
Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software - LinuxBender
https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page
======
ethebubbeth
I still use mumble with friends for general voice chat.

I really wish more games implemented its MumbleLink API for positional audio
between clients.
[https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link](https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link)

For example, GW2 implements so people sound relative to where your characters
are if they are on the same map.
[https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:MumbleLink](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:MumbleLink)

The API has also allowed for other tools such at GW2 Tactical Overlay
([http://www.gw2taco.com/](http://www.gw2taco.com/)) to present additional
positional information.

~~~
cliff
Happy to see people using that! :) I implemented that Mumble integration while
I was at ArenaNet.

~~~
ReidZB
Awesome, thanks for that! By the way: that integration has been co-opted for
use by a bunch of overlay software, like gw2taco [1].

So, even if not used for Mumble, it's now a pretty big feature for other 3rd
party software. I use it regularly myself.

(For the unfamiliar: gw2taco et al use position/viewport data, I guess, from
the GW2 Mumble API to draw an overlay on top of the game with navigational
markers/aids.)

[1]: [http://www.gw2taco.com/](http://www.gw2taco.com/)

~~~
cliff
Cool, that was actually what I had hoped would happen! It was fun creating
public APIs; the ArenaNet leadership was extremely supportive.

~~~
johntash
I don't use Mumble for voice chat, but I do really appreciate mumblelink api
being implemented in GW2 for things like gw2taco, so thanks!

------
Wowfunhappy
I really appreciate Mumble's dedication to lowering latency.

Latency is a silent killer of conversation quality. When it's relatively
small, you don't notice it's there, but it makes conversations more stilted
because everyone's responses are just a bit less immediate. You chalk it up to
the person or situation, rather than the software.

I'm not seeing anyone make significant attempts to solve or reduce this
problem. To my ears, 2010-era Skype had lower latency than any VOIP software
in mainstream use today, including Skype. And of course, latency over POTS was
fantastic, albeit with terrible audio quality.

~~~
TomMarius
> To my ears, 2010-era Skype had lower latency than any of the modern VOIP
> systems in use today (including Skype).

Yeah! What happened?

~~~
mrguyorama
Skype went from point to point systems to routing through a server backend.

~~~
solarkraft
Any idea why? Sounds stupid, considering latency losses and increased server
costs.

~~~
dymk
Hole punching through routers. It's hard to generically connect two NAT'd
devices directly. It's simpler to route through a central server.

~~~
oarsinsync
Skype's original USP was that it resolved the NAT issues that plagued SIP
based VOIP implementations, exactly by performing hole punching through
routers (I suspect just UDP hole punching)

------
lvh
It looks like voice packets are intended to be OCB2 (CryptState.cpp,
cryptstate go package in Grumble). I haven't read the code through to figure
out how to mount it (and it looks slightly funky), but if it does what it says
on the tin there's a trivial, one-encryption-oracle-message forgery attack for
that.

Also: I don't think that means you shouldn't use Mumble. I just think someone
should see if they can exploit that bug and then get someone to fix it :-) I
went on their IRC and someone talked to me within 5 minutes, which is a Good
Sign(TM).

(I wish I had more time to just do random audits of open source projects, but
the incentives aren't really lined up for that to happen, and I do more than a
bit of open source work already.)

[cryptstate]: [https://github.com/mumble-
voip/mumble/blob/4976c1ad2e0802755...](https://github.com/mumble-
voip/mumble/blob/4976c1ad2e0802755c15d051783403afc440b173/src/CryptState.cpp)

[ocb2-go]: [https://github.com/mumble-
voip/grumble/blob/master/pkg/crypt...](https://github.com/mumble-
voip/grumble/blob/master/pkg/cryptstate/ocb2/ocb2.go)

[ocb-forgery]:
[https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/1040.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/1040.pdf)

~~~
zaroth
Is it the last step of the encrypt function which would need an additional XOR
operation added (XEX va XE for the encryption of the tag) to mitigate this
attack? [1]

    
    
      S3(delta);
      XOR(tmp, delta, checksum);
      AESencrypt(tmp, tag, &encrypt_key);
    

[1] -
[https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/63642](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/63642)

~~~
lvh
The cryptographic answer is: yep, that sounds about right (with low confidence
because the model violation is subtle).

The cryptographic engineering answer is: use OCB3 instead which doesn't have
this problem :)

------
dharmab
Discord has pretty much completely eaten Mumble's market. Free servers and a
way better chat system ate Mumble's use case.

TeamSpeak is still used by milsim/flightsim communities because it support
plugins which integrate the in-sim radios with the VoIP system.

EDIT: Got Vent and TS mixed up

~~~
greymeister
I refuse to use Discord because I don't know how or to whom they are going to
sell my data yet. It's possible they go to a subscription model but I doubt
it, it seems more likely they'll be acquired by one of the big data brokers at
some point.

~~~
teirce
Discord already has a subscription model (nitro).

They tried to pivot themselves into a game store, but that appears to not have
gone particularly well.

Not too sure on the privacy front. I don't believe they sell any user data,
yet.

