TS 2 is feature packed. I have only one request.

[Oleg_Taktarov]

I play Return to Castle Wolfenstein and have been a competitive clan player for quite a while now. The one thing that I have noticed among all the top clans is that they all use Ventrilo. I recently joined a new clan and they have a Teamspeak 2 server set up. My personal observation is that TS 2 has many great features that surpass what Ventrilo has but, and this is a very big but, Ventrilo has superior transmitted and received audio quality. With TS I hear a low underlying sysnthesized type of noise when someone is talking. There is no such noise with Ventrilo and both TS and Vent appear to only use around 22 kbps when transmitting so my only request is for TS to find out what Ventrilo is doing to deliver the superior audio quality? TS is great in every other capacity except the sound isn't quite as good. I have already talked to a few of my buddies who have used both and those that have tried both think the same way as I do. I don't know how hard it would be to make TS sound as good as Vent but, it'd be awesome since that's the only thing lacking about TS.

[Helza]

One of the next versions of TeamSpeak will probably support even higher quality codecs ...

ps: I believe Ventrilo is 32kbps and teamspeak highest codec is 16.4kbps (although i'm not sure)

[Oleg_Taktarov]

If Teamspeak can improve the audio quality I'm sure more clans will use it. One thing that TS might add to their features is for a text to speech engine. Ventrilo will tell you the name of the person joining your server and your channel. It does it's best to pronounce what ever name a person has. That would be a neat addition too. Instead of member joined or member left etc. As far as the bandwidth I was talking about, I use a program called Net Medic which shows me how fast I'm uploading and downloading and it appears that the average speed for uploading and download while I talk and another person talks is around 22 kbps with both TS and Vent. That's just what my Net Medic program is showing me. I'll be glad to give up a little more bandwidth to TS if it'll improve the audio quality.

[Helza]

I'm 100% for the text to speach function.. but the development team would need an Text-To-Speach program that is freeware and functions under Windows AND Linux ..

[R. Ludwig]

some of the speex codecs ventrillo uses will be also in the next client release.

[UltraMagnus]

Good news, indeed! Now I won't have to play windowed to see who comes in!

[SatanClaus]

@ultramagnus: you obviously didn't understand what ralf was talking about :p

[Helza]

Text-To-Speech is also being looked at.. but i have no idea when it will be implemented

[Oleg_Taktarov]

I'm sure that a lot of us who use TS would like to have a text to speech program built in so that when we are in the middle of a game and can't immediately hop out we could still tell who joined the TS server and channel. That is one of the advantages of Ventrilo. It automatically pronounces the name of the person who joins the server or joins the channel. Just hearing player joined isn't very informative when you can't look to see. I think the Ventrilo program uses a Microsoft text to speech program and there is the default synthesized voice and the Microsoft Sam voice. If you could incorporate that into TS and get the audio quality on par with Ventrilo; TS would be superior in every way. It's no crime to look at the competition and incorporate their best parts into your product. The car manufacturers have been doing this for decades and the end user receives the greatest benefit.

[Cstar_maxim]

Its not so much as not wanting to incorporate more and better into TeamSpeak as it is having the ability, time, and resources.

This is why TS-team undoubtedly chooses the most important improvements first while fixing bugs from past important incorporations to the program.

[phar0e]

I am not sure if that idea is such a good one. I think that could be abused quite a bit with people changing their names to something inappropriate just to annoy people with the robot voice trying to pronounce the filthy word.

I propose a better idea. If a user is Registered with the server you can right click their name and say "Set notification sound" and have it play a sound once that Registered user joins the server/channel.

What do you think?

*EDIT* A tip would be to spend a few minutes and have your gaming buddies say a greeting line such as "I have arrived!" and use the RC2's best feature of Recording and use that wav file as the notification!

[Oleg_Taktarov]

Originally posted by phar0e
I am not sure if that idea is such a good one. I think that could be abused quite a bit with people changing their names to something inappropriate just to annoy people with the robot voice trying to pronounce the filthy word.

Here we go. You should not be giving access to people on your Teamspeak server who you do not know. If TS is used in a gaming clan environment then you already know your gaming buddies and it's not like some stranger showing up making the TS program say a curse word. Also, you're going to hear the occasional curse word during a game from a real live person often enough. It's the liberal mind that said you couldn't raise your kids so let's put a V-chip in your TV. There is no replacement for personal responsibility.

I propose a better idea. If a user is Registered with the server you can right click their name and say "Set notification sound" and have it play a sound once that Registered user joins the server/channel.

That is the lamest idea I have ever heard. Right now with Ventrilo you can set the program so it will only announce people who join your channel if you wish or it will tell you who joins the server and who joins the channel. IMO, there is already one too many steps than is necessary to join a TS server right now and throwing another step in the process so you can manually announce your arrival is stupid. When you first enter the channel you are likely to say hey anyway. If TS would announce who joined the default channel that does not require a password then you would know who joined the server and go and drag them to your channel if they did not have channel admin rights.

What do you think?

I have got to ask if you are an overly sensitive female or a limp wristed male? I don't like it when people try to sensor what I see, read, or hear. The program does not curse without a person making it. Just like a gun does not kill without a person making it. I guess you are thinking where are the thought police when you need them by now.

*EDIT* A tip would be to spend a few minutes and have your gaming buddies say a greeting line such as "I have arrived!" and use the RC2's best feature of Recording and use that wav file as the notification!

