Does anyone use Mumble to voice chat?

[kertinker]

Does anyone use the Mumble voice chat program to voice chat? Discord is a bit "closed shop" for my liking. At least... if possible, I'd rather avoid running programs which do things I'm not allowed to know about to my computer. Yet I don't see any gaming groups mentioning "Mumble," and a lot (all?) mentioning "Discord," even though as far as I can tell they're pretty much the same thing. Is there some sort of "gotcha" that I'm not seeing, that makes Mumble no good, or is it just scarily effective marketing on Discord's part? Is there something else I should be looking at instead, if I'm aiming at open communication and voice chat?

[CarlZalph]

There's nothing wrong with Mumble, and I use it as my primary VoIP client.

 

A lot of people use Discord because "it just works" with very little setup or computer skills.

[kertinker]

That's fine. Mostly I'm just curious about Mumble. I ran it and er... it configured my microphone? Other than that, it seemed to just work. I think actually running a Mumble server is a bit involved, but there were like... a hundred servers I could connect to. I may have been too shy to try talking to anyone. Perhaps there's a "test your microphone" channel somewhere I didn't see.

[Captain_Rage]

Mumble is an extremely nice program. Me and my friends have been using it for years when gaming and talking over the net. I even had a Murmur server running on a Raspberry Pi B+ for a few users and it worked nicely.

Since it's open source and free (developed by people whose sole aim was to make a neat VoIP program and spread the love) it is fairly easy to set up your own server if you got a server running at home, for example. From my experience the technical aspects really shine. Sound quality is superb och the latency is minimal, even when using a low-end computer as a server (coupled with a decent connection). The client is also minimalistic and has a low resource footprint on the system.

We used such a private server to connect to while hanging out and playing games. It was on a basis that somebody had set it up and invited a few friends, and some of them invited theirs, and in total I'd guess that there were around 4-15 people connected there daily.

 

Discord however is developed by a company and they integrate many services that are connected to their servers. It is easily accessible. I only tried the browser version a little, and yeah, it actually worked alot better than expected, but I read that the GNU/Linux and Windows clients are rather heavy/bloated programs and I tend to stay away such. It has its appeal, with many people using it and ease to get connected with every user that is on the Discord network, as well as integrating with other online services. Sound quality and respone times when using the browser version were really good, I'd admit.

[kertinker]

5 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

Mumble is an extremely nice program. Me and my friends have been using it for years when gaming and talking over the net. I even had a Murmur server running on a Raspberry Pi B+ for a few users and it worked nicely.

Okay, so it sounds like I don't have to worry about it. I'm curious though...

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they integrate many services that are connected to their servers. It is easily accessible.

What services do Discord integrate that Mumble doesn't, and how is it easily accessible where Mumble is not? You mean how they have a web browser application, instead of just a desktop version? I guess that could be a small advantage over Mumble. Doesn't seem too much trouble to install a chat program though, plus you're still "installing" a webapp, it just installs without your permission.

 

Maybe I should have titled this thread "Discord vs Mumble..." I already know Skype is awful though. It's only those two I'm a bit uncertain about.

[Captain_Rage]

On the technical side Mumble is nice. Both the server and client is open source software and very light. I like that. Once you set up your server (if you want create your own) you get a nice place for your friends to hang out (well, of course you can hang out on Discord as well). Or if you find a server to your liking; only install the client and connect to it.

I meant that I barely used Discord. When I tried it, it was the browser version. I don't have any experience of the Discord client but just reading about it made me hesitant to try it out. There are probably many features that I'm not familiar with or have heard about. 

They have some Twitch integration, for example. Haven't seen it myself. If someone is arranging a big event for a stream while talking with many strangers, or something, it is understandable why they'd want to use Discord. Seems to be easy to do those sort of things and make it easily accessible and flashy. https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/212112068-Twitch-Integration-FAQ

It's funny that they write "You can now have a dedicated Discord server for all of your closest sub buddies". I'd rather describe it as "a chatroom on our network", lol. The fun thing with Mumble was to actually set up and customize your own server.

Maybe I'm just one of those backward thinkers that prefer to tinker with my own setup with oldschool style software.

 

Mumble is not complicated, once you get a hang of it. You install the client and connect to a server (entering server details or clicking on a public one). Ideally, that's it.

On Discord you register an user, install their client (or use the browser version), and then you can click on stuff and search for users and channels across their whole network.

The latter might easier for non-technical people, as mentioned above, since you don't have to know how to connect to a specific server or fiddle with stuff like that (you don't even have to know what a "server" is; you just "log in").

 

Yeah, I meant that it's nice that Discord has browser version as a mean of connecting as well. A minor boon, I agree. (There are mobile app clients for both Mumble and Discord also).

Oh, thanks for pointing out that it installs a webapp. I didn't know that.

 

For me:

Mumble is more of coming back and hanging out with the same people. Discord is more of changing chatrooms and talking to randoms (since all users are on the same network). Not the best comparison but that's the vibes I get from them. Pardon if this doesn't make any sense, haha.

