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Comment by gravypod | Hacker News Reader

One thing discord fails at accomplishing is voice activation in their web browser client. If anyone from the company is reading I will gladly write you a python/scipy program that will do the correct real-time DSP for voice activation if you implement it into your platform.

It's a window, an fft, a filter around a primary frequency range, an integration, and an N second timer since the last time the audio crosses the threshold.

Discord's current implementation drops in the middle for words! It's crazy.

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Is this only in our web client or also in our desktop client?

It definitely drops the last word for the cell phone app. I often talk using the desktop client to someone using the cell phone app, and every last word of a sentence she says seems dropped

Android, iOS? Do they use automatic detection or did they adjust the thresholds.

Finish every sentence by saying “over” ;)

(CTO of Discord, in case anyone doesn’t realize)

also as a phoenix dev (just released my first big site), you picked the right stack :)

I frequently experience this in the web client. Sometimes we have to switch to Skype because it does a better job of mic activation.

Edit: I've adjusted the thresholds to try and tune it, but it's been very hit or miss.

We use the desktop client and our group often has problems with words being dropped not only at the end but also in the middle of someone talking if they're using voice activation. :-/

It's usually specific users whose words get dropped, maybe their activation threshold is just low enough. But still, seems to me like this should not happen, especially in the middle of sentences, since the beginning of the sentence is recorded just fine.

(Windows 10 Pro)

It's the web client. I haven't tested the desktop client.

What's wrong with push-to-talk?

It's obsolete and only needed because their software is broken.

Skype, Google Hangouts, teamspeak, ventrillo, mumble, and tox all support my microphone and voice activation correctly.

Push to talk is most certainly not obsolete. I (and many gamers I know) use push to talk for the privacy of being able to choose when your microphone is activated.

Its even more useful in competitive gaming and/or streaming where many want to chose what to say to their team/friends and themselves/the stream.

Also helps a lot in large communities. There will always be people that are nice and you like to have around, but are a bit "louder" during gaming sessions. We were really successful by teaching them to not hit the PTT-button when they need to drop their load of frustration.

The gaming community that I am a part of that uses Discord holds a weekly big gaming session where almost everyone attends at the same time. It occurs around dinner time on the west coast, so some of our west coast members will be having dinner between rounds. Push to talk allows them to talk between bites without all of us getting the smacking sounds of chewing and eating in our ears.

Is push to talk a better solution than a toggle push-to-mute?

PTT is useful when you don’t want everyone else on your channel to hear your breathing, coughing and keyboard-clacking

(can you tell I’ve played Overwatch?)

Yeah - there are games for which I will use voice activation, like PUBG (where I do not have the mental availability to hit a PTT key), but for Overwatch I started with PTT with one of the thumb buttons on my mouse and I still do it.

That said, I use a for-realsies dynamic microphone with tons of off-axis rejection and a wall-mounted arm (I play games in my office/recording space, that's the engineer station mic). So I probably could use voice detection and be fine. But habits die hard.

> keyboard-clacking

The rise of mechanical keyboards has made PTT practically the only option. Otherwise you just hear little clicking all the time.

Definitely not. If you have been in a channel with 25+ people for a raid or large event (exactly the type of gaming community Discord caters to) then you should know push-to-talk is absolutely required and you will often be kicked if you don't use it.

I don't want to hear you chewing. Please consider push to talk.

Push to Talk is necessary when you regularly have 200+ people, sometimes 800 people in the same channel. We don't use discord for comms because it doesn't support shout + channel hierarchies unlike mumble. Discord is still useful for pings, as their mobile app w/ push notifications are very helpful.

It tends to fail to register the key being released for one, even occasionally on the desktop client.

Last time I tried it the browser app was especially prone to this, to the point of rendering push-to-talk completely unusable.

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