Is Voice an obligation or an option?

Which is the greater imposition?

a. Buying and callibrating additional equipment that you're not even sure you want.

b. Using the keyboard that came with your computer.

I wouldn't bother; I have an iMac with a USB iMic system, which quite happily interacts with every other sound-based application that I have, but SL Voice doesn't seem to like it. I've tried with the internal microphone and speakers too, and those don't work.

*shrugs*

The iMic is a good option, by the way, if you ever want to use Skype or record old records or cassettes or transfer sound from a Minidisc or, well, any other general sound input tasks.

I think eventually voice will become a fact of life. It isn't now because it has to overcome the inertia of persons like me who have never used it online, aren't excited about it, and don't care enough to spend whatever time and money it costs to set it up. Voice is more likely to expand with new people coming to the internet to socialize without any prior experience or expectation. This has nothing to do with whether voice is better than orgasm or worse than death, it just simply has to do with the fact that people who have already been here get comfortable in their ways, while new people are willing to try out every bell and whistle just for the sake of trying it out.

This gives it a much more understandable perspective. I'm still leaning toward the side of the event organizers here though. As much as I respect one's personal choice not to use voice, I respect the organizers' choice to use it. I think generally speaking, there's a time and a place for it. Particularly for the character you play, I can certainly see voice kinda.. you know.. NOT working for you.. in a public, non-role play event like the SL birthday events? I think that's different, and voice seems an ideal way to conduct planning sessions for it. In RL meetings where I work, we don't sit around the conference table typing text messages to each other.. we speak.. it's effective. If event organizers want meetings to be conducted in voice, and a participant doesn't wish to switch it on, that participant should probably consider finding some other way to help that doeson't involve voice meetings.

Upon installing the new voice client, doesn't a dialog box pop-up asking you whether to enable it or not?

You have to get passed that dialog box to proceed...hence, you have to know the answer to the question of this thread--at least one would assume you've tried voice before starting a thread like this. Am I making sense?

Robin was going to hold her next meeting (last week's) entirely in voice, but I wasn't able to make it so I'm not sure how that actually turned out .

A USB headset is not required to use voice - I'm using a cheap radio shack headset, no USB cable.

Yup, and also to ease Raudf's troubled mind, you can buy an inexpensive hardware-switch so you can quickly and easily switch back and forth between speakers and headset.

Just so you know, you can get a headset/mic combo for super cheap.

I would guess that the side which already has what it wants need not waste energy "screaming."

I attempted to try it and it didn't work. And, at this point, I've yet to miss out on anything I'm interested in because of a lack of voice.

It's possible this may change. I don't deny that voice has its advantages in certain contexts, but what about those contexts where text is better? Should those fall by the wayside simply because of the advent of voice?

Newbies will also enter a world where sculpted prims are an option and, for them, always have been. Does this compel me to put them in my builds?

You tried it and it didn't work? Then how do you know whether you've missed out on anything or not? Sounds contrary Mary to me.

Lot's of specifically voice things have gone on in SL since it's release...I suppose if it didn't work for you...you wouldn't have been able to enjoy them...you may not care they exist, and most importantly again, you wouldn't know that you're "missing out."

You seem awfully touchy about this. Why is that?

It is with certain Macs. And as I have already said, even _with_ perfectly adequate hardware, it sometimes still doesn't work.

Not that the technical aspects are the most important here.

Not touchy...

Just quick to clarify glaring contradictions regarding negative voice propaganda. I'm all smiles mate.

NVM, be a waste of time and energy.

I'm not sure what the glaring contradiction is in asking "If Voice doesn't work for me, do I absolutely HAVE to use it?" But okay.

I've used voice with some friends, but will not use voice with strangers. Ever.

Oh, and any lag causd by voice is client side - caused by the extra CPU and memory usage of SLvoice.exe. As someone pointed out, if you turn it off the lag stops - that's how you spot client-side lag.

Ditto here. It's enabled on my land, but I don't have it enabled in my client all the time, only when I know I'll be talking to friends. Apart from a few connecting problems during the first days of Voice, it also works fine on both of my systems (Win XP, 3.2 GHz CPU, 1 Gig RAM as well as the 512 MB/1.8 GHz laptop)

I have simillar specs on my systems, but with 512mb on the 3.2ghz desktop and 1gb on the 1.6 laptop instead of the other way round. No lag that I've noticed as a result of SLvoice.exe.
I keep voice on at all times because I like to hear what others are talking about.

I'm just nosey basically.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why people can't or won't bother with voice:

- Whining children in the background.
- Domestic disputes in the background.
- Interruption of personal music/trance/peace (which can be maintained during a text chat)
- Humming, bad singing, coughing, sniffing, heavy breathing, lip smacking, eating/drinking.
- Text grief is easy to hide, sudden voice grief can carry across the house (embarassing).
- Oversensitive sound detection that pulses on every other second.
- Other user's mic volumes being set too low or high to the point of distortion.
- Cheap/broken mics that sound like garbage no matter what.
- Crosswired/bugged mics that either perpetually static or loop output back.
- The voice client just plain doesn't work for some people.
- Pounding migraines.
- Local sleeping family members.
- Missed conversation due to lack of logging while AFK.
- Voice logging takes up a lot of space and isn't quickly searchable.
- Multiple voice conversations at the same time are very difficult to follow.
- Impossible to translate spoken foreign languages (like via Babelfish or otherwise).
- Thick accents.
- People text-chatting each other with high WPM rates can have a conversation a lot faster.

