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Hi all, I am some serious need of assistance. Back in May, windows did an update. so did firestorm viewer. My laptop is only a year old (Asus). I updated both and lost all sounds, music and voice. I have check my firewall settings, voice settings in FS, used the advise of forums, did a clean install twice... none of it worked. With the latest release of FS viewer (December 2018), I got my sounds and music back. But for some reason, I still can't hear voice or speak,m even though I have a dot. I've check Windows (10) firewall settings (using info from wiki and SL forum help), reset and double check all levels on my sound mixer, updated all drivers, even rechecked and reset FS sound. I even went to Voice Echo Canyon, toggled voice, logged out, relogged to last sim and then tpd home. Still have a dot but I can't voice or hear voice. My mic works on all other programs. I know its a simple setting, i just can't figure out what it is. Can anyone help me please? And thank you so much in advance!! Have a happy and safe New Years!!

I intermittently receive the following error message, and cannot log in to voice: "We're having trouble connecting to your voice server https://www.bhr.vivox.com/api2/:UDP:3478,3479,5060,5062,12000-17000. Voice communications will not be available. Please check your network and firewall setup." I have been working with Linden for a few weeks trying to resolve this with no luck. I had hoped the error message would mean something to them, but apparently not. It is an intermittent problem. Exists on 2 different computers (Window 8.1 and Windows 10), using both SL Viewer and Firestorm. Occurs with main av and alt. I replaced my router trying to correct problem with no luck. I have allowed SLVoice through the firewall, and opened a number of outbound ports suggested by Linden. I have tried turning off Avast security, with no apparent effect. Relogging and rebooting also has no effect. I have found older posts about this problem, but none of them offered a real solution that works for my situation. Has anyone else encountered this, and discovered a solution?

It is my understanding that voice in Second Life depends on a module supplied through Linden Lab, which uses proprietary code from Vivox. All third party viewers depend on this code and use a module called "SLVoice", marked as an executable. I have not seen any clear statement of when this code was last updated. While Linux support is suspended, and a future "Alex Ivy" viewer for Linux depends on work from the TPV community, which I see is being done, this particular component appears to depend on Linux code that ceased maintenance four years ago. I refer to the gstreamer-0.10 module. It already appears not to work any more. Since it is not open source there is an obvious problem in an update depending on the TPV community. I can see a couple of possible fixes, but they depend on there being a legal way for somebody to work with the Vivox code. Essentially, it needs somebody with Linux skills to do the work under contract, but is it Vivox or Linden Lab who has to employ them. While there are similarities with the situation over the Havok code for mesh import, I would argue that Voice is not the same. We don't need to agree extra T&Cs to use Voice, as we do to import mesh. Is there a long term plan, or should I assume that voice is now a dead option for Linux viewers? Should Voice be assumed by event organisers to be a universal (I hit problems at SL15B, where presentations by Linden Lab used Voice with no apparent alternative.) (Having somebody speaking on a media stream while listening for questions on voice could be a fix for these big events, but you would need to be careful about feedback loops.) The voice problem also raises questions about the regular in-world user group meetings. I am not enthusiastic about using Windows for a special event, but if it is going to be necessary, I would prefer something a little bit more explicit than saying Voice is used. It isn't working with Linux. Say these events don't work with Linux viewers.