The feedback cancelling wasn't the problem. It's a feature that should scarcely even exist. The only time it's ever really good is when there is some sort of interactive one to many setup. A hands on demo from a lecturer where for some reason they can't wear some wireless buds.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    You can make speakers and mic sound good, but you need solid software support and also a really decent mic. I have a friend who does this with a Blue Yeti mic sometimes. If you put it in cardioid mode, have the speakers not too loud, and position the mic so the speakers are behind it, you can't hear feedback on Discord. But people running mic setups this fancy are definitely the minority.
    - theelous3 5y ago
      Sure, but the vast majority of this legwork is being done by a nice mic having directional capability and massive gain control. This is far from a win for discord and audio comp software. This kind of setup can be made to work on mumble too.
rijoja 5y ago
How does the latency compare to other solutions?
- pindab0ter 5y ago
  In all the years I’ve used it I never noticed any latency. In fact, I didn’t even know that could be a ‘thing’. I haven’t used it in the past year, but if I were to guess I’d say it’s in the tens of milliseconds, definitely not higher.
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    I used it (on Android the app was called Plumble) over tor, because of tor latency there were lag spikes at times, but in general, it worked quite well.
- allarm 5y ago
  The biggest contributor to latency in any VoIP solution is the underlying network latency. Even though Mumble uses modern low-latency codecs such as Opus, it is difficult to compete with Zoom/Webex/others because Zoom and Webex are not only clients, but also the backbone network. If you want to use Mumble (or any other similar service) in an international firm, you'll need to invest in a low-latency network with proper QoS to deliver an experience similar to Zoom/Webex. I guess it would be cheaper to just use Zoom/Webex in this case - we spent millions each year for our 10-20 Mbps MPLS network at one of my prior jobs (not including the cost of the engineers). However, it might work for a smaller company.
  - patentatt 5y ago
    But everyone generally accesses Zoom/Webex/et al over the public internet, right? Do they implement a CDN-like series of endpoints and have some special sauce low latency network in between nodes? Genuinely curious.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    With P2P sound there is no need for expensive slow servers serving free tier users. Scalable! But companies have a hard time letting go of control and 'value add'.
PBnFlash 5y ago
Seriously, I ran a community while discord was taking off and I had an infographic for how to install and connect but still spent hours every week walking people through troubleshooting. I tried to make a custom build preloaded with the server even. I understand that connecting to hundreds of servers wasn't a thing in 2015 but it is just so high friction to talk to people about video games.
daptaq 5y ago
I've managed to convince my friends to use Mumble just as the pandemic started. The initial suggestion was to use Discord, but I luckly averted that. I think that the wizard and the defaults in general can be improved, but it is not unmanagable. The only thing that can confuse people is the certificate security system, where a friend of mine complained they couldn't connect, but it was just a "Do you want to accept this certificate" popup that was in the way. That is an issue of general technical illiteracy, that Mumble cannot address.
- ctas 5y ago
  > The initial suggestion was to use Discord, but I luckly averted that. Why is Discord not a good choice in your opinion?
  - toxik 5y ago
    If not for anything else, then because Discord is a service owned by somebody, Mumble isn’t. The free and open web depends on people using the Mumble model.
  - vifon 5y ago
    For starters it's not free (as in freedom).
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's a centralized, non-free service that feeds on people's data. That's horrible enough, but i'm guessing i can't even use it with a Tor browser? Mumble works plenty fine on the Tor network.
    - paulcarroty 5y ago
      > can't even use it with a Tor browser? You can, but it will be painful with captcha and email submit links for your new IPs.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
iforgotpassword 5y ago
I tried to switch a community I once hosted to mumble. Previously teamspeak 2 was used which showed its age through high latency and low quality. TS3 was not available yet. There were so many complaints about the client that people voted to switch back to ts2. When ts3 came along they switched to that, but I already passed on the admin job by then so don't know any details about how it went. While it's not open source you can at least self host...
j1elo 5y ago
I have to agree that the security model is horrendous. It's that kind of thing that when you come up with it and program it in your own code, it looks so obvious and easy to use right? Well... no. The way one configures users and permissions in Mumble clearly didn't pass the mom test. I have similar qualms with how users identify. "What? are you telling me that there are these weird files that are called <certificates> and that if I want to move between my PC, laptop, or phone, I need to hunt for this file and copy it into all my devices?" (obviously at this point people started logging in as "Joe2", "Joe3", etc. in my server)
deleted 5y ago
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Causality1 5y ago
Oh yeah. I love Mumble as long as it's been set up by someone else. Trying to get a server running on your PC with correct security settings and then over a phone walk non-technical people through connecting to it? Nightmare, or at least it was a few years ago when I tried.
tsjq 5y ago
thanks for that heads-up !

