[RELEASE] CrossTalk

[Philosound]

CrossTalk - What’s that?

CrossTalk is a Teamspeak 3 plugin that enhances the general audio experience and provides advanced features for commanders.

Current Features:

Stereo Position Spread


When multiple people are talking at the same time, which tends to happen, they are harder to understand than necessary. First, our brain is a lot better at decyphering those noises into language if they are located at seperate positions. Second, when two or more people are talking, the client mixer will possibly not have the headroom to keep things from distorting/generating artifacts. This module shall help on both of these issues.

In advanced mode, you can reserve specific regions for certain types of incoming audio streams: Have whispers on the right, secondary tabs on the left, current in the middle (if conflicting, they'll also be spread inside their regions). I've pre-set it for whispers usually being the most important incoming communication to the right side to be in consistency to "right ear language dominance", however, especially if you're left handed, you might have more satisfactory results switching those around. Just try it.

Channel Ducking



In short:
Reduces the volume of speakers in the channel of the currently active server tab as soon as a whisper comes in or someone talks on another server tab (in common scenarios this is some kind of commander channel).
Longer version:
In case you haven't heard of ducking, let's start with that. Ducking is the reduction of a target channels volume dependant on the activity on a source channel. Usually, the actual sound volume of the source channel is analyzed to modify the reduction of the target channel. Here, however, keeping in mind we don't want to add either sound or reaction latency, the talk status is used as trigger, the reduction solely determined by the setting. So now, the only question left would be: What's the source? What's the target?
Whispers are always sources, you can either set your current server tab to be the target, thereby adding other server tabs as sources, or the other way round - depending on your needs.
You may be able to reduce the ducking amount / set less reduction if you have the SPS module enabled due to the nature of this modules enhancement in understanding multiple people; so there's some interference between both settings regarding the fine tuning.

Cross-Server Push-to-Talk & Whispering

This is currently implemented using Plugin Commands and Hotkeys, I may or may not provide a proper GUI for setup, once it is possible via the API to specify key down/up.


Other places:

CrossTalk on the Teamspeak addons section.
The CrossTalk project on GitHub.

Version History:
1.0.1 Changes:

• pressing the SnT Button now opens a wiki manual in the browser
• deprecated Hotkey "TS3_NEXT_TAB_AND_TALK_END"
• deprecated Hotkey "TS3_NEXT_TAB_AND_WHISPER_END"
• fixed a potential crash on plugin commands specifying a target server
• fixed crash on enabling plugin while connected to multiple tabs
• Provide temporary module-disabling to the SPS module so that specialized plugins like ACRE can disable it when their relevant process is detected
• Command Parsing changes
• code cleanup

1.0.0 Initial public release.

ToDo/Under Consideration:

• Scheduled for 1.0.2: VUP, Very Unimportant Person, MusicBots and such as global duck targets of any other audio source

[Kwaad]

Really like the sound of this plugin Philosound. Any idea when we can start using (downloading) CrossTalk?
I've tried building from the GitHub but Teamspeak wouldn't recognise the dll as a valid plugin unfortunately. Have an event coming up tommorow where this plugin would make things a lot easier.

[Philosound]

Sure, I'm sorry for that kinda vapor-warey post, I probably should've provided an interims link for the fearless until official approval, however wasn't sure of the procedere, like time frame of the official link becoming available and such.

Edith: CrossTalk on the Teamspeak addons section /Edith

Note that, while I had quite a closed beta period, due to the nature of some of the code stuff that's hard to notice is possible, like some exotic event might break something even after hours of flawless use; and the latest changes haven't gone through testers - however discouraging as this may sound, I haven't really had any complaints so far - I just have become quite the pedantic in trying to achieve an adequate quality pre-release and it's hard for me to let it go in the wild However, at some point potential remaining bugs are hard to find for a small amount of (internal) users, which slows down the whole process. Long story short, if there is a bug, aside from reporting it, consider the file renamed to release candidate. Oh the struggles of an 1.0 version

Also, as you probably know, there's no client-side auto-update for plugins. I'm considering implementing one in the plugin itself at some point for being out of other options, so until then keeping a subscription of this thread or adding the plugin to favs (if you like it at all / I'm assuming an update to that would trigger a notification, admittedly I don't know really), might come in handy while I shamefully fix things or add new stuff later.

[Kwaad]

Awesome, thanks a lot! We'll (my outfit) will start using/testing it. If we find any issues I'll make sure they get reported to your Github.