~~~
LinuxBender
Hopefully they won't provide chat data or metrics to others. If Discord were
acquired or partnered with anyone shady, they are certainly in a position to
Big-Data-AI (and other bs bing words) everyone. They brag about storing all
messages. [1]

[1] - [https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-stores-billions-
of-m...](https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-stores-billions-of-
messages-7fa6ec7ee4c7)

~~~
gsich
Getting acquired is their business model.

------
colkassad
We live and die by Mumble in Eve Online. The hierarchical chat room setup is
essential for large fleets.

~~~
jqgatsby
That sounds like a really interesting feature! Trying to find some
documentation on this specific feature but it's hard to find exactly what
you're talking about.

1) Can you elaborate how "hierarchical chat room" works and how fleets in Eve
Online use this?

2) Do other game chat apps like Discord implement anything similar?

~~~
dcbadacd
Mumble's channel system allows nesting channels, in addition to that, each
channel allows specific access control list that could be both inherited from
top-level channel or be inherited to a lower-level one. In addition to that it
has the possibility of creating groups of users to whom the permission
applies. It's really sophisticated. Discord has only role-based rooms, but
nothing hierarchical.

~~~
jqgatsby
I don't have any experience with gaming so this is a bit hard for me to
understand. Are nested channels used as a way of grouping channels in a
hierarchy in the UI? Or does the hierarchy affect what people hear? In the
latter case, I'm imagining something like: "Everyone in subchannel can hear
everything said in parent channel, but not vice versa".

~~~
DanTheManPR
The hierarchy can be set up to affect what people hear, and where they can
speak. This is invaluable when you need to coordinate dozens or hundreds of
players in real time. You can set up overlapping rooms where team leads hear
their team member's voice chatter and their superior's voice chatter, and have
the option of communicating in either direction. I usually had the two side
buttons on my mouse set to push-to-talk, one that for talking up the
hierarchy, one for talking downward. The exact setup everyone uses varies, but
at minimum you can have a room for higher-level voice chat among team leads,
while each lowest-level team is isolated to their own channel and can focus on
the tasks given to them by their team lead. Mumble is also flexible enough
that you don't need to strictly adhere to a hierarchy, you can have your
lower-level players also be able to communicated laterally to groups of
specialists who are handling specific support tasks.

This is all a difficult communication problem, but it's doubly difficult
because decisions need to propagate up and down your communication hierarchy
in seconds. Being able to manage this level of communication without it being
a hopeless clusterfuck is a defining feature of effective organizations of
players.

~~~
StavrosK
How do you configure where your push-to-talk transmits? I installed it but can
only find one PTT function, and the documentation didn't really help...

~~~
dcbadacd
You transmit in the channel you're in usually.

------
ocdtrekkie
I still regularly record podcasts via Mumble. It's got solid built-in
recording with decent options, such as whether to record users individually or
as to record the entire chat as one audio feed. Because we have users drop
from time to time, having this built-in capability makes it easy for us to
have at least two people on recording duty at any given time.

I do take mumble.com up on server hosting, because it's so dirt cheap, I
mostly forgot how few dollars I spent on a multi-year subscription for a
server. It might cost me a month of Netflix for a year of Mumble.

~~~
raihansaputra
Do you have guests on your podcast? Does Mumble have a one-click web client
for the session? Interested in this as I had an idea about remote-recording
interview app, but I don't really know the space as of now.

~~~
Svoka
No, it doesn't. We have self-hosted mumble server, and guest set-up is quite
easy. Enter couple parameters and you're good. But again, it's a techie
podcast, so may be it is harder than click here and start talking Discord's
approach.

------
alfg
I use Discord now since most of my friends are on it, but I've always been a
fan of Mumble (and murmur server) since it's high quality software and open
source.

I also made [https://guildbit.com](https://guildbit.com) years ago for gamers
that want to just quickly spin up a temporary server with their friends. I
still operate it today since there's still a few users out there.

I think it would be cool if someone were to create an open source Discord
clone using Mumble/murmur.

~~~
lwhsiao
I'm a huge fan of guildbit, it makes it really easy to get a quick temporary
server. We use it all the time.

~~~
alfg
Thank you! I'm glad you like it! :)

------
admax88q
I'm always amazed how many video games have shitty built in voice chat when
they could have just embedded mumble.

