Ventrilo Servers are great, but the users on them can sometimes pose a problem. Luckily Ventrilo has several features that help keep such issues to a minimum.
Case in point, have you ever had someone login to your Ventrilo Server and have their microphone volume up so high that it? Well, this is something that you can remedy without having to be an admin on the Ventrilo server. You can actually raise or lower the volume of anyone in the server as you see fit! How do you do this, you ask? Well, Let me show you.
1. Right-click on a person’s name within your Ventrilo client then goto “Miscellaneous” and click on “Special Effect”
2. A new window will pop up with a list of special effect on the right. Highlight “Volume” on the right.
3. Click the “Add” button in the middle of the window.
4. A menu will pop up asking you to adjust the volume to your desired level. Simply drag the slider to the setting you wish then click “Ok”
5. Click “Ok” again to close out of the special effects window and your changes have been applied.
This setting will only affect how you here the people which you have modified. Other people in Ventrilo will still hear them normally. Like wise you can go back into the special effects menu and go into the properties of the “Volume” effect and adjust their volume again at anytime or remove it entirely.
This little tactic comes in handy for people who won’t reduce their microphone volume or are just having too much trouble figuring out how to change it on their home computer. I can vouch from personal experience that this has saved me from a lot of stress on many occasion. I hope it is just as useful for you!
Tags: ventrilo, Ventrilo Server, Ventrilo Servers
When creating a clan, guild, or other group of individuals that require the use of a voice server for communication, a major question that you need to ask yourself is what type of voice server should I pick? Currently your primary choices will be between a Ventrilo Server or a Teamspeak Server (though individuals who like to stay on the latest edge of gaming software may also opt for Mumble Servers if you don’t mind dealing with newer software that still has a few kink to be worked out).
In this article we will set Mumble aside for now as it won’t be a real contender until they release they release the v2.0 of their software (which should be coming soon!). Instead we will be dealing with the two most popular choices: Ventrilo and Teamspeak.
So what are the main differences between Teamspeak Server Hosting and Ventrilo Server Hosting you ask? Well, without getting into specifics, I’ll lay out their major points below:
Teamspeak Hosting:
- Voice quality is not the greatest, but it is pretty good and often alot better than the voice service that is built-in to many games, such as Counter-Strike: Source or World of Warcraft.
- Easy to use for both it’s clients and it’s administrators.
- Easy to configure for it’s administrators. Administrative options are very basic for Teamspeak with minimal computer experience to operate and configure.
Ventrilo Hosting:
- Voice quality is very clean and clear.
- Moderately simple to use for it’s clients, but administrating a Ventrilo server requires quite a bit more fiddling and a moderate amount of computer experience to use.
- Configuring a Ventrilo Server is a bit more difficult than Teamspeak, but the voice quality is often worth it to many individuals. Luckily it has a good learning curve, so once you take the time to play with all of Ventrilo’s various administrative features, it’s pretty easy from there on out.
Aside from these major points, both Teamspeak Servers and Ventrilo Servers are relatively the same. Both require very little computer power to run and don’t require a fast internet speed to operate properly. Both are also fairly small and easy to install.
This information should help you pick the right brand voice service for you and your fellow members’ needs if you are having trouble making a decision. Also, it never hurts to ask your members if they have a preference of voice software. With all of this mind, if you still find yourself having trouble making a decision, then that’s when it’s time to flip a coin, as at that point either decision you make is going to be a good one.
How to create working channels on your Ventrilo server.
Channels help separate the individuals on your server into different areas of your server so that multiple people can have their own separate conversations going on within the same Ventrilo server without interrupting one another.
Read the rest of this entry »
There are two methods of doing this. One is to simply have the user kicked from the server so they are no longer using up one of your server slots and the other is to have them moved to a specific channel so that they are out of the way and everyone else knows that they are AFK. To setup AFK management on your server follow these simle steps below:
Read the rest of this entry »
Ventrilo voice servers have a whole spectrum of uses ranging from “work” to “anti-work”, aka “sweet, sweet videogames.” Whether you’re setting up a conference call, a clan meet, or an actual clan-as-in-family conversation with members around the globe, a ventrilo server can let you talk without hassle or exorbitant charges. Here we look at the two most common applications and the server/client options you’ll want for each.
Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever needed to be logged into two separate Ventrilo servers at the same time? If you’re a casual gamer then you likely have not had to deal with this dilemma before, but if you play online games as much as I do then you may have come across one or more instances where you’ve needed to do this. By default, Ventrilo will only let you login to one Ventrilo server at a time. Fear not! This ability is exceedingly easy to setup. First, find the shortcut that you use to launch your Ventrilo client. Once located, whether it is on your desktop, your start menu, or on your Windows toolbar, simply right-click on the icon and select “Properties” from the menu that pops up. This should bring up the following window:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ventrilo Server, Ventrilo Servers
Simulated battlefields are much better than the real thing: your gun won’t jam, running for your life just means holding “shift+W” and there’s the minor advantage that being shot in the gut doesn’t propel you into a world of terminal and unbearable pain. But just like in real life, bad communications can get you killed.
Whether you’re exploring a new deadspace complex or flanking counter-terrorists in dust, the last thing you want is for an urgent warning to turn into a “KKK-CHHHH-SCREEEEEEE“, drilling into your ear and distracting you in your (last) vital moments. Here we look at some common communications problems.
1. Roaring Noise
Your teammates tell you that you sound like you’re whispering inside a wind tunnel, a vast volume of white noise drowning out everything you have to say.
The key here is gain - your room might not be as quiet as you think it is, and with the amplification set too high every whisper of air in the room will become a wailing wall of anti-ear audio.
click to enlarge
Especially if you’ve splurged on a high quality headset, the headphones might be insulating you from background noise that you can’t hear but your mic picks up just fine. The human brain quickly learns to screen out a constant background, but your computer will faithfully transmit every over-amplified bit. Get into “Setup”, click the “Voice” tab and turn down the amplification. Use the test function to check yourself things yourself before inflicting earache on anyone else.
2. Wash out
Your beautiful voice sounds like a Daft Punk song remixed by a four year old with a synthesizer, bursts of techno mixed in with strong simple tones which might go down well in a rave but aren’t the best for interpersonal communication.
The odds are that you’re using something low quality. The chief suspect is your microphone - if you picked up a $0.99 mic at the “fell off the back of a broken truck” clearance store, don’t be surprised if it transmits sound slightly less faithfully than an adulterous deaf-mute. After that it could be your codecs: choosing too high a compression level will certainly save your bandwidth, but if you go too far you could save even more by not talking at all as you’ll transmit the same amount of intelligible speech. Go into “Setup > Voice” and check your codec settings.
click to enlarge
Make sure you haven’t bottomed out your sound quality in the hopes of avoiding lagging. Sometimes you’ll be forced to low fidelity by the limitations of the ventrilo server, in which case it’s time to go elsewhere or set up your own.
3. Echoing
When you talk, you or your friends hear it two or three times over and over again - and while everything you say is awesome it doesn’t deserve the repeats.
This problem has two main causes, one extremely simple and one complicated. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’ll be the simple one. People seem to have a strange ego over technical problems: they want to believe it’s a resource conflict that’ll take three reinstalls and a sledgehammer to solve rather than believe they forgot to plug something in.
The simple: it’s just feedback. Especially if you’re using a mic with speakers (very liberating, but not very controlled) your words are cycling through the system more than once. Use headphones, or alter your volume and sensitivity settings until your mic isn’t picking up the speakers anymore.
The complicated: there are known issues with certain soundcards, and these are of the super- cyber-sounding movie type. In one case (the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card) the physical layout of the circuitry causes signal to leak across the card, in another (some Creative Labs models) incorrect driver operation causes the card to mix a few too many channels together at once, confusing the input and output. Worse, these problems can be triggered by someone else’s computer doing the mixing - so if you’re sure your headset is A-OK and you only get yourself in stereo when certain people are online, refer them to the Ventrilo FAQ for peace of mind (and gaming). Tags: ventrilo faq, ventrilo problems, Ventrilo Servers, ventrilo troubleshooting
So you’ve heard all about this Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and have decided that maybe unlimited international calls for a total price of zero is a good idea? Correct. But in this brave new world of global communication, whether you’re conferring with global colleagues or planning a raid on a Deadspace Complex with an armada of all nations, you have to get connected.
How do I start?
The first thing you’ll need is a Ventrilo client, and luckily for you these are fast and free to download from their website. Yes, this is one of those smart companies that realize the software is going to end up free whether they want it to or not and only charge companies for its use - since businesses can’t afford to get caught stealing. Instead you pay for bandwidth, but even then a small server can be run from your computer and even renting a hosted Ventrilo server is much cheaper than the phone.
