Genres: Voice Communication
Release Date: September 2, 2005
Developer: Mikkel Krautz and Thorvald Natvig
Official Website: Mumble


Mumble is a free, open source, low latency, high quality voice chat application.

Mumble was the first VoIP application to establish true low latency voice communication over a decade ago. But low latency and gaming are not the only use cases it shines in.

Users use Mumble for record podcasts with Mumble multi-channel audio recorder, players seeking realism with Mumble positional audio in games, Eve Online players with huge communities of over 100 simultaneous voice participants (Probably they make good use of extensive permission system 😄), the competitive Team Fortress 2 community making Mumble their required voice communication platform, hobby radio transmission users, and a variety of workplaces adapting Mumble to fit their needs - be it on-head mobile devices or communicating across countries or into airplanes.

Administrators appreciate Mumble for being able to self host and have control over data security and privacy. Some make use of the extensive permission system for complex scenarios (for example separating two groups but leaders being able to talk to both). Some love to provide their users with additional functionality with scripts making use of server APIs, or host music bots and the like that connect to the server. Those that have an existing user database often make use of authenticators to allow authenticating with existing account login data.

Features

Different user groups are interested in different capabilities and so we describe some of the features specific to each kind of user.

For End-Users

• Low-latency - great for talking and gaming


• Stay private and secure always encrypted communication


• Public/private-key authentication by default


• Recognize friends across servers

For gamers:

• In-game Overlay - see who is talking, FPS and the current time


• Positional audio - hear the players from where they are located in-game


• Wizards to guide you through setup, like configuring your microphone

For Administrators

• Libre software - no licensing hassle, caveats and limitations Open Source - open in security and technology, and open to extendibility


• Extensive user permission system (ACL)


• Extendible through Ice protocols


• Web interfaces - free choice of several community free software projects


• Channel viewers - even without direct Ice access, if the hoster provides the CVP, easily set up your channel viewer of choice


• Authenticators - to allow users to authenticate against an existing user database


• Custom chat commands and context (right click) menu entries

For Hosters

• Free software - no licensing hassle or cost


• Automatable administration through Ice middleware


• Low resource cost for hosting


• Very stable server software


• Free choice between official and third party server software


• Custom web-interfaces for users through Ice or host one of the available free software web interfaces


• Provide users with channel viewer data (CVP) without giving control away or empower the users by providing the Ice interface