Do You Use Voice?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

Use that filthy Voice-spammer stuff?

Oh hell no!

Voice-Spam is disgusting. Wash your prim hole out with soap.

Ewww! Ewww! Ewww!

 

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

I do not use voice, and I avoid hanging out in places where people use voice a lot.

That said, I am looking forward to trying WebRTC.  I think most non-voice using people don't fully grasp how nice a higher bitrate is.  I'm not being a snobby audiophile when I say that.  Vivox streams at a variable sample rate, that can dip as low as 4 khz.  Last I heard, WebRTC will reliably stream at 48 khz.  That's like the aural equivalent of comparing 8 bit and 16 bit graphics.  Web RTC is better than a regular telephone, which samples at 8khz, in America.  WebRTC is not going to be as nice as a club's audio stream, though.  Icecast, for example, streams at a 256khz sample rate.  So it won't be the best quality ever, but it will be an improvement.  So when you hear it, you might like it, even if you don't like voice now.  Or you might not like it.  I might not like it, but I'll at least give it a fair chance to win me over.

I think WebRTC will probably improve voice more than PBR 'improved' graphics.  Unless LL is pushing a broken implementation again.  That wouldn't surprise me, at this point.  I hope it works, though.

Edited August 21 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

[Midnoot]

Silence second life . We must never hear an ounce of humanity from the real world , lest it remind us of our sh***y lives and break our precious immersion and make us revert into our grumpy state of jaded " get off my lawn". 

 

 

I use it rarely , but that's just because I'm quiet . I love to listen to it when it's people I know or somewhat know . If it's strangers , it's usually low quality " I'm bored , entertain me " types . It's nice to have the option to weed through them though . I lower the volume of the ones I don't wanna hear and listen to the ones I do.  Not like I would try to remove it entirely  and silence second life into cold , distant , inhumanity or anything like that .

Edited August 21 by Midnoot

[Amata Karas]

I used it early on mainly to talk with a few friends, not at clubs/events/whatever with strangers. I haven't used voice for years and usually have sound turned off to listen to music. 

[Freckles Fairelander]

I think I've only used it to participate in a couple of group rituals during church services. I do keep it on so I can hear others most of the time - once someone was trying to have an important conversation with me, and I didn't know because I had voice unchecked!

[BriannaLovey]

47 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

I do not use voice, and I avoid hanging out in places where people use voice a lot.

That said, I am looking forward to trying WebRTC.  I think most non-voice using people don't fully grasp how nice a higher bitrate is.  I'm not being a snobby audiophile when I say that.  Vivox streams at a variable sample rate, that can dip as low as 4 khz.  Last I heard, WebRTC will reliably stream at 48 khz.  That's like the aural equivalent of comparing 8 bit and 16 bit graphics.  Web RTC is better than a regular telephone, which samples at 8khz, in America.  WebRTC is not going to be as nice as a club's audio stream, though.  Icecast, for example, streams at a 256khz sample rate.  So it won't be the best quality ever, but it will be an improvement.  So when you hear it, you might like it, even if you don't like voice now.  Or you might not like it.  I might not like it, but I'll at least give it a fair chance to win me over.

I think WebRTC will probably improve voice more than PBR 'improved' graphics.  Unless LL is pushing a broken implementation again.  That wouldn't surprise me, at this point.  I hope it works, though.

They won't be using their own implementation, so it should go smoothly.

[WeFlossDaily]

7 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I personally don't use voice

I don't either.

[colleen Criss]

 I do not use voice, it breaks immersion for me. Also, I do not live alone and would hate for some voice actor to say something that people/kids do not need to hear. In all my years online I have exchanged numbers with 2 people and that was on skype.

[InnerCity Elf]

I don't use voice in SL I might, if it actually made sense in a setting, but it never did, so far, to me. 

[Anna Nova]

In RL I train my servants and family and acquaintances to email me, never to phone.  In SL I will never use voice either.  The great beauty of typing stuff is that you can go at your own pace, and respond when you feel like it.  You are in control.  With voice, you either listen when they speak, or miss it.  Daft idea.

[Sid Nagy]

Now if only everybody had a decent radio voice and technique, if only everybody had an actually for strangers understandable accent, combined with the use of a proper microphone in a quiet environment... Yes, than I would use voice. Now not at all.

[MissSweetViolet]

The only time I've ever turned it on is when an inworld event needed it to hear the speaker. I've never talked on voice, don't want to for the same reason I hate talking on the phone, it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. Typing is easier and far more relaxed for me.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

I have used voice before, but it is really rare and on my own terms. If someone tries to demand I use voice, I just leave. In text I can think about what I want to say since it slows the conversation and makes it more intentional.  I hate hearing chewing, burping, shuffling of things on desks, and gulps from drinking. I also don't want to hear your TV or music playing when I have my own TV or music blasting in the background. No one else needs to hear that kind of screaming or have my singing forced upon their ears.  *cringes in sympathy*

 

Edited August 21 by Cinnamon Mistwood
spelling, ugh

[Sid Nagy]

9 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Now if only everybody had a decent radio voice and technique, if only everybody had an actually for strangers understandable accent, combined with the use of a proper microphone in a quiet environment... Yes, than I would use voice. Now not at all.