~~~
kkarakk
no one uses in game voice chat, literally no one. even the friendliest most
inclusive games with really amazing voice chat systems(all 3 needed to belong
to this list) like overwatch had players use voice chat for maybe 3 weeks
after launch and then go back to their private discords.

~~~
fisle
I play Overwatch and CS:GO and in competitive matches it is the norm to use
in-game voice, if you don't - you'll get flamed about it.

Casual game modes - that's different.

~~~
geophertz
Yeah but in fact almost no one solo Qs.

------
Arie
For over 10 years I've been running a semi-public Mumble server. It's pretty
much zero effort, low CPU and low bandwidth usage.

These days mainly just as a backup for when Discord lags, which over the past
few weeks has been often. It's so nice to have a very good, open source, self-
hosted, encrypted communications app as an alternative to yet another Electron
app.

~~~
LinuxBender
That also makes the server requirements very simple. I have a tiny VM that can
handle a lot of users.

[edit] removed e2e, the clients are not using pfs yet.

~~~
dcbadacd
It's not end-to-end encrypted?

It's only encrypted going to server, I'm quite certain of it.

~~~
LinuxBender
I stand corrected. [1] I will see if I can find a way to replace a voice
stream. Perhaps I am thinking of a forum thread about PFS.

[1] - [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/58568/is-
mumble...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/58568/is-mumble-
encryption-end-to-end)

~~~
dcbadacd
Even PFS doesn't really work well with Mumble due to the fact that most
clients are using Qt4.

------
Notorious_BLT
I've managed to keep a group of friends using Mumble instead of Discord, and I
think we've all benefited from it. My privacy-focused friend appreciates the
encryption and everyone else appreciates the ability to locally mute people if
they walk away with their headset hot-mic'ed. We use discord for text
communication, but when people are online for games or just to chat, we use
Mumble.

~~~
ziddoap
I mean, you can locally mute people in Discord too so I'm not quite sure why
that is in the "pro" side for Mumble.

However, I'll agree that Mumble is great if all your looking for is somewhat
privacy-forward low-latency voice chat with minimal bloat.

~~~
Notorious_BLT
Oh, fair enough, I didn't know people could local-mute in discord, when I used
it I didn't notice the feature. The low-latency and lack of bloat is still a
major plus though.

------
snvzz
I'd add "difficult to use" to that list. Difficult even for an engineer to
use. Terrible.

It works great once you figure it out, but it could use a better user and
admin experience.

~~~
nightski
Interesting, used to be in a clan of over 100 people that used it no problem,
very few of which were engineers. Not sure what particular functionality held
you up?

~~~
rhn_mk1
Setting up the automatic transmission is notoriously causing problems. The
lack of echo cancellation and no normalization of audio levels are interfering
with discussions as well.

~~~
LinuxBender
The 1.3 snapshots have echo canceling and normalization.

------
dcbadacd
The only thing that's annoying about mumble is the `mumble.com` namesquatting,
distributing outdated clients to people I've tried to get to use Mumble.

------
c0l0
Ah, mumble!

In a former online life of mine, this was one of the key components for my
clan to advance into the Eurocup finals of 2006 (or maybe it was 2005?) in
Rocket Arena for Q3A =)

All the other teams were on (I guess) teamspeak2, and latency was noticably
higher for them due to the inferor audio/voice codec employed. I originally
considered mumble and murmur attractive due to the fact that the client and
server were both proper FOSS, but it proved a secret ingredient to our success
back then.

I still use it to this day, but since most games include a voice chat thingie
of their own these days, I can understand it isn't more popular. Awesome piece
of software, and very polished for a FOSS desktop project!

------
keb_
I still prefer to use Mumble over Discord for its low latency, low system
requirements, simplicity, free software license, and voice activity options /
wizard. I created a Discord server to fill the void of a Slack-like chat for
our group, but even after we had created the Discord, we still preferred
Mumble for VoIP.

We ended up replacing the Discord chat with Riot.im eventually anyway.

------
lamby
Purism ([https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)) uses Mumble for all-hands staff
meetings. Works pretty well and, of course, is free software. :)

------
ThatPlayer
One of my favorite features that Mumble has that Discord doesn't is the
ability to suppress a keypress you're using for push-to-talk. For example, I
use Caps Lock for my PTT, as it is right there and not used in most games
anyways. With Mumble Caps Lock will not toggle at all with that option,
allowing me to type or do other things fine.

------
hadlock
I used to run a gaming server(s) for about four years, we peaked at about 3500
registered users, with 200 concurrent users.... We used Mumble in the
community before I came along, we ran Mumble, after I came along, I took over
the server and hosted it on a 1 core, 512mb memory linux server.... never went
above 2% cpu and... I forget, probably 150MB memory usage with no restriction
on quality (users can transmit CD quality audio)... this worked great, I set
it up in about 10 minutes with little experience at the time, and the mumble
server ran for years without issue until someone dictionary attacked the
password.

Big advantages:

1\. Free

2\. Very low resource requrements, even for hundreds of users. Probably runs
great on a google micro-f1 (Free forever) instance

3\. Crystal clear audio

4\. Lots of in-game plugins, such as positional audio in game (Battlefield:
Bad Company 2, you could hear your teammates talking as they came up the
stairs behind you, etc)

5\. Cert based identity management. Used private key auth to verify you were
you; no other user could sign in and impersonate you. Certified users had a
big yellow C next to their name.

Probably the biggest thing for me, is that there was never, ever an audio
glitch where the computer was not able to send/receive audio. We regularly run
in to audio problems in Meet/Hangouts where audio does not work properly.

When I looked in to online gaming a couple of years ago I was stunned to see
that everyone had moved to Discord, I didn't see the advantage of "upgrading"
to something with a web client, but I suppose there's less friction to using a
web client, even if mumble is a very easy install on Windows.

------
ziddoap
Mumble... What a blast from the past. Used to use this for gaming alongside
Vent.

If I'm not mistaken, the last update was in like 2017? Is it even in
development any more?