andrewzah 5y ago

Great software, poor UX. I have difficulty getting people to use it over zoom or discord.

laurent92 5y ago
Whereby used to be excellent: No login no plugin. I’d happily give them the $4 a month per employee they were requesting at the beginning for WebRTC, but they keep jacking up their prices, currently at $12, increasing by $2 every 6 months… …and now they present login as if it is mandatory, even if we pay for it on our side, which is annoying for customers/applicants.
rijoja 5y ago
Since this is a client server architecture wouldn't there be alternative clients?
aero-glide2 5y ago
Poor UX seems to be a recurring theme with open source projects. Anyone knows why?
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Many reasons: * Code is more interesting to the author than user experience * High familiarity with a tool, as authors gain by working on a tool, will normalize bad UX * Free software (specifically) often attracts a type of person that has very non-mainstream UX tastes
  - bombcar 5y ago
    And by the time anyone's developing for the project, they're already entirely familiar with all the quirks and UI decisions. It takes real top-down leadership (or a one-man project) to be able to change those things.
    - jimmySixDOF 5y ago

Justsignedup 5y ago

Mumble sucks. Security problems. Barely maintained. Some pretty major os bugs. Most people can't get it to work first try. I have to say, my game group uses it instead of guided or discord and it is genuinely annoying.

22c 5y ago
>Security problems. What security problems?
rijoja 5y ago
If you prefer closed source solutions geared towards non-technical people maybe HN isn't the forum for you.
- haunter 5y ago
  Why? I have an open source project and we run it on Discord with 500 people on the server because it's just better than anything else available. Yes I wish there were an open source alternative but there isn't really when you don't want to self host or manage servers like with TS or Mumble (and those are utterly lack any contribution or chat features). Just voice chat alone doesn't cut it and Mumble not even that good as some people make it out to be Element is the closest but the fact that it's paid already a huge turn off for a lot of users https://element.io/ https://element.io/
  - mouldysammich 5y ago
    Element isnt paid? It has paid hosted options if you want your own synapse server, but the free version has always been there and if you're using discord why care that you dont have your own domain for your matrix community
    - im3w1l 5y ago
      On discord, communities (or as they call it servers) will typically have many different channels. From my understanding you'd need your own domain to replicate that on element. Eg. #memes:ultimatefrisbee.pt

a254613e 5y ago

Being open source, low latency, and having high quality audio doesn't do much when the clients are absolutely horrible, everything has horrible UX, and absolutely zero echo cancelation.

ekianjo 5y ago
Maybe there is potential for Mumble to improve going forward ?
- foxpurple 5y ago
  It’s almost impossible for them to compete with discord at this point. Discord is so good it has raised the bar far beyond what foss developers can make in their free time.
  - calpaterson 5y ago
    As an occasional user of discord I cannot understand that at all. It is one of the most confusing UIs I have ever used, everything from finding the settings to joining or telling what channel you are connected to is done in a "unique UI paradigm". Quality of calls is good but the app is mental
    - trampypizza 5y ago
      In my experience, discord was better than the previous options for a few reasons. A) it's free, as opposed to a vent or TS server, which while they are not expensive, it's still a barrier to setting one up. B) the free tier has quite a lot of functionality without paying for servers, even for a lot of players (like a World of Warcraft guild). C) it merged voice Comms with a community hub where people could communicate and share things relevant to their game (to use the WoW scenario again, raid organising, upcoming patch discussion, guides and other helpful information) in an organised and central location. I recognise there is a bunch of issues with discord, I've had it have complete melt downs when the voice systems have broken, it can be a real resource hog, and don't get me started on the security and privacy (it's not great), however because of the additional functionality I still think it's a great bit of software. I'm so glad I don't have to be in Warcraft guild Facebook groups anymore!

