Voice quality - or Lack thereof

Senior Member
★ Black Lounger ★
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Feb 17, 2003
Messages
1,483
Best answers
0
Well I have some time to kill so it best be to tell all the admins about the lack of voice quality across the servers.

There is a lack of servers using high voice quality. It sickenes me. I go into servers and hear nothing but mumbleing from the players cause they are using the outdated miles sound system. Please I beg you guys. USE THIS. Go to your server.cfg and listenserver.cfg and add the changes into it.

My server uses:
sv_voicecodec voice_speex
sv_voicequality 3
This will only take up 8 kilabits of the line, now I say that reconizeable voices are WORTH 8 kilabits.

*Would an admin please stikify this*

Copied off of steam help files said:
Server Settings:
Servers have quite a few options now for player voice settings, here is a summary:

The codec that a client uses is determined by the server, so use this command on your server to switch over to using the new one:

sv_voicecodec voice_speex

And then these commands to change between different quality voice streams (also on the server):

sv_voicequality 1 : 2400bps, lowest quality
sv_voicequality 2 : 6000bps
sv_voicequality 3 : 8000bps
sv_voicequality 4 : 11200bps
sv_voicequality 5 : 15200bps, highest quality

*edit: removed the usless miles speech*

This is a copy of a thread with some additional detailed information about the Speex codec and relative efficiencies:

http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=48362&st=0

Here is a mailing-list archive entry about the Speex voice-compression codec, where it details how to enable and use this new and vastly improved speech compression with Half-Life. It will eventually replace the existing voice-compression, and become the only option. Until then, it is not the default option, but available for all Steam-powered servers. In general, reducing bandwidth usage for voice down to 6000 bits/second (quality 2) still sounds better than the current codec, while truly high levels of compression (2400 bits/second) sounds equivilantly bad, but in a different way than the current compression method.

As a quick comparison, it used anywhere from 7.5% as much bandwidth to 47.5% as much bandwidth as the current 'voice' compression, and at less than 25% the bandwidth usage sounds generally better than the current voice compression. It does use a higher portion of server CPU, but only 1-2% in most of my tests.

And as Yet Another Note: 56k modems generally have around 20000 bits/second of upload space available, and around 40000 bits/second of download space available, once you factor in TCP/IP and PPP headers and everything else. So these new codecs are MUCH more friendly for modem users.

Unfortunately, it's only available for Steam-compatable servers. Anyways, for those that don't want to read that mailing-list for more information, here you go:

First, switch your server to use the Speex encoder:

sv_voicecodec voice_speex

Now, you're running in Speex mode. The next choice is how much bandwidth do you want Speex to use, which is a direct trade-off with the voice quality.

sv_voicequality 1 = 2,400 bits/sec, 7.5% of current usage
sv_voicequality 2 = 6,000 bits/sec, 18.75% of current usage
sv_voicequality 3 = 8,000 bits/sec, 25% of current usage
sv_voicequality 4 = 11,200 bits/sec, 35% of current usage
sv_voicequality 5 = 15,200 bits/sec, 47.5% of current usage
 
Active Member
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
2,462
Best answers
0
Is this why that practically every guy that uses the microphone. sounds the same?
 
Lost in space
Banned
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Dec 21, 2003
Messages
3,608
Best answers
0
Chakra said:
Is this why that practically every guy that uses the microphone. sounds the same?
i guess you could say so

the only bad thing though is if they yell at us with really good mic quality on the server. n00bs would yell into peoples ears and piss and moan going "STOP PWNING ME YOU F**" , and that already happens on aus servers >:eek:
 
Lost in space
Banned
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Dec 1, 2002
Messages
2,725
Best answers
0
Chakra-X said:
Is this why that practically every guy that uses the microphone. sounds the same?
Yep, that's what we call the Counter-Strike voice. The voice that just about every male has using voice communication on HL because of people using the old miles sound system.

If you're tight on bandwidth, even sv_voicequality 2 sounds better than before. The highest setting sounds very clear, and uses less than half of the bandwidth previously used. I can't believe that most people don't know to use this.
 
New Member
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Sep 8, 2002
Messages
2,278
Best answers
0
Location
Earth
People actually don't know this stuff :O

Oh well, hope the OTHER admins all listen to this. I play on other peoples servers during Summer School.
 
Base belongs to me.
👑 Administrator
🌠 Staff
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
💎Légéñdārý
Joined
Nov 30, 2002
Messages
10,861
Best answers
0
Location
Netherlands
I think i have the settings either on 4 or 5. Voice very clear, i love it. Its a shame Valve is not even bothered to tune up the sound / microphone system in Half-Life / 2
 
Senior Member
★ Black Lounger ★
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Feb 17, 2003
Messages
1,483
Best answers
0
No, they did better with the miles sound system in half-life 2. But the code for the miles sound system in hl1 is quite ****ty.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom