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
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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 and 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 as
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 of 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 going to 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 2s to
be a typical headset and a mod mic 5
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 that 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 cloud 2 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 chase 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
roboty 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 kicking and banning while mumble teamspeak and discord offer
fully fledged rank and permission systems
teamspeak definitely takes the cake for having the deepest customizability 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 connect you 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
rs technica reported that microsoft may be snooping for example the urls that
you send in chat onto overlays another feature not to be overlooked
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
leading 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 teamspeak's
reliable clarity but discord sounds just
as good most of the time and i think our
poll response numbers indicate 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
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about us section so thanks for watching guys if this
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