SCUSKU 5y ago

I used this back in 2014-2015 in high school to chat with friends while playing Minecraft. I had a good experience with it then, can't speak for it now though.

Datagenerator 5y ago

Running Mumble server for my coworkers and instantly switching between channels is very effective. Where in Teams people are occupied to one meeting we can quickly help each other. Also created many one-on-one channels so you can talk privately if needed. It's free, very fast and low latency, scales to hundreds of clients on single server instance has text-to-speech notifications and multiple clients on Windows, Linux, Android and so on. The server can be very secure and private, if you combine Wireguard with Mumble and only bind to the WG0 interface it's encrypted twice. No centralized eavesdropping like is possible with Zoom, Teams. The attack on private conversations is real, see the freenode saga or Skype being bought by the mother of all telemetry etc.

mattowen_uk 5y ago
For clarity, you can switch audio/video meetings in Teams. When you switch to another one the current one is just put on 'hold', and it's a one button click to re-join. Not that I'm advocating Teams here, far from it, I think of all the remote-meeting platforms it's one of the worst, but it's MS, so regardless how bad it is, it'll maintain it's significant market penetration.
- summm 5y ago
  but it always takes some seconds to actually switch to the other Teams meeting. On mumble this is instantaneous.
- fastball 5y ago
  Not just maintain, probably grow market share significantly now that they're adding it as a built-in app in Windows 11.

0x0 5y ago

Security seems to have taken a backseat, by the looks of the attitude towards outdated openssl versions displayed here. https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/4001 https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/4001

SirCypher 5y ago
This is only the case for the static binaries and not for the official Ubuntu/Debian/... releases. At least they put a warning on their release page: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/releases https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/releases But releasing a vulnerable version of Mumble is still bad. They should either fix it or not release a static binary at all.
BelenusMordred 5y ago
Nothing in that thread backs up what you are saying. There's some rude commentary by an angry individual but the devs clearly explain the reasoning and make it known to end-users on the actual download page. Also just update your version if you are really so concerned? This doesn't affect me at all on linux and the current development snapshot for windows is using an updated openssl lib.
- SirCypher 5y ago
  It does not affect you, but it affected me. I wanted to run the newest version of the Mumble server "murmur". Easiest way to do this is to use the static binary. (At that time there was no warning on the release page yet.) But of course this ran with an outdated OpenSSL. I don't want to run a server with unpatched known security holes so I had to scrap that idea. "Just update your version" is also not possible because the newest static build still contains old OpenSSL. In the end I had to get the newest murmur package from Debian Unstable. It's fine, it works for me (TM), but then why did the static build exist at all? They should just remove the outdated static binary build if they aren't going to fix it.

eximius 5y ago

I miss Mumble. My friends all migrated to Discord, which replaced Mumble + phpBB.

matkaguessing 5y ago

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simondotau 5y ago

While this is likely common knowledge in this community, Mumble uses the Opus codec, which is a significant factor[1] in Mumble audio being both high quality and very low latency. Prior to Opus, Mumble used CELT.[2] This was a precursor to the Opus codec developed by Xiph.org, makers of the very well known Ogg container format and Vorbis audio codec. [1] https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CELT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CELT

jtsiskin 5y ago
Most calls on the web are using it. It’s the webrtc default
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Right. As you would desire and hopefully expect, even if it might be technically possible to squeeze out slightly better compression with some non-free technology, it's very attractive for everybody to agree on the free things instead. The FSF even offers this as one of the few reasons you wouldn't use Copyleft. It actually would be better for society if everybody copy-pastes the Opus code and refuses to let you see their source code, than for them to use a proprietary codec instead.
LinAGKar 5y ago
I'm pretty sure it used to use Speex
- delusional 5y ago
  Isn't that Ventrilo?
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    Mumble did use Speex too. I4ve heard the "This is an example of Speex" voice line spinning around my head too many times every time I set up mumble.