[skidrow]

So fare it works excacly like i want Philosound, had one crash but i think that was something else that did that crash.
Found one error in and that was in the info window at 2 in the end it say -> Next Tab and Talk End, should be -> Next Tab and Talk Stop =)

[Philosound]

1.0.1 Changes:

• pressing the SnT Button now opens a wiki manual in the browser
• deprecated Hotkey "TS3_NEXT_TAB_AND_TALK_END" for "SnT Stop"
• deprecated Hotkey "TS3_NEXT_TAB_AND_WHISPER_END" for "SnT Stop"
• fixed a potential crash on plugin commands specifying a target server
• fixed crash on enabling plugin while connected to multiple tabs
• Provide temporary module-disabling to the SPS module so that specialized plugins like ACRE can disable it when their relevant process is detected
• Command Parsing changes
• code cleanup

[Troyd]

When I install or attempt to use this plugin... it completely mutes out anything that isn't a whisper. Can I correct this somehow? Ideally I want it so that regular chatter is muffled or lowered when the whisper is incoming.

[Philosound]

Before connecting, go to the plugin options, turn off the SPS module (for now to focus on the ducking) and move the ducking slider to the right to inbetween -10 and 0dB (zero is no volume change). That should do a milder lowering than the default -23, which is quite hefty. If it still doesn't function as you expect then, please post the ducking settings used and the amount of server tabs used, I'll double check the specific context for the current and next version then.

Note that the next update will fix a bug when changing the plugin settings while someone is talking. I'll have to go through the modules and test them again for functionality before publishing it still, so please try to avoid that until then.

[Philosound]

v1.1.0 is up on the download page

Changes:
* New Module: Global MusicBot Ducking
Set the MusicBot per Right-Click Context Menu, determine ducking in the plugin options
* Fixes a bug in the SPS Module potentionally crashing the client on ui interaction
* Fix issues with client .10

Known issue:
Enabling the plugin while already connected needs some more work. Try to avoid it for now.

[Troyd]

Before connecting, go to the plugin options, turn off the SPS module (for now to focus on the ducking) and move the ducking slider to the right to inbetween -10 and 0dB (zero is no volume change). That should do a milder lowering than the default -23, which is quite hefty. If it still doesn't function as you expect then, please post the ducking settings used and the amount of server tabs used, I'll double check the specific context for the current and next version then.

Note that the next update will fix a bug when changing the plugin settings while someone is talking. I'll have to go through the modules and test them again for functionality before publishing it still, so please try to avoid that until then.

This works amazingly, thank you. I appreciate the work put into this plugin.

[Philosound]

v1.2.0 is up on the download page

* Added ChannelMuter module (context menu of channel for muting and client context menu for toggling client whitelisting)
This is intended for temporary usage on tabs where you only need to listen to a couple of talkers in a large channel, setting will not be saved.

Other Changes:
* fixed some instabilities
* fixed ChannelDucker on "other" server target
* (all?) settings should auditory apply immediately when one plays around in the config ui

[DeMiNe0]

This is an extremely useful addon. Many people in my Planetside 2 outfit are using this to clear up coms on teamspeak. We work a lot with channel commander, channel groups, and we work with allies on their TS as well; where the channel muter makes things MUCH easier.


Im having issues setting up the hotkey to PPT on another tab. When I press the hotkey while in another server tab, TS3 just closes. If I'm allready on that tab, it works fine. This is with the latest version of teamspeak. Wondering if I should downgrade maybe.
/ct TS3_SWITCH_TAB_AND_TALK_START 7th Cavalry Regiment

That's the command im using. Here is the dmp file from the crash with all other plugins disabled.

Edit: I downgraded to 3.0.9.2 but couldn't log onto the other TS as they require 3.0.10. FML

[Iggie]

Hi, i love the add on. As a podcaster i got a chance to use it in the previous version and it is absolutely brilliant even though i am still trying to figure out some details. However since i updated to the latest version of TS, Cross Talk was removed from my pluggins and now when i try to instal it i get a missing QTCore4.dll error message. As a bit of layman i don't know what does that mean and/or how to fix it. Do you guys have any ideas?

[Philosound]

Just dropping in to confirm I read both reports and will be looking into it.
However, I'll have answers not before I have looked into it Stay tuned.

[Philosound]

While I look into the code for Demineos report, Iggie, can you confirm crosstalk_win64.dll and crosstalk_win32.dll are in the plugins folder (not deeper) and QtCore4.dll existing in <Programs>/<Teamspeak>? That one could be a problem with the updater, however I would've guessed the whole client should implode if that one's missing.