[phar0e]

Oleg_Taktarov, you are going way off topic and turning a suggestion thread into a flame.

You wanted a feature that took text and turned it into speech by way of a robot. I simply added my opinion on what a better idea would be.

Why have a robot voice tell you "Oleg_Taktarov has joined the server"? That will take the robot much longer to say and if you happen to be playing you will have the sounds of the game plus the sounds of the other voices on TeamSpeak interfere with the robot voice. The robot voices are hard enough to understand as it is. A simply "boink.wav" can be associated with Oleg_Taktarov.

[Oleg_Taktarov]

It's apparent that you have never used Ventrilo. It has the text to speech feature and it works great. Hearing player joined or member joined like you do with TS is useless when you can't see who joined and just making it so that you manuall have to set up a wav file to announce your arrival is no good. What if the person who joins doesn't want to make a wav file to announce who they are? Then you still don't know who joined the server. If that were the case the newbies that we have join who go to the default channel would not be able to tell the registered users that the need to be moved to a real channel. I just want for the designers of TS to keep on improving their program. In many ways TS is superior to Ventrilo but, the most key features of Ventrilo make it superior to TS. That being the audio quality and the text to speech features. I'm all for more options and don't want anyone trying to limit the number of options. If I had my way the multigaming clan I am a member of would start using Ventrilo until TS2 gets their audio codec and text to speech features incorporated into their already good program. Right now when I tell some of my old gaming buddies that my new clan uses TS their like oh..sorry.. I tell them it's not very bad but, when it comes down to brass tacks they know what sounds best and that's what they will continue to use until something better comes along. I hope that next thing is TS. I just find it funny that you focus on the worst possible scenario when someone talks about adding a neat feature to a program. The benefits are far greater than the detractors.

[woutur]

Don't want to sound too harsh but how would you know what the detractors are?

Anyway, tts will not be in the final of ts2. Maybe in another release. Voice quality will be upped and on par with ventrilo.

[Klink]

I'd be happy if I could set my own client-side .wav files for specific users. That way I can tell when people have jumped on-board during a game.

When you're in the middle of a game, no one has the time to stop, task out to TS see who joined and then task back in. What a PITA.

Since day one I was surprised this feature wasn't available because it seemed a natural fit and something that would be relatively easy to incorporate into the app. After last night's embarassing event - where an infrequent TS member quietly joined (there's alot of joins/disconnects for our group and not everyone announces themselves) and was diss'd and cursed at for camping, etc. - I now know that this feature needs to be added.

Anyways, I agree with not taxing system resources by using Text-to-Voice or sending monster-wav files from the server....but surely there can be a way to map our usernames to a WAV that each user creates, saves locally and remains at client-side. :confused:

[Oleg_Taktarov]

Once again I have to ask if any of you have tried the competition to see what advantages their program has over TS? The Ventrilo installation file is only 1.3 megabyte and apparently has a text to speech engine built in. Why you people keep talking about making your own wav file to announce yourself is bordering on silly. What if a person doesn't want to make a wav file to announce themselves??? I think most people would not want to go through the silly process of recording themselves saying "it's me" etc. Then for everyone to have that wav file it would have to be downloaded to the TS server and then downloaded to every client side program so everyone would have your wav file. That is ridiculous especially considering that wav files are huge in comparison with MP3 files. Look at the competition. If the American car makers hadn't been forced by the Japanese car makers to improve their product then the best American cars would still be judged by who made the nicest vinyl roof. A simple text to speech engine can pronounce the name of who ever joins your server or channel. Why you want to look past the obvious benefits of this and come up with a goofy work around is beyond me.

[Oleg_Taktarov]

I reread your post and see what you were talking about making a wav file for your own use to play when a certain user joined the server or channel. This would be feasible but, still not as nice as having a text to speech program pronounce the name of who ever joined. Your buddies are likely to tell you when they join anyway. The sometimes anonymous user is the one who you'd really like to know if they have joined the server. On our server we've got the default channel set up with no password but, unless we look up to the default channel we don't know who has joined and may not even notice they joined and they must be dragged down to a regular channel or else they're just stranded there.

[Mizery De Aria]

I still notice that the audio quality of Ventrilo is superior than Teamspeak 2. Has this issue been taken care of yet. I also am for TeamSpeak 2 as its features far outweight those of Ventrilo, but the purpose of the program is voice conferencing and Ventrilo still is better quality than TeamSpeak.

[Peter]

Well,

first of, I have to disagree with you saying that "the purpose of the program is voice conferencing" - actualy I would say the primary use is for in-Game communication. This has many different aspects than "just" chatting around, as in conferencing. One thing is the bandwidth, gamers need good pings and low packetloss, using very little bandwidth is a must. Also CPU usage has to be very low for gamers...basicly what currently makes ventrilo sound better is the fact that they use wideband (16 kHz) in their codecs, where as teamspeak currently only uses narrowband (8 kHz). The reason is, that 8 kHz eats less bandwidth to produce a good (good to understand) voice stream. But, of course for some places of use it _would_ be nice to use 16 kHz (or even 32 kHz) codecs - those situations where you have lots of bandwidth, and dont realy care about its usage - as found in *voice*chat*.
As it currently looks the sound system of TeamSpeak will be redesigned to be able to use these type of codecs during the process of porting it to C++ Code, which is taking place buisily while you read this.