romseb 5y ago

I was looking for an alternative to Google Meet for a constantly open meeting room where we can share ideas and screens and spend the lunch break. Ideally, this would've been Slack with discord-like voice channels where you can drop in and out and see if a participant is online. They promised this feature [1] last year, but it did not land. What we tried and their pros and cons: 1. Google Meet: * ○ Excellent noise suppression only if you are on one of their higher paid plans like Enterprise or Business Plus * + Statistics on participant activity (how often did they enable their mic/camera, bitrate, etc.) * - Overheating on MacBooks * - Room will be deleted if nobody is joined for X days * - Real full screen for screen sharing not possible * - Proprietary, needs a paid plan * - Forget about privacy 2.Zoom: * - Proprietary, no privacy, security vulnerabilities 3. Teamviewer: * - Needs a separate software (otherwise a worthy competitor to Google Meet) 4. Mumble: * - Others in this thread have already laid out why it is not being used more: UX, setup wizard, no echo suppression, finicky push-to-talk 5. Discord: * - No privacy * - No encryption * - Focused on gaming * + Interesting feature for screen sharing: You can select if you want readability and low frame rate or high frame rate and low readability * + Voice channels 6. We now ended up with a self-hosted k8s instance of Jitsi Meet (they host their own at [2]) which works great: * + Open source * + Latency and call quality is phenomenal * + sharing screens of multiple participants works like a charm. Sharing a screen in Google Meet takes 5 seconds or so, in Jitsi Meet, it is immediately. * ○ Echo suppression is not as good as Google Meet's * + Unique features like synchronized Youtube player (which automatically mutes all participants) * + End-to-end encryption * + Recordings [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21505519/slack-instagram-stories-push-to-talk-audio-calls-new-features https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21505519/slack-instagram-... [2] https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/

omk 5y ago
What is the minimum spec required for running Jitsi for upto 5 participants?
- romseb 5y ago
  I don't know exactly, but it must be pretty low considering my home server can handle it without much of an impact to CPU/RAM.

chmod775 5y ago

Quite popular in the EVE: Online community, where alliances and corps run mumble servers with tens of hundreds of people each.

AmericanChopper 5y ago
It was quite popular back when I played WoW.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  WoW is pretty much 100% discord now. My guild only moved on from Mumble because we couldn't get pick-up players in voice.
Bombthecat 5y ago
I play eve, most are on discord now. Only a few "hardcore" corps are still running mumble
remram 5y ago
> tens of hundreds Thousands?

baohwang 5y ago

How is this different from a VoIP WebRTC implementation?

hytdstd 5y ago
For one, it's native rather than web.
vetrom 5y ago
Native vs yet another Electron app, customizable in pretty much every fashion, and it has inbuilt support for positional audio chat (so you can manually move entities in relation to each other, or use one of many available plugins to feed positional data from something else!) see: https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games

Lammy 5y ago

I like https://umurmur.net/ https://umurmur.net/ since it can run totally headless at the cost of some of Murmur's features. Mainline Murmur (the Mumble server) requires QT5 and mDNSResponder and various DB drivers and even D-Bus if you look at it crossways

broodbucket 5y ago
umurmur good. I never did anything fancy with my server but I never noticed anything that umurmur didn't have, meanwhile it used virtually zero resources.
zxzax 5y ago
The D-Bus RPC is considered deprecated in favor of Ice and can be compiled out.

n4bz0r 5y ago

I doubt Mumble/Team Speak are ever going to be as popular as they were before. But boy do I wish they would. - Native UI: everything happens instantly - Lightweight client - The ability to host your own server Even initial setup difficulties had an upside. More often than not, those who weren't capable of properly setting things up also weren't the right fit to play seriously/competitively. Such little barriers were a great initial filter for toxic wannabes with short attention span.

deleted 5y ago
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superkuh 5y ago
It's too bad Teamspeak stopped existing as the excellence it was in the Teamspeak 2/3 era. By the end of TS3 they had already implemented nagware that would kill TS3 servers every $x months unless you reinstalled $latest. And now with Teamspeak 5 it's just Matrix. And Matrix is a super heavy protocol. You can't just spin up a matrix server on some random low end VPS with 512 MB of ram.
- justaj 5y ago
  > And Matrix is a super heavy protocol. You can't just spin up a matrix server on some random low end VPS with 512 MB of ram. That's not the fault of the "heavy" protocol, but the implementation of it. As of now there's only 1 reference server implementation which is written in Python (Synapse), but https://conduit.rs/ https://conduit.rs/ and Dendrite are making good progress to be able to run on embedded devices.
- Avi0n 5y ago
  TS5 is matrix? I’ve been using the TS5 beta client for over a year and I’ve been able to connect to my old TS3 server with no problems, both audio and text. I wasn’t aware there was a new TS5 server either, I thought they were going to keep the current one.

