Voice chat?

So, I've been using voicechat a lot lately.. and it just seems like out of twenty people with voice on that I bump into, only one will speak. Why is that?

Voice chat is on by default, so quite a few people may have it on and not realize it.

Personally, I mostly use voice only with my closest friends and then mostly in IM. I find it rather abrubt and disturbing in world. I find I prefer other sounds over chatter: music, various ambient sounds that creators have added.

I have occasionally joined in with a group of people talking, but not often. Funny but in SL voice has come to seem almost as intimate as a hug to me. I don't hug everyone, and I don't talk to everyone.

Quite a few probably have it on so they can hear others but don't have a headset connected. I've been trying this out lately, just to see what I might be missing. Not much, as it turns out.

i use mine mostly in private calls, which might be with one person, or a group chat.

I can not stand voice. There are only 2 exceptions where I will turn it on:

1) I am assisting someone who has to use it to communicate.

2) A friend insists on using it (which is rare since most of them know how I feel about it).

I can not figure out why anyone would want to walk around with it on all the time. On any machine below spec turning on voice is a sure trip to crashville. Even on high end machines it seems to make a crash more likely.

I agree with Kara, except that I always DO leave mine on, on the off chance that I'll need to hear what someone who uses it is saying. Without it on, you don't even get the green "I'm voicing" waves, and are left in ignorance of something that may be happening around you.

It's the large number of people like me, and/or the ones who don't even know about voice and yet have it on by default, that result in the ridiculous statistics about "millions of minutes of voice usage" touted by LL.

Does leaving voice on contribute to viewer problems? Does it have any effect on lag? I leave mine on but don't use it very often.

I hate voice, have it on for the little sound waves off the white dot but I mute the channel. The poor quality of the sounds, the differences in volume, the feed back loops, etc

Pass.

Edit: Not forgetting how it splits up communities that used to communicate via translators.

The only reason I ever have voice on is when I have just installed a new viewer and it's turned voice on again. [BTW: WTF is up with that?]

If I have it on and I don't notice the dots, I might walk around with it on, but since I've usually got all sound muted I still can't hear anything.

I usually end up deleting slvoice.exe after I notice that it turned on again. [re-WTF]

Also: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1317

I've actually loved how the voice chat works at a distance.. and it seems to be clearer than Ventrilo or just as clear as a skype video call with my family.

Got to be honest, every time I see someone not talking.. I just think the person might be insecure with themselves. I don't know if that comes with the perception that usually surrounds this game.. but it always pops into my mind. Of course, theres always the avid roleplayer that I consider..

That merely is evidence of a narrow mode of thinking and is typical of the mentality of people who like to make negative assumptions about people who don't act and think like they do. It's ironic that some people think that they make themselves taller by cutting other people off at the legs and then try to infer insecurity and self esteem problems to those people.

I love voicing I love all the different accents out there. I came to SL from other chats one being a voice chat and there was never any fear. I do hear a few ppl saying they wont voice because its to personal, they could be identified or they play a women but are a man in RL. I think it is a pity when in groups ppl will listen but not talk to me if your not willing to speak why bother listening all the time even if you just say hello

Oh oh, don't get me started on the accents. There are some that really grate on my nerves.

I find voice most comforting and adds to the world of SL. I do however feel that voice should fade with distance. As in... when approaching a club, the music should fade in, same with voice.

Personally I just assume that female avatars who are "NO VOICE" are guys. I have it on by default and only disable it when the chatter becomes overly inane, such as at Welcome Areas and sometimes at IOL.

That's a bad assumption, I think. I never turn it on, and I am the same gender in SL as RL. I don't much like voice and I leave it off.

Trish and Shimn are very narrowminded indeed.

I don't have anything against voice, and I have tried enough of it to know it don't work good enough for me.

I am not having English as first language. I write well enough to manage, and prefer that over voice. You are welcome to talk with me in Norwegian, if you can hear enough over the crackling sounds due to my bad internet connection. I am waiting for fibre optic cable, and if that improves the connection dramatically, I will use voice more. I can't see myself using it by default, since I often log in and shop while the kids are up. Even if I don't do anything "naughty" then, I don't want them to hang over my shoulder.

