In the beginning there was
Teamspeak
then came Ventrilo, Skype, mumble, and...
Skipping over a bunch of platforms that no longer exist
Discord
So is discord legitimately better on top of being newer, or is it just another flash in the pan?
Let's find out
After I talk about today's video being brought to you by...
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[Intro]
We'll begin with a quick rundown of our competitors teamspeak and mumble are both
What are called self hosted voice and chat platforms both of them require server software
either running on your desktop or a rented server in a data center somewhere and
Both require you to be actively connected to receive messages
Skype and discord by contrast are hosted by Microsoft and
Discord respectively both of them allow you to send messages to friends who are offline
They'll just be delivered later and both offer video chat in addition to voice
They are structured a little differently though discord is more like a social network
So you can join an existing community or make your own?
while Skype
operates more like your address book so like your phone you start a conversation by scrolling through your contacts list and
Selecting one or more of them, okay, so now let's talk design a usability both teamspeak and mumble share a theme. That's
reminiscent of the beige PC cases of
Decades past though you can skin them well discord and Skype are much more modern
This is an aesthetic advantage
But it should be noted that while Skype does have a more conventional
Desktop app the Windows Store version that Microsoft is pushing users towards
Has generated many complaints about it actually being too simplistic to the point where it makes it confusing to use
adding contacts for instance is done through the
Search Skype box rather than intuitively by clicking on the plus button so do yourself a favor and don't use the Windows Store version
Discord's design on the other hand is both beautiful and functional
every server that you are a part of is displayed in the left tab along with of course your direct messages and
My main gripe with discord is just the lack of
Joint voice and text channels has it's kind of jarring every time your friend says yo check out this link and you have to ask
Which channel. To their credit though, they finally added channel categories which is great.
But all this ignores a huge factor so far: cost.
Teamspeak has a number of paid licensing options, and if you don't buy one of them you are capped to 32 slots
mumble on the other hand is open-source and
completely free with no slot limitations
Skype is free for up to 25 simultaneous users over the Internet
And if you want to call conventional phones allows you to pay for a subscription or a la carte for that service and Discord
seems to be taking the
Silicon Valley
Social network startup approach their core service is free for as many people as you want and according to them
That's how it's gonna stay though
We'll see how that goes after the insert multinational here acquisition
Anywho, let's get to what matters most for gamers. How do they all sound?
To answer this question for you guys once and for all Jake used three common microphones a blue Yeti to represent the higher
End a pair of HyperX cloud twos to be a typical headset and a mod mic five
Because it was on his desk at the time
Each test clip was played through a host computer and then recorded on the other end
This is a test recording on the blue Yeti. Every quality setting was cranked to the max
And we turned off both echo and noise suppression
YouTube's audio compression though may make it challenging for you guys to hear the differences, so if you're interested in the raw clips
We'll have them available for download in the description
We'll start with the Yeti when discord is working well more on that a little later
It's basically indistinguishable from teamspeak
This is a test recording on the blue Yeti blackout Edition
While both mumble and Skype have a higher noise floor, but you'll notice if you listen very closely
This is a test recording on the blue Yeti blackout Edition
Switching over to the cloud twos
We can hear that the gap between teamspeak and discord compared to mumble and Skype is more noticeable with
Lesser source audio. This is a test recording with the HyperX cloud 2 gaming headset
This is a test recording with the HyperX to gaming headset
So mumble has a muddier sound to it while Skype maintains its background hiss
This is a test recording with the HyperX cloud 2 gaming headset, then the story completely chaste
Stays the same actually with the mod mic teamspeak and discord are very clear while mumble and Skype are slightly worse
So okay, it seems like you can't really go wrong with teamspeak or discord as long as that one's working
Let's talk about that as a regular user our writer jake has noticed a pattern of degraded or
robot e voice quality on discord
it's hard to say if it's load related or
completely random without a much larger sample size
And it can usually be fixed by temporarily changing the region of your server
But it's one of those things that happens often enough that it is worth mentioning
Let's move on to admin control. This varies
wildly across all four platforms
Skype groups are
Basically limited to kickin and banning while mumble teamspeak and discord offer
fully fledged rank and permission systems
teamspeak
Definitely takes the cake for having the deepest customized ability
But it does come at the cost of the time required to set up and learn the system
Discord on the other hand is much easier, and there isn't much that you can't do with it so for most people
It's probably the way to go here, but
Security is another big consideration because teamspeak and mumble are self hosted and can be
Encrypted all the data on your server is yours and no other party can access it without your permission
discord and Skype on the other hand both connected to their servers and
While discord says they don't sell your information
according to their privacy policy they can
Share it with related companies, so that's just something to keep in mind
Skype of course is a similar story and ARS technica reported that Microsoft may be snooping for
Example the URLs the you send in chat on to overlays another feature not to be over looked
Teamspeak has an excellent in-game overlay supplied by overwolf that gives you access to an easily repositional basically fully
functional teamspeak window while in-game
Mumble is much more limited by contrast, but at least does show you which users are talking in your channel
discord shows you who's talking and allows you to switch channels or servers on-the-fly and
Also, has some great integration with twitch so you can auto sync subscribers, and even show who's talking on stream talking talking talking
Leaving us then to the final answer. What is the best voice platform out there?
Well in terms of pure sound quality. It's hard to compete with team speak's
reliable clarity but
Discord sounds just as good most of the time
And I think our poll response numbers indicates what our viewers think of its excellent chat system and community building features
If you're looking for an open source solution with top-notch security though mumble is probably the way to go and as for skype
well
At least the IP address resolving nonsense is finally fixed and it's blue so if you like the color blue
Then you should probably also still use one of the other things we talked about
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Entering Linus tech tips into how you heard about us section
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