ArsenArsen 5y ago

They also support RNNoise, and everyone who knows me knows I love RNNoise! :)

southerntofu 5y ago

I'd like to point out that Mumble is one of those rare solutions that works just fine on the Tor network, for everyone's privacy. Why would it be normal for a voice server to know where you reside in order to take part in a discussion? In the age of everything WebRTC that only works with JavaScript and countless invasive browser "standards", Mumble is very refreshing. (Yes you can technically tunnel WebRTC through Tor by using firefox/chromium instead of Tor Browser, but by doing so you will leak your IP!)

pmoriarty 5y ago
"Mumble is one of those rare solutions that works just fine on the Tor network" How do you even set it up to use TOR? It'd be nice if it just had a "Connect through TOR" checkbox in its preferences, but I have a feeling it's not even remotely so easy, is it?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's not so easy no, but it's not so hard either. You need to use a SOCKS5 proxy with localhost:9050 (where tor usually runs). Then you need to connect using TCP not UDP. I believe it's as straightforward as that, but to be honest i haven't fired up a network log to check that Mumble wasn't sending IP addresses or other "private" information over there.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "where tor usually runs" So you have to set up tor too. The average person's not going to know (or even want to know) how to do that. It needs to be made as simple as a "connect over tor" button, and everything should be done for you, including setting up tor... anything requiring more interaction or knowledge is going to lose a lot of users.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Not that i disagree with your point, but that's not exactly part of tor's threat model that it would be setup by a random application trying to leverage it. Usually, you set it up once on your system then apps access it. Auto-setup may be easier if you're targeting a certain platforms, for example on Android you can keep a local copy of the F-Droid PGP key, download the latest installer, set it up, and from there enable Guardian Project repository and setup Orbot (tor for Android). On Debian, you could just run "apt install tor" (acquiring privileges on the go) from your program and then start proxying through localhost:9050. But if you're targeting many systems the problem becomes hairier. If you have better suggestions about how to ease this process, i'm sure folks from the Tor community will be very interested! :)

omk 5y ago

Since the pandemic, have been using a mumble setup for our team to have seamless interactions with each other. It is a lot easier to ask a query over PTT than typing away in a chat window. People can easily deafen themselves when busy or in focus more. It just brings the office space back to life.

fingerguns 5y ago

Mumble has been one of the if not the best additions to FiveM[1] It has allowed for so many cool in game features, like the ability to have DSP audio filters on channels so we can do RadioFX audio effects in game without any external applications. [1] https://github.com/citizenfx/fivem/tree/b959f174803a972cf8c7a2daee5d64299295a5c0/code/components/voip-mumble https://github.com/citizenfx/fivem/tree/b959f174803a972cf8c7...

lu4p 5y ago

I think the mumble/ teamspeak ship has sailed a long time ago the UI/ UX of discord is just better. I would like a open source solution similar to discord, I think the closest thing we currently have are Signal group calls. Current features of Signal calls: - peer to peer no need for a central server which sells your data (Discord) or needs to be setup rented, maintained (teamspeak, mumble) - end to end encryption - video calls - Screen sharing - large group sizes for text chats (1000) Wanted features: - adjust the volume of individual participants - multiple voice/ text "channels" for a group (something similar to discord servers) - usernames so that not everybody needs to know my phone number - more participants in a single group call (currently maximum 8), I think 10-15 should be enough for most use cases, with more voice participants voice chat breaks down regardless, because of people constantly interrupting each other - the UI for group calls is still a little confusing

gizmo385 5y ago
> no need for a central server which sells your data (Discord) Discord doesn't sell your information: https://discord.com/privacy https://discord.com/privacy FTA: > "The Company is not in the business of selling your information"

beshrkayali 5y ago

FWIW Linux Unplugged[1](one of the best linux discussion podcast) still uses mumble[2] to connect and communicate with their community. 1: https://linuxunplugged.com/ https://linuxunplugged.com/ 2: https://linuxunplugged.com/mumble https://linuxunplugged.com/mumble

bartwe 5y ago

Mumble is fun, we have a positional audio plugin for mumble in our game.

