Roundup – VOIP applications
By Mitchell Vleeskens – Tue Mar 9, 2010 2:19pm
Gamers are a social bunch. Society might think we sold our vocal chords for some quick cash to get the latest Grand Theft Auto, but we know better: gamers love to talk. Indeed, it’s often more difficult to get some of you to shut up!

In a competitive environment, there’s no substitute for team communication. Whether you’re bombing sites on de_dust , or wiping in Molten Core because somebody didn’t realise they were the bomb, typing on the fly doesn’t cut it. So what do you do when you want to “voice” your concerns?
Welcome to a three-way fork. Well, really, it’s a three-way fork with a dark alley behind a few crates off to the side that your mother warned you about. Ahead of you are three roads: an over-populated tollway, Ventrilo; the road everybody used before, TeamSpeak; and the cool road that the edgy crowd uses because nobody else has heard of it, Mumble. Let’s start with Mumble.


 

Mumble
Could Mumble be any cooler? For a start, it’s open source. Add in the Mensa puzzle logo and the ability to skin the interface, and we’re talking ice cold. Thankfully it’s free of the pretension.
Mumble’s greatest asset is its simplicity. Setup is painless, as the wizard will help you configure volume and whether you want a push to talk button, and the UI makes sense in a simple but functional way. The in-game overlay in Mumble continues this theme using plain text and an avatar pic. It’s easily the best overlay of the big three because of how unobtrusive it is. You can also configure the font and colours if you so desire. However, a few games will crash or not display correctly when the overlay is enabled – for a full compatibility list check out mumble.sourceforge.net/Games.

Mumble’s audio quality performed the best of the three in our testing, thanks to its implementation of the Speex codec, one handy feature of which is positional audio. Mumble will adjust the direction and distance your teammates voices will come from in correlation with where you stand in the game. Got a couple of mates backing you up? Hopefully they’ll sound like they’re right behind you so you know they’ve got your back instead of letting you rush to your death. Or if your team splits up – a few to the left, a few to the right, while you hang back – you will be provided with instant audio clues as to where the action is. This obviously has more benefit and utility in an FPS, but MMOs also appear on the list of supported games, of which there are currently about 26. Gimmicky? Maybe. Necessary? Maybe not. Awesome? Hell-yes!

Options at first glance appear pretty basic, but hit the inconspicuous “advanced” checkbox in the bottom left corner and you can access more audio and plug-in options. Mumble’s downfall however is its server – Murmur. It’s not for the faint hearted or those not willing to delve into .ini files or plug-in apps. You’ll need to dedicate some time to setting it up. Commercial hosts will help ease the pain if you want an easy way out.

Why choose Mumble? Completely free, great quality, simple but useful client-side UI, best looking overlay, positional audioHopefully from here, things will only get better as more games are added to its compatibility list.
Score 4/5

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