How to join
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Why are you doing this?
I don't like Discord. I think I've made my stance on that abundantly clear by now. This is especially true as I've learned that they (probably) share who you're in VC with, with third parties.
I want to try and reduce my reliance on Discord at least a little bit. This makes it to where I don't necessarily have to use Discord to VC with my friends.
How is it different from Discord?
What it does have that Discord doesn't:
- Better voice quality. The Mumble server can handle up to 558kbps audio bandwidth from a client (and can be configured to handle more, but this is already more than enough). Discord servers only allow up to 384kbps, and that's with 14 server boosts - without any boosts, you get a paltry-in-comparison 96kbps. (Granted, that is fine for a free public service. But more is good.)
- More granular permission system. Mumble uses an ACL system with groups and registered users, subchannels with permission inheritance. Where it differs from Discord is in the advanced things, like linked channels and specifying subchannel depth for some permissions. I could use this for races or competitive games where the teams can't hear each other, but spectators can listen to everyone participating, but not message in or join their channels.
- Positional audio support for some games, including (but not limited to) Source Engine games, UT99/2k4/3, WoW, and Among Us, with support for others via downloadable plugins. I'm not sure if I'll use it often, but it's still neat to possibly mess around with.
- More granular settings for UI, audio in/out, and notifications.
- Better text-to-speech support.
- Robust attachment support. This one might be slightly painful in practice. You can only send images, not GIFs or videos. In the desktop app, they're also not downsized at all and instead sent and displayed at their native resolution. And the UI in the desktop app is manageable, but not great. I don't send GIFs or videos much at all and there are better services for that anyway, but it's still not ideal.
- Streaming and webcam support. You will need to use a separate service to stream gameplay or use a webcam. I could maybe use something like this to add some rudimentary form of streaming/webcam support, but personally I don't see this as a necessity.
- Chat permanence. Text messages are ephemeral and not saved to the server; you'll need to log anything you need to save yourself. You might see this as good or bad depending on your needs; I don't personally mind either way since, if you need permanence, you're reading on a forum board right now anyway!
- User profile decorations. In Mumble, you get a username, avatar, and comment (basically bio). There is no profile card. There are no avatar animations. You can use basic HTML to style your comment, but that's about it. I personally prefer this for accessibility and consistency, but some might find it less "fun".
- Paid subscriptions and ads. No Nitro. No Quests. You log on, and you talk to people. As I think it should be.
Mostly due to a lack of familiarity in comparison, but also the fact that it's closed-source and proprietary.
I think it also requires an account on a central server to access much of anything (I may be wrong, feel free to reply if so). This partially goes against the reasons why I chose Mumble to begin with. (It's also why I plan to use eg. Jellyfin over Plex/Emby for home media library stuff.)
TS6 certainly looks nice. But for software, I generally prefer power features and open source over pretty visuals.