Voice Servers (TS/Ventrilo)

[Rebiv4]

I know some of you guys are misinformed about how the voice server bandwidth/Codecs work so I figured i'd give you guys a quick rundown so some changes for the better could be made.

Ventrilo:
Ventrilo Bandwidth: 65% (on Cable/ISDN 1 megabit)

Teamspeak:
Takes a lot more Bandwidth for worse quality. (Same Conn)

A lot of people don't understand that the codec in your sound/setup area is for TESTING only, it is only when you're in that menu testing your keys/that codec. It has NO effect on the codec the server uses. The server codec is dictated by the server control panel from the hosting company.

The amount of bandwidth a Ventrilo or even a TS voice server takes is negligible at best - if you have anything higher than 1056k running at the highest codec would not put much of a strain on your system. I've looked all over just to see if the codec could be increased without much interference with your guys rigs/connections and everyone I talked to read about said that 25.5kb/s, which is the best Speex codec, does nothing to really change your latency in IL-2 or any game for that matter.

I'm not trying to force or beg here, but the crackling, drop outs, and just plain poor quality after 4 years of Ventrilo (I moved from TS after 3 to vent) is amazing, and really makes it difficult for distinguish voices and commands/comments while in-game with prop noise and gunfire. If the channel codec can be changed by an admin to Speex 25.5 just for one night, you'll be blown away. It won't be as good as Ventrilo with the same codec because Ventrilo takes less resources than TeamSpeak, but it at least will increase voice quality in many situations.

Communication is key, and being a clan leader and officer for 9 years has taught me to take advantage of all resources at your disposal and find the best way to optimize and steamline your ability to coordinate and communicate with your teammates.

Just some ideas that I hope we can give consideration, I did a good 45 mins of research to get to these results and it would benefit everyone to at least try some of them.

Thanks!

[american]

Ill tell you Why this is and is not true and why ventrilo cna be pretty inconvenient.



1st alot of guy's are computer geniuses. Ventrilo compared to team speak is alot harder to under stand.

Bandwidth. This is simply set by the server. There are ventrilo codec's that use more and less and same with team speak. If you talk Quality/Bandwidth Ventrilo wins. But when you talk bandwidth in general team speak wins. It is practically impossible to chat on ventrilo with a dial up connection.

This refers to them crappy computer users. Ventrilo actually uses up more CPU while in use. Since it has bigger more complexed codec's the computer actually has to use up computing power for you to hear. although almost unnoticeable on 1st person shooter's on a single core computer at 2.0 GHZ you can feel the difference.

Last ventrilo has possibly the worst voice activation set up ever. an with the whole 1 second delay before yous peak and other setting like when you continue to talk to not shut if can really get annoying.



Im a fan of team speak for it's simplicity low CPU usage (and RAM) and it reliability. (Ventrilo server's tend to crash if you start doing server wide setting) I had a ventrilo server (I paid for it) i ran one in my basement, and even with the new update it the same thing with a new setting menu.

[Warren]

Im torn between the two. For the past 3 years I have had a 24 slot Ventrilo sever for my RB squad, well I pay DarkStar for them to host it and am very pleased with it overall. A lot of neat features and at least for me is very easy to use server manager/admin stuffs and the sound quality is second to none.

More than a handful of pilots that I can recall that have had major problems installing it and operating Vent..... <---- mostly eastern Europeans, something to do with different versions of MS OS's.

Been on larger Vent servers, 60+ people and I have to say...... wasnt impressed. The Vent "delay" that American spoke about was really bad and was more fustrating than anything...... and Im a Vent fanboy. IMO Vent is great for smaller groups for relaxed talks.

I've also had problems with Vent needing the server to be manually rebooted.

TS is solid overall and is standard much like RogerWilco was back in the day. Ventrilo will over take TS one day in the future but they have a few more versions to come out with before they are able to dominate the online gaming scene.

I for one can't wait!!

Forget, what the hell was MircoSofts' little voice comms things Had to buy the box and receiptors? Team Chat maybe, I forget, that thing sucked ballz!!!!!!! lolollo

TS aint that bad and believe me there are many worse out there.

[Tiger]

S! Gents,

My take on Rebiv4's post is that he advocates either using Ventrillo, or, using a better codec for TeamSpeak. Since we have the resources, we can run whatever voice communication program that we like. And, I'll be happy to give Speex 25.5 a try.

[Grim_35]

i have vent as well and think very highly of it i have a powerful pc now but was running it fine in a old 1.7 mhz amd i had beforw this one and did run it on a dial up for a while ran fine as long as there wasnt more than 15 or so people on it while on dial up with my cable connention it ran great with all that was ever online compared to t/s i think vent is in its own class the sound is like on the phone not talking through a wall and i never had a problum setting it up thats my opinion i dont really care witch we use though

[american]

Did you run il2 while using it?

[Grim_35]

yes i did

[Tiger]

Rebiv4, can you provide a link to the codec that you are referring to? The TS server goes up to 24600, but not to 25500. I assume that I have to add it.

S!