I’m running the program but nothing is happening!
That’s because you’re staring at the phone waiting for it to twitch. To get online and gabbing away, you need to set up your username (unless you want to be known as “guest”, which online roughly translates as “n00b idiot not worth talking to” in many places) and server. If you’re heading online for a reason the odds are you already have the server and port number. If you’re off adventuring, a google search for “public ventrilo servers” can yield some interesting results. Just be warned that it’s like dialling a number at random, but online, which means you truly never know what you’ll find or what they’ll try to say at you when you get there.
Nobody is listening to me…
Actually, nobody can hear you. The odds are that you’re sitting there with your snazzy headset on and Ventrilo connected, but until you press the magic “Talk” key nothing is being transmitted. A fresh Ventrilo install defaults to Press-To-Talk (PTT) mode, to avoid you accidentally transmitting whatever you normally do when you’re at your computer around the globe when you connect. Hit “Setup” and you can disable this mode if you want to, or redefine the talk key if you don’t. Especially if you’ll be running Ventrilo behind a game, when you’ll want to choose a convenient but unassigned key.
Nobody cares what I have to say!
It’s not enough to talk - you have to go where people want to listen. When you first connect to a server you’re dumped in the lobby, where the only people are other undecided connectees who are just looking for the right room to join. Any server will have a list of rooms for you to talk in, each showing its current status and members. Red loudspeakers indicate silence, green loudspeakers mean the user is talking, and red crosses are members only rooms that you’ll need a password to enter.
Nobody is doing things they way they should. I should be in charge!
Ah, now you’re thinking like a professional internet user! Luckily for you running your very own Ventrilo server is easier and cheaper than it’s ever been. Of course, then you’ll have to deal with all these stupid people connecting to your lovely server of intellectual delight and sitting stupidly in the lobby, but that’s why you put passwords on all the really interesting rooms.
Tags: ventrilo beginner, Ventrilo Server, ventrilo tutorial
Submitted by: John Ramirez
(submit your story)
We hadn’t played or hung out together since the last season ended so some of my clan mates and I met at one of the local restaurants for dinner. We played catch up and talked and laughed about how last season ended up. We made it to the finals in class and lost in over time. Second place wasn’t bad and we earned the right to play in the top tier of our league. No more 2nd tier trash talk about us… The reality of it was this game was in the mature stages of it’s life cycle and was on it’s way out. We had decided to move on to the next game but we had lost Benny who used to host our VOIP Server. He was a cool cat but got married and called it quits. I never understood why you would name your kid Benny, but he had a good shot in FPS games (around 32% accuracy) and he had a geared warlock and warrior. (His lock’s DPS was as mad as it gets in the game but he couldn’t tank a bunny rabbit with his warrior if his life depended on it!)
So the aging debate cropped up again….Are we going to go with a Teamspeak Server or a Ventrilo Server? There were 6 of us there and we were split down the middle. Half wanted to go with a Ventrilo Server and half wanted to go with a Teamspeak Server. One or two of us on each side actually had admin and setup experience with each product. The rest were from that bunch that had their opinion about which one they felt was better, didn’t know squat, but could boldly say the other product was and had no technical knowledge to back either product up. We’ll call this group “Category 2″.
So here is our clan all together hanging out and having dinner which happens never even though we are all local; and this…..is the dinner topic of the night. Where was our bonehead leader to help us hash this out and make a decision? He can’t shoot for crap anyway so we always make him the engineer, but he is a great strat guy and he’s also the priest leader in the RPG game we play. Plus he is your undisputed main tank of all main tank healers. In either case he couldn’t make it because he had to study for an exam or some other lame excuse. Alright we’re split down the middle so we order another round of queso, nachos, wings, and start to discuss the pros and cons of each. We quickly determine that Category 2 as we discussed above, didn’t really have an opinion of their own. They just voted for which ever one someone told them was best or what they thought was best because such and such team that was really good used it. So we quickly nullified their votes because they couldn’t even tell you about the interface of either product. They just know that someone gave them an IP address, a port, and a password and they were talking with their teammates. We called them noobs, all laughed, and munched on our appetizers. For the record the 2nd round of appetizers was our dinner because we were stuffed afterwards.