And:

As a non native English speaker, I don't translate everything first from Dutch into English. Because I use English on a daily basis, a lot of English words come naturally just like in Dutch. But my active English vocabulary is a lot smaller than my active Dutch vocabulary. So there is always some translation and word finding going on in my head as well when I use English.
Translating is a lot easier when I type than on the fly when I talk.  Another reason why I only text. Texting gives that tiny bit of extra time to translate if needed.

Besides that: Google Translate is a good friend at times, when a conversation becomes very specific and my English vocabulary hits its limits.

Edited August 21 by Sid Nagy

[Gopi Passiflora]

Sometimes, depending on the type of avatar/character I'm using. If I think the voice fits my current avatar/character (even if it's a non-human animal or alien or something) I will use it. I sometimes use it when the character I'm portraying is supposed to represent the real me.

[Perrie Juran]

I rarely use voice. Most people find a Martian's voice too painful to listen to. Kind of a cross between Bob Dyan and a dying dog, only an octave higher.

[BillFletcher]

No, I never had at all up until recently. For years after I started I had the same issue of the voice not matching the avatar that Katharine mentioned, then once I had begun using an avatar that matched my voice I was in the habit of using text. Recently however a woman asked if I would voice with her and I figured why not. The experience however wasn’t as nice as texting. To me it made the words easier to express which meant there were more of them, but actually less of substance was said. Another issue is I typically listen to music when I do SL and the mic picks up the music and makes it hard to hear what I say,

[Paul Hexem]

Once we have WebRTC I'll probably use it more. Right now Discord is the superior option. 

[Gabriele Graves]

I have done in the past but not in recent months and I'm not particularly fond of it.  Like other's have said there are issues with it.  Some of which are tech related such as quality, drop-outs, etc. others such as idiots shouting, playing loud music in the background, etc. which isn't going to change regardless of the tech being used.  I don't like the fact it breaks the illusion of a virtual fantasy world and so tend to limit my use to particular situations.

I think WebRTC is a good change to make and using things which are a standard is a good thing generally.  It's also supported on Linux which is good for me considering Vivox dropped Linux support and while that hasn't really impacted my use on Linux (using the old components) it meant that no updates were possible and therefore no issues could ever be fixed.

I don't use any other voice platform such as Discord for SL related things.

I do prefer text based chat/im in SL but I think that's normal for anyone who has spent any significant time in SL before voice.

Edited August 21 by Gabriele Graves

[Lysistrata Szapira]

I used it a long time ago, probably 2013 was the last time. I hung out with a voice crowd back then.

If this change means I can stay on old Firestorm and not have to hear people's TVs in the background and a bunch of yammering in stores that have voice activated, that'd be great.  Yes, I know I could turn it off completely.

[Lexxi Gynoid]

16 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Now if only everybody had a decent radio voice and technique, if only everybody had an actually for strangers understandable accent, combined with the use of a proper microphone in a quiet environment... Yes, than I would use voice. Now not at all.

Reminds me of when I went to an event sometime in 2007.  A voice event.  Broke immersion hearing people talk and having their voice not match what I expected.  To a certain extent my fault, but still. 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

I grew up speaking to my parents, but discovered I could "chat" with Dad via the terminals on his office/lab/shop computer. I was quickly seduced by the "purity" of text chat, in which the ideas and intent were not diluted by pauses, coughing, or chewing and I could focus or shift my attention as desired. Our puppet theater provided the opposite effect. The intonation, intensity and timing of our voices made our characters come to life. I also have difficulty understanding speech in the presence of noise. Because I can't control the rate of incoming information in speech, I'm likely to tune others out. My ex-husband would happily verify this.

I've been texting people since about the age of six and have never brought voice into the mix. The few times I've enabled voice in SL have been dreadful. Each method has its separate place. SL (online in general) is my place for blissful silence.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Because I can't control the rate of incoming information in speech, I'm likely to tune others out.

..Did you say something?

[Madelaine McMasters]

29 minutes ago, Lexxi Gynoid said:

Reminds me of when I went to an event sometime in 2007.  A voice event.  Broke immersion hearing people talk and having their voice not match what I expected.  To a certain extent my fault, but still. 

 

The only sound I could ever tolerate out of you would be purring, hissing, or meowing.

[Arielle Popstar]

I'd be ok with Voice if I could turn on CC (closed captioning) in the voice channels.