- Text chat isn't broken.

Sorry, voice chat is not a bed of roses for everybody, so please have some goddamn understanding for those who quite understandably decided not to use it.

Assuming it works. I clicked that (using an alt), and got nothing but dead air. My Mac Mini was totally unable to hear the sounds of Voice until I added a $200 external USB sound input mixer, to give it input circutry. (I don't know anyone who owns a USB headset, but I did know a sound geek who had a USB input mixer). THEN it could allow me to hear. So I would assume that at the very least I would have to spend $40+ for a new USB Headset, which I don't have any desire to actually use to Speak, just for the privilege of hearing the RL voices that I would just as soon not hear?

Yes, a meeting like the event planning sessions is "not roleplay". We aren't "in character" at such meetings *unless we strongly desire to be*. Here's one example of why a roleplayer who dislikes Voice would still be very unwilling to participate in that sort of meeting.

Let's just say for a moment that I manage to get a new computer, and to get it configured somehow so it will allow me to hear Voice, and I just plan on keeping my mic firmly off. I even use a new, unverified alt, so no one there knows it is me. So I am sitting there with a bunch of strangers, and in walks three of the people I roleplay with, because THEY want to have input on the big SL Birthday bash or whatever. Before I can turn off my speakers or more likely before I even realize they are present, I hear their RL voices - and it totally shatters the mental image of those characters for me. Maybe it outs that big hunk that's been romancing me as really being a whiny-voiced teenaged boy. Maybe it outs that pretty girl next door as a deep voiced old man. Maybe one of them sounds just like my mother! The instant they speak and I hear them, that damage is done, and its irreversable. They may as well be doing a slide show, showing RL pictures of each person who walks into the room.

Can you possibly see that point? Can you understand why, to a roleplayer, divulging personal information about fellow players doesn't matter if it's in a roleplay setting or not? A lot of radio stars lost their careers when movies became popular, because their looks didn't match up to the standards presented by their radio voice. A lot of silent movie stars lost their careers when movies with sound started, because their voice didn't match their looks. Eventually, it didn't matter with the new crop of actors, because to make it you had to have the looks AND the voice. Those who had only a good voice were relegated to doing voice-overs for cartoons and TV ads. Sure, if you're doing a D&D game with a bunch of friends, no one cares that the 80-year-old troll is a 16 year old kid, or that the cute female thief is a male college professor. You aren't trying to act out the roles fully - just to play out the action. That is why voice doesn't matter in WoW or other combat games. No one there is trying to BE a mountain troll or a sexy female Paladin. Text roleplayers, on the other hand, often create complex, fully-developed characters, playing on the anonymnity of text to allow them a far wider range of believable roles. Revealing their RL voice shatters that. And so by insisting on using Voice as the primary means of communicating in a public meeting, it firmly excludes roleplayers like me. Because my only choice is to not participate, or to risk destroying a major aspect the roleplay that I come to SL to do.

Everyone sounds the same to me. If I strain I can just about distinguish male from female.

Sorry, please speak only for yourself. I'm a role player from another service - one where text was the only alternative.

Guess what? voice hasn't ruined my character at all - if anything it actually allows me to make use of the proper accent (no possible way to properly type it out or for that matter to get the proper emotion to come through in text).

I've said it before in other threads where this has come up: drop the bloody expectations! sure, a male playing a female role is a bad thing but ya know what? You character can have any voice in the world, just like real people!

Now I'll ask you: Can you possibly understand the use of Voice to a Role Player actually capable of adapting to the advent of Voice?

On a more personal note ... I've heard the voices of many a person who I have role Played with in the past and guess what? No 'damage' has been done at all! The moment we go into character, Real Life is left at the door (with exception to Instant Messages)!

to me, to read such things being said to 'destroy' the image of a character ... they are just excuses. If you do not want to use voice - don't. That's your option and prerogative. If you do not want to use Voice due to Role Playing issues - again, don't use it. Please remember thoug: You don't speak for all of us.

Amen, I completely agree with this 100%.

To me, text is an *advancement* over voice for roleplaying -- for the reasons you mention, as well as for others, such as: (1) allowing much more time for considered responses, emotes, creation of atmosphere and a "fuller" descriptive environment, (2) allowing for multiple conversations to proceed at once at the same time without speaking over each other (whereas with voice as we all know it's a "one at a time" type of thing) and (3) the intrusion of (a) SL into my RL (with people around me in my RL "hearing" what I am doing in SL, which I typically do not want) and (b) other people's RL into my SL (as in the screaming kids in the background, the inane television set that some people seem to have constantly blaring when they are on SL and so forth). So I don't use it. I support the right of others to use it, but I certainly think it's a step way backwards for roleplaying and, frankly, for people who are either seeking (1) a more comprehensive separation between their RL and their SL or (2) a more immersive experience in SL.

A point often overlooked.