j1elo 5y ago

I think Mumble as an OSS voice chat project has had its success and has brought some net positives to the ecosystem since its inception. But nowadays, especially since pandemic times, the focus of the technology has moved and newer systems are in place which bring very powerful possibilities to the audio/video conference field. WebRTC has seen an incredible push and if you only wanted Mumble for its open-sourceness and its use of the Opus codec for low latency, you might be better off by joining a Jitsi room with your friends and enjoying the immense effort that the web browser already brings in matter of echo cancellation and other shenanigans related to conferencing apps, plus the better UI that these kind of projects offer for end users (Mumble's bad UI is a common topic). On the other hand there is Discord, but it plays in a different league because it is closed-source, VC-backed, and uses some advanced technology like AI-based noise cancelling.

LinuxBender 5y ago

UX issues aside, one plus for Mumble/Murmur is privacy. Should Discord some day be purchased by one of the big players, I would expect them to follow the path of Zoom and add voice transcription thus allowing them to not only save text chats forever, but also save everything that everyone says. Their user-base are already asking for it [1] One would have more control over this on a Murmur Mumble server. In my experience, people are more relaxed with things they say vs. things they type. There is the assumption that only the people visible in the channel are listening. It is only a matter of time before voice transcription is standard on all the large platforms and I am not confident that this data will be protected properly. [1] - https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360063450132-Text-transcription-live-captioning-on-voice-chat https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600634...

pmoriarty 5y ago
"I would expect them to follow the path of Zoom and add voice transcription thus allowing them to not only save text chats forever, but also save everything that everyone says" It might not be transcribed, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't already save everything that everyone said (in audio format). Some of it is probably already transcribed too. It's just that doing it for every possible accent and language is not easy without training, so they probably don't have everything transcribed, but some of it probably is and the rest is just waiting in archives for when they want to give it more attention.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

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hyperionplays 5y ago

Intergrating Mumble with Mattermost would be amazing. Then I'd be able to convince people to switch.

pixelmonkey 5y ago

Is there something like Mumble, but for async voice communication? Of the style of yac.com, or of the style of "voice recordings" you see in WhatsApp or Telegram? I think that would be really nice for 1:1 and group chats in a work/friend context, especially spanning timezones, and where the point isn't to game or socialize in real-time, but instead around busy work/life schedules.

alfg 5y ago

I've always been a fan of Mumble (and murmur server) and its high quality, open source software. I made https://guildbit.com https://guildbit.com years ago for gamers that want to just quickly spin up a free temporary server with their friends. I still operate it today since there's still a few users out there. I realize most are using Discord now. I still think it would be great if someone were to create an open source Discord clone using Mumble/murmur as a backend. I'm sure it's possible, but not too sure if there's still a sizable audience willing to use Mumble over Discord these days.

keb_ 5y ago

Mumble is great. I've personally used it with friends for about ten years now. The main client, while not as intuitive as Discord, is pretty easy to use and get used to. Many of my friends are non-technical and never had problems using Mumble aside from the occasional microphone issue (which happens to me regardless of VoIP software.)

antattack 5y ago

Mumble...what a horrible name for a project that offers low latency and high quality voice chat.

hadlock 5y ago

We ran a mumble server for a 3,500 user, paid/paying, video game server community (Battlefield 3, circa 2010). We typically had 200+ users on, with 30-50 users per channel (three servers, two channels per server) plus a handful of regulars in the hangout channel. People would stream the same video on netflix and chat with eachother. It was quite the community. The server ran on a "free-tier" server that the hosting company gave us for free, since we were renting three of their top-tier gaming servers. It used, at peak, 5-7% cpu, and 250mb memory, if I remember correctly. Normally it was closer to 2% cpu and 100mb memory. This was with all the settings jacked up to "ultra" or the equivalent. Audio quality, and latency were amazing. It's really disappointing to use video chat like Google Meet, or Zoom after a product like Mumble. My servers & mumble server finally got retired, but some of the regulars started their own server, and occasionally I'll login still and a bunch of them are still hanging out. Mumble is an incredible, extremely stable product. Highly recommend.

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