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Voice Chat programs where people can speak at the same time without it being awful?
- Thread starter Tanerian
- Start date
I'm not sure what you mean. Discord works well for me, but when there is four of us talking at once, it is of course harder to understand. But that's a product of not being able to understand three other people at once, not the streaming quality, I think. In my experience, Discord works quite well as long as people have good mics. Are you wanting something where it mutes other people when one is talking?
I think this is an issue with microphones/speakers and the need for the chat program to attenuate the volume on the other end when you speak, so that you don't hear your own voice coming back at you.
It's super annoying, but I can see how hard an issue it is to get over. I guess the best thing to recommend is use headphones and tight microphones.
It's super annoying, but I can see how hard an issue it is to get over. I guess the best thing to recommend is use headphones and tight microphones.
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I mean, if multiple people are talking at the same time in real life, it's hard to understand what's going on. Are they just talking over each other? Or is this a different problem?
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Well for example, if you have 5 people at a table speaking about something, everyone can be talking etc.
On discord, if more than 1 person talks, no one can hear anyone say anything, it's just a garble of voices (and yes, all wearing headsets).
I've seen people using voice chat programs where 1 person will talk, another is laughing at the same time, and I can hear both of them clearly even though 2 mics are open at once. Doesn't work like that at all on Discord.
On discord, if more than 1 person talks, no one can hear anyone say anything, it's just a garble of voices (and yes, all wearing headsets).
I've seen people using voice chat programs where 1 person will talk, another is laughing at the same time, and I can hear both of them clearly even though 2 mics are open at once. Doesn't work like that at all on Discord.
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I would probably look at your settings as this isn't true at all.
The trouble with remote isn't usually a technologically problem but a social one. You do so much more communicating without talking then you realize ... A look, a glance, a gesture, your subtle body language, leaning in, leaning away, etc, which provokes someone to know "now is my turn to talk" or "now I should stop talking" or "this person wants to talk at this priority and this person wants to talk at the next priority..." That's basically all gone in remote because you can't give a person a look, or a nod, you can only look at your camera and they can only look at theirs. There are some apps that try to mitigate it but its hard to adapt a billion years of human communication over the course of 10 months.
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Any suggestions that might help? We all have different sound cards and set ups, and all have this problem. I don't see anything in the settings that would fix it.
Nitro would fix this? Never heard of it but I see the option in Discord.. I don't use any of the features it talks about like emoji's etc.
Our audio quality is perfectly fine when 1 person is speaking. The second another person starts speaking, you can understand nothing either person says. It's this way for all 5 of us, and all of us use headsets.
I would like to add to this that the inherent lag in voice chat also complicates things further. Also the lack of directionality in multiple peoples voices does not help
We might need funky AI tech to get the problems directly pertaining to voice fixed. That krisp noise reduction stuff in Discord is a step in the right direction
I think the fact that most people don't have multiple speaker sets on their computers is probably also contributing because all the sounds are coming from the exact same source and being layered on top of each other in a way that wouldn't really happen in an IRL conversation.
I think you should be able to test it quite easily. There are a bunch of level 3 servers with 384kbps audio quality voice channels that y'all can just hop on and test.
Yep, it's this.
Honestly, the user experience would probably be better if Discord et al did mute everyone else once one person started talking, so instead of getting incomprehensible crosstalk you'd get one person speaking clearly. Or maybe additional speakers should come in at 25% as a way to let people request the floor without actually being able to interrupt or something, I dunno.
Or just get used to taking turns better while talking. I know it can be hard with DnD specifically, because with that game there's a lot of jockeying for initiative when you're out of combat. When you roll up to the town and there's one DM trying to manage a bunch of players who all want to go RP and follow leads or do their own thing it's just a mess. But when my board game group gets together and we're just playing games with well-structured turn order, it's pretty easy to not talk over each other.
For D&D, Discord's Priority Speaker might help, inasmuch as it will drop the volume of non-DM speakers, when the DM is talking.
Meanwhile my 7 year old niece has a zoom class where everyone is talking and she can understand her friend over all the noise and they can carry a conversation.
It's pretty crazy. I get immediately frustrated when I can't understand/hear the other person over all the other voices. What would be cool is the ability to selectively mute other people talking and focus on a specific person's audio feed at will. Someone get on that quick.
It's pretty crazy. I get immediately frustrated when I can't understand/hear the other person over all the other voices. What would be cool is the ability to selectively mute other people talking and focus on a specific person's audio feed at will. Someone get on that quick.
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This. I've seen videos of meetings and calls where everyone will talk and the audio is clear enough to hear the individuals. If there are any Critical Role fans, their narrative telephone series is a good example of this. They are all laughing and talking over one another, and you can hear them all clearly. I think they use Zune too.
Maybe it's just Zune?
Sounds like it's a you and your friend's problem. Hasn't been hard to parse what people are saying in our discord calls.
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It just sounds like a jumbled mess of speech. No clarity. I can tell it's speech, but I couldn't tell you a single thing said.
I played Among Us over voice Discord and we could all understand each other just fine
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Fuck I need to find out why we can't. Did your server use Nitro?
If there isn't a drop in audio quality, I'm going to guess it's because in real life, your ears are directional. You will hear better the person you are looking at. You may even lean in to hear them better. In discord and other voice chat programs, all people are speaking from the same direction and proximity. You will also look at a person to read their lips, which you may do more of than you actually realize.
Speach is directional and localized too, in real life. People talk in the direction of the person or people they're talking to, and with consideration for the other conversations happening around them. In this way, 6 people sitting at a small table can have 3 conversations, each of which is perfectly audible to its participants.
Nope. We're using a free one. Do you all not understand each other or is there just one or two people that's experiencing the issue?
It's probably a combination of bad headphones on your part and/or bad microphones on your friends end. Also your settings might need some tweaking.
those videos are probably going to be using locally recorded audio rather than the audio everyone is actually hearing on the call.
each participant records their audio and then someone syncs it all up later offline.
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Are you all using the same headphone models perchance? Also have you tried making a dummy Discord server and trying out if the audio there is also bad?
Echoing the not running into much issue over discord on Nitro boosted or on non-boosted servers. My largest DnD group is 8-9 all up, it only gets problematic if all of us are talking at once, but we're fairly good at taking turns as well.
On my end I personally attunate each person to an appropriate level (DM a bit higher than everyone, people who come through too loud quieter and people who come through too soft louder), and make sure my own mic settings are dialed in (if not push-to-talk, have the auto mic tuned to pick up just my voice and nothing else).
Server wise we make sure we're on the best global server for our ping as well.
On my end I personally attunate each person to an appropriate level (DM a bit higher than everyone, people who come through too loud quieter and people who come through too soft louder), and make sure my own mic settings are dialed in (if not push-to-talk, have the auto mic tuned to pick up just my voice and nothing else).
Server wise we make sure we're on the best global server for our ping as well.
Arcadum, a popular DM on Twitch, runs his campaigns using Discord and there are no problems with the audio. Almost everyone involved in the campaigns is a streamer though so they have better audio setups than most people.
Maybe you just suck on a personal level.
I'm in his DnD group. We tried out Priority Speaker last night and had some success, but that's mostly solving a different problem. Looking forward to trying things out again with the possible new fix.