You can "assume" what you want, but you'd be dead wrong.

There is a pretty well-defined cultural divide within SL between those who use and like voice, and those who don't for a variety of reasons. While I am not rabid about it (and will turn on voice if I feel I'm missing something), I fall into the latter camp, as do the majority of my friends, male or female.

A minor point which is raised by your post, and which I am sure is unintended: nothing annoys me more than the idea that voice is some sort of "test" to ensure that a female avi is a woman in RL. It annoys me at a personal level, but also, frankly, ideologically: it's only women who seem to be expected to jump through this particular hoop. Many women, myself included, feel that voice blurs the lines too much between RL and SL; others similarly feel that it "exposes" them too much, rather as giving out RL pics or info would.

There is an enormously diverse variety of reasons for not using voice: I don't want to accuse you of being "close minded," but I would urge you to consider that this is a more complicated issue than you imply.

Actually the point raised was not unintended at all. If some "hot chick" comes up and starts hitting on me at IOL, I have found that about 90% of the time asking for voice tends to throw a bucket of cold water on her (him) pretty fast, the remaining 10%, well, we have nice chats on voice and text. Sure I get all the usual excuses, like those being thrown out here.. (Excuse a - english isn't my first language.. umm, not asking you to recite Homer, just try a bit of chatting. Excuse b - I have a bad connection.. if your connection is fast enough to do SL, it's fast enough to do voice over SL. Excuse c - I don't have a mic, if you own a computer powerful enough to do SL, you have the earning power to buy a mic, sheesh).. The simple matter of the fact is this, guys pretending to be girls avoid voice like the plague, and come up with some wonderfully machiavellian leaps of logic on how it's evil to expect someone who wants do naughty things to verify they are what they are advertising. It may be narrow minded, and maybe I am, but I don't really want to be some loser panty wearing dude's stroke fantasy while he sits in his parents basement.

People can keep complaining all they want, but the more overwrought and arcane their arguments get about why it's wrong it is to expect voice the more they sound to me like they are proving my point.

I DJ at IOL, so I do voice occasionally. You still won't get me talking to you with voice.

Sometimes in a group we can't all be using voice because of feedback, so that person just communicates via typed chat. I also know someone who prefers voice due to the fact it is extremely painful for her to use her hands. The reverse is also true, that a health issue/condition makes it difficult for them to use voice.

And let's face it, some connections just make voice to harder to use. Let's not even get into those annoying little voice inworld glitches, sheesh. As a general rule I think most of us use chat out of consideration towards others. Rather like being on a bus and not using your cell phone to force everyone on the bus to hear your latest gripes about your job/bf/gf/.

Well, if it really matters to you -- and clearly it does -- I suppose you have the right to want to go to voice with someone with whom you are planning to cyber. And of course, you have the right to decline for whatever reason you want.

Personally, I'd tell you where to get off; I don't like being "tested," thank you very much. But then I wouldn't approach you (or anyone else, for that matter) for sex in the first place.

I think that this is different, however, from simply assuming, as you suggested in your initial post, that female avs who don't do voice are necessarily or even most likely men IRL. If you prefer to remain steadfast to that view, then so be it . . . but I, and probably most others here, will tell you that you are deluding yourself.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that everyone else approaches SL as you do. For many of us, your RL identity is next to irrelevant.

Yeah, that's pretty annoying, but I'm sure that without that "feature" the whole "billions of minutes served" thing wouldn't be possible.

I seem to have it on at the moment. That's handy, I suppose, so I'll know if it ever starts working. It used to crash all other sound on my machine, but now it's just mute. I hate the buggy piece of crap, but I hate it slightly less now that it isn't crashing everything else.

That's ashame, Trish, you may be missing out on some very interesting people

Some folks are just truly shy and don't like the voice thing, but at the same time, I can easily see your point. Sometimes we get things in our head that we just can't get over, and after all, we're just huma......errr um...avatars

Scorp