We had a competition at hand and a winner had to be decided. Were we going to go with Ventrilo Server or Teamspeak Server? Category 2 was already eliminated so we only had 3.5 contributors left. We started to discuss the idea of querying the internet for which one was the best but we decided that that would yield millions of results in people expressing opinions on which one was best (read: millions of Category 2). We started listing the pros of each one. Teamspeak Server was easy to set up, permissions were straight forward, had a lot of codecs to choose from, and was an all around solid and stable product. Ventrilo Server had stepped up their game and had come up with a slightly smoother looking interface, had text to computer voice feature if you wanted to mask your voice or you couldn’t speak (this feature always annoyed me), and had a very granular setup so you could tailor your server to host multiple games with multiple rooms per game. “You can do that with Teamspeak Server also!”, I argued. I didn’t want to use Ventrilo Server because I was a die hard Teamspeak Server admin, user, and I wasn’t a fan of the computerized voice that Ventrilo Server used. Teamspeak Server had a hot\important sounding ladies’ voice in it when you or someone else joined the server. Ventrilo Server could use it’s computerized voice to tell you who just joined so you didn’t have to ask. Back and forth we went for almost an hour. This clan has played together for almost 3 years and on our 5th dinner outing together we get snagged up on this topic?!
Teamspeak Server sound sample - Tough to beat!
Ventrilo Server sound sample - Sounds like you are playing the game Myst. You can also choose the robot voice but it pales in comparison to the one above.
Screenshot of Ventrilo client running on Windows Vista.
It seemed that we were at a stalemate and were going to be undecided when Shelly played an evil trump card. “Ventrilo Server gave away a Corvette at Quakecon this year!” she exclaimed. Everyone backed her up and was oohing, ahhing, and agreeing with her. I even lost my 2.5 supporters momentarily in the Corvette gold rush. I needed to implement damage control quick! Somehow 3 of us got tickets to win the Vette in the giveaway so we had a 3 in 200 chance to win but some guy in Houston, Texas won it. “Well none of us won it and it was probably an act of desperation to win over some gamers anyway! Ventrilo Server was probably so far behind in market share that they had to do something drastic like that to compete.”, I retorted. This cooled the flames for the time being, put my 2.5 supporters back on the fence yet still leaning towards the Vette contributor, and sadly earned me some Category 2 points. Most gamers were suspicious of gimmicks and fluff to begin with so this bought me a little time. How could she play that card?! For starters she was a super hot red head with boyfriend, our third best shot shooting around 34%, used to be a member of an all girl clan that used to dominate at LAN events, but her druid was pvp specced which means she couldn’t heal well and her pvp was mediocre anyway. Her boyfriend was terrible at games so he didn’t hang out with us or play with us. He was a chemist or something. Somehow she held some sway over some of our on-the-fence clan members. If I didn’t pull something out of my hat soon we were going to be using a Ventrilo Server and that was that.
I felt like the narrator in the song “Devil went down to Georgia” making a pact with the devil because I was about to pull the trump card of all trump cards out and slap it down on the table. Now if you’re not familiar with this song, I don’t recommend that you go look for it and download it because it’s a genre of music I am not overly proud of but it had a good story. I recommended to the group innocently, “Let’s call Mr. Know-it-all. He can give us the code level technical details of both products and help us decide.” I knew Shelly was trying to use her gaze to turn me into stone but I also knew he would be able to give us all the facts and help us draw the line plus I was wearing my shirt of +12 resist to paralysis. Shelly agreed and encouraged the idea as if it was her own. A few members also agreed that this was the thing to do and a few slowly put their heads down and stared at their plates but agreed. To give you a little background on Mr. Know-it-all who I will refer to as “MKIA” from here on out….MKIA is one of those guys that doesn’t have any college experience at all but earns comfortably over six figures, knows 2-3 programming languages, is an authority in 3-4 major business server products, and has more money and cars\toys than they were giving away at Quakecon - but is mediocre at games. He shoots down in the mid 20s and has zero battle smarts but wants to give out all the orders. You play with him, but pretty much ignore him when he is trying to give direction in-game because you know it’s a bust. However when it comes down to technology, software, and hardware he is the go to person because he makes it his job to know as much as the people who designed the products do. I’m pretty sure that’s his part time job because that’s all he does when he is not at work. When a CIO or CEO of a corporation questions his technical solution and asks who he asks when he doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he replies “I pray”. He’s one of the few people I know that can say something like that to an executive and not get fired.