[ZolaRay]

6 hours ago, CarlZalph said:

There's nothing wrong with Mumble, and I use it as my primary VoIP client.

 

A lot of people use Discord because "it just works" with very little setup or computer skills.

is that a king crimson reference

[InfamousJackson]

I personally have never used Mumble, But I do use discord. I would recommend it. It uses a lot less CPU than Skype. I think I will try mumble out though.

[Cellby]

Discord has better sound quality, but it's only noticeable if you have quality headsets and microphones. It actually has a lot of cool features that I've only recently been learning about, and it's really useful for people who run a server or want to interact with people in it. RhythmBot is my recent new favourite; you can request songs and make playlists on the spot and have a good time sharing music with friends. One can even listen to the same Spotify song someone else is listening to if their account is connected – you can see what song they are listening to just by hovering over their avatar. When I tried to look into setting up a Music Bot in Mumble long ago, it was more complicated compared to this. It's a good place for admins of servers to put up announcements, a place for people to share photos and an easier way to meet new people. Discord channels are a lot easier to invite people to join than Mumble's need to type in the IP and port, getting access tokens, etc. 

This server I joined less than a month ago has a #server-chat channel on Discord, and you can say and read things said on the server chat even if your game isn't launched, which is pretty impressive to me. I'm sure there are still features that I don't know about the app, but they are constantly improving and updating it. Plus it just looks prettier and more modern, not to mention an easy to access mobile app.

I would recommend using Mumble if your computer is old or not-so-powerful laptop; the difference will be felt especially if you need every bit of CPU you can manage to run your games better. Mumble is also older than Discord, so a lot of people have it and are used to it. It works fine as a voice chat. But that's all it is. I've noticed a lot of communities that used to work with Mumble move on over to Discord just because of all the features that they can use. I have several friends on there that don't even have a Steam account that I can add them on. You can think of it as a social media app despite it primarily advertised as a voice chat option. I still use mumble every day to chat with my same old friends, though. We already have other mediums to send each other links to things and to chat online.

 

[kertinker]

7 hours ago, InfamousJackson said:

I personally have never used Mumble, But I do use discord. I would recommend it. It uses a lot less CPU than Skype. I think I will try mumble out though.

The non-awful</opinions> equivalent to Skype is a program called Tox and yeah, it's a p2p chat relaying program, which makes it more involved than just "send audio to server." But how much more involved? I think the only programs whose CPU usage could slow things down are this game, and screen recording software. I don't have anyone to test it with, but just sitting there idle, qTox only takes like 0.7% of a single CPU.

If you need to test it out with someone, let me know, because I don't really have anyone to test it out with myself...

20 minutes ago, Cellby said:

Discord has better sound quality,

Mumble actually deliberately has lower sound quality. They use an algorithm called "Opus" which tries to hone in on what parts of a voice our ears actually hear, and get rid of everything other than that, to crunch it down as tiny as possible. You can set the sound quality really high, but people don't, because they're using Mumble to talk, not to record the Metropolitan Opera.

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When I tried to look into setting up a Music Bot in Mumble long ago, it was more complicated compared to this

I'd probably set up a separate file server to serve music, if that's what I wanted to do. Broadcasting it on top of people trying to speak is kind of... hard to filter out. But you are correct, companies like Youtube and Twitch are much happier to work with DIscord, since it gives them the assurance that you're not in control. If we give up a little freedom, they'll definitely stop trying to sabatoge us. Which is nice.

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I've noticed a lot of communities that used to work with Mumble move on over to Discord

Yeah, people are leaving Mumble, people are leaving IRC, even image boards, all going to Discord. The rest of the chat net is something of a ghost town, with everyone hailing to Discord, and... nothing else. I really don't like using closed source programs if I can help it though, because I have no way to verify their security. So, mostly I'm trying to find problems with Mumble, not reasons to use something else.

[Cellby]

1 hour ago, kertinker said:

So, mostly I'm trying to find problems with Mumble, not reasons to use something else.

I don't think you will find anything significant, at least to my knowledge. Mumble is pretty solid. It is a tool, not a service like Discord. Anyone can fork the program and anyone can host a server. Reliability is completely in the hands of the user.

Another point to support Mumble use.

[Sinister_Fang]

1 hour ago, kertinker said:

because they're using Mumble to talk, not to record the Metropolitan Opera

Dang. Guess I won't be using Mumble then...

[Captain_Rage]

3 hours ago, kertinker said:

Mumble actually deliberately has lower sound quality. They use an algorithm called "Opus" which tries to hone in on what parts of a voice our ears actually hear, and get rid of everything other than that, to crunch it down as tiny as possible. You can set the sound quality really high, but people don't, because they're using Mumble to talk, not to record the Metropolitan Opera.

It depends on the server settings (which should be set to accomodate the connection + hardware optimally). Most public servers intended for many users keep the bitrate very low, which indeed makes the sound quality poor. The sound quality on the private server that me and my friends are using is top notch, together with a minimal delay. It really shows in fast-paced games.

The few times I tried Discord the sound quality was very good and response times seemed to be okay (but, yeah, then I was talking with random people in countries further away), for every intent and purpose.