~~~
privong
> If I'm not mistaken, the last update was in like 2017? Is it even in
> development any more?

A 1.3.0-rc1 was tagged 9 days ago (17 March 2019): [https://github.com/mumble-
voip/mumble/releases/tag/1.3.0-rc1](https://github.com/mumble-
voip/mumble/releases/tag/1.3.0-rc1) But it does look like the previous stable
release was in January 2017.

~~~
LinuxBender
They update the the 1.3.x branch every couple months. It is quite stable. My
semi-public server has been running on 1.3.x latest without issue.

------
Hikikomori
I remember our transition from ventrilo to mumble. Everyone kept talking over
each other because of the low latency, we were used to start talking before
others finished. Jumped the ship to discord on day 1 though, mostly for the
chat features but also different communities you find there and easily can
keep track of.

------
BuckRogers
I went from Teamspeak->Ventrilo->Mumble. Never got onboard with Discord just
due to life timing when that was on the rise.

I would probably just use Steam voice chat for 1:1 gaming sessions or in-game
today. I know League of Legends has voice chat for parties now, which is the
only use case that I could have.

------
Causality1
Mumble has been the highest-quality group voice chat system for many years
now. It's unfortunate server is such a pain in the ass to get running
properly. I'd rather pay for a commercial Mumble server than go through that
troubleshooting nightmare again.

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Mumble definitely works, and the voice quality is very good, exceptional
maybe, but the user interface is atrocious.

Don’t expect non-technical users to be able to figure this client out.

I know Discord isn’t open, but it’s a lot easier to figure out by most people.

------
checkyoursudo
I used mumble with friends years ago. Mumble was a pretty nice experience for
gaming with friends back when I could do that kind of thing more often.

I see that there is a mumble client for iOS. Has anyone here used it? If so,
is it any good?

------
holtalanm
i prefer discord, imo. Ive tried most of the popular voice chat clients out
there, including Mumble, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, RaidCall, Google Hangouts, and
Skype. Discord is (so far) the best out of all of them in my opinion.

------
jboogie77
Huge fan of mumble. Me and my friends still use it over discord. It barely
beats discord for us but that small improvement over quality and latency is
enough to keep using it

------
monkeydust
Low Latency makes it ideal for voice trading.

------
zZorgz
Ah, good old mumble. I had contributed a patch to it a few years ago, made it
sometime in 1.2.9

The community I was in all moved to discord though. Explaining new users how
to use mumble was also too hard as I recall. And it didn’t have such a great
user interface but I don’t remember vent/TS being super great too.

------
mushufasa
funny that they rolled their own license, where the terms seem compatible more
well-known licenses. Maybe the project started before convergence to standard
permissive licenses?

Would it even be possible for them to change it at this point? I'm guessing it
would be difficult at the least.

------
Animats
Anyone tried this? How is it on echo cancellation, VOX, and conference noise
rejection?

------
emersonrsantos
Is there a Mumble with video feed?

~~~
Sebguer
[https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Planned_Features#Video](https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Planned_Features#Video)

Posted in 2011, lol. I wouldn't hold your breath.

~~~
Zekio
"However, I don't really want to know what a 2mbit/s commercial hosting is
going to cost. I doubt it's cheap."

reading on that page is like time traveling :)

~~~
zanny
Unless you live in about 80% of the US where ISP monopolies still only get you
2-3mb upload at best.

------
m_b
Looks so 2000s to visit this website.

~~~
kkarakk
for some reason all the open source wikis look really bad in their base state,
i dunno why they try to look like v1.0 wikipedia

~~~
zyx321
Wikipedia's software is open source. They literally are Wikipedia without the
design customizations.

------
tjpnz
/

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