I give MKIA a ring….of course he can be here in ten minutes. Now the reason a few people hung their head low when MKIA was mentioned is because when there is a topic up for discussion he will talk about it for as long and deep as you let him. Once you’re locked into conversation with him he won’t let you go. He’s got you in his tractor beam and he’s uploading information into your mind as fast as the Matrix front side bus will allow. This isn’t one of those flip-the-switch and get out easily tractor beams either. You have to distract him and casually slip away. MKIA shows up and we tell him what the debate is as he starts in on our appetizers. MKIA explains that both Teamspeak Server and Ventrilo Server operate on the same technology in the sense that they both are VOIP Server products and for all intents and purposes are not very different from each other in function. Then he starts getting deeper and goes over a few of our heads when he goes into hardware overhead, codecs available, features, permissions, clarity of voice, and rambles on for the better part of another hour as he orders another round of food.
Some of the Codecs available in a Teamspeak Server.
Both servers run on Windows, Linux, and the Mac although Teamspeak Server does not have an official release for the Mac it does work. Ventrilo Server has a very versatile setup that allows you to communicate between channels, text to voice, and many other configurable features. While Teamspeak Server does not have quite the same functionality, it is a stable and reliable VOIP Server. It is also very easy to setup and configure for a server administrator or user. When you put them both on the stand head to head, they are virtually the same product. You just have to decide if you want to spend your time playing with the features in the client or use the client to talk to your teammates while playing a game. Teamspeak Server as stated above overall is slightly easier to use and navigate. At the end of the day MKIA explains that it is a matter of preference as both of these products are very high quality and can be tailored to meet a variety of needs. The factor that tips the scale in favor for Teamspeak Server is the wide array of server or client side codecs that can be configured. With high bandwidth connections quickly becoming available all over the world, you can find yourself playing with others in Australia, Brazil, the UK, Israel, Russia, and wherever else you can think of. Those with fast remote connections will still encounter latency when connecting to your location but you can configure the codecs to meet their needs and still be able to hear each other with clarity. So the dark horse Teamspeak Server edges ahead and comes out on top. MKIA continued to ramble on and on while he finished all the food and we voted on and chose Teamspeak Server as our solution. It was a relief to have finally decided and it was also a relief that MKIA finally stopped talking. Matter of fact, somewhere during the voting process he had quietly slipped out and stuck us with the bill for the food he ordered too. Morale of the story as it were from our perspective? Play your trump cards carefully and go with Teamspeak Server!
After installing your own Ventrilo server you’ll want to review the options you have as a server admin. Before you can do anything you’ll need to connect to your Ventrilo server and login as an admin. Once in your server right click on the server name, next to the computer icon, to log in as an admin.
One of the most basic functions you will probably want to take advantage of is the ability to create new channels within your Ventrilo server. Once again, right click on the server name and then click on ‘Channel Admin’. Next to ‘Display Name’ type in the name of the channel you would like to create. The phonetic refers to what users joining the channel will hear upon entering the channel. You may also password protect the channel, forcing users to know the password in order to join it, but they will still be free to move about the other non-password protected channels. Creating new channels is very helpful if your Ventrilo server is shared by different groups, CoD4 clans, WoW guilds, etc.
 As an admin you will also have the option to ban users from your Ventrilo server. This will make it so that a user can no longer connect to the server. To ban a user, once again, right click on your server name and then go down to ‘Server Admin’. Next click on ‘Ban List’. From here you can ban, as well as un-ban users. It’s a good idea to put in a reason for why the user was banned to help you remember, and in case you should decide to unban them in the future.
As an admin you’ll also be able to create an MOTD (Message Of The Day) for your server. This feature is also in the ‘Server Admin’ menu and it will allow you type out a message that all users will see upon connecting to your Ventrilo server. This can include things such as the rules of the server, its usage, etc.
If you have a large server with many users you may want to give out admin to other members. This will allow your server to be moderated even if you’re not there. In the ‘Server Admin’ menu under ‘User Editor’ is where you can do this. Ventrilo allows you to create admin passwords for individual users, as opposed to having to give them the Ventrilo server’s master password. Just make sure that you only give admin to those who you can trust.
There are many features in Ventrilo designed specifically to help admin’s customize their servers and hopefully after reading this you’ll be well on your way to learning the intricacies of utilizing Ventrilo’s admin features.
Tags: Ventrilo Admin, Ventrilo Server
|
|
