Town Hall Audio

I went to yesterday's Town Hall to see what it's all about.

It was certainly interesting. But Philip's method of communicating was pretty unsatisfactory.
The audio worked fine - for his first few sentences - then died.
I had a choice of iTunes, WinAmp, or the SL software audio and none of these worked.
iTunes was giving 'too many users to connect to server' messages.
WinAmp was giving 'stream synchronisation failure' error messages.
And the SL audio just said nothing.

So, I picked up Zero's text output instead, occasionally tinkering with audio during dull bits. Eventually (about halfway through), iTunes started up all by itself and, having the text window open, I began to notice the difference between Zero's output and what Philip Linden was really saying.

I want to make it completely clear I am NOT complaining about Zero's efforts. Trying to type someones spoken word in realtime is virtually impossible without resorting to shorthand or similar code. Zero had a very difficult job to do and made a pretty good attempt at coping.

However, the fact is that the typed text bore little resemblance to what Philip was actually saying. I many cases Zero was forced to either paraphrase Philip or simply omit large chunks. The result was that the text, at many points during Philip's answers, bore little resemblance to what Philip was actually saying! Sometimes, in my opinion, the actual sense of his dialogue was completely lost.

However, the typed text has now been 'cleaned up' for public consumption, removing the inevitable typos and generally tidying things up.
That text is being presented as 'Philip Linden at the Town Hall' - it isn't!
Philip Linden seems to be a pretty good speaker, with the ability to choose his words well and get his point across. Though you wouldn't think that from the text.

The real problem is that the Streaming Audio seems to be unreliable. Hearing Philip speak puts an entirely different richer more personal perspective on the Town Hall to reading the condensed paraphrased post-sanitised text.
There is simply no comparison.
Town Hall audio needs sorting out properly so that if 10,000 users want to listen they can, without stream loss or dropouts.
The text system, despite Zero's best efforts, simply isn't satisfactory.
It would be more effective if Philip simply had written questions submitted and wrote answers for later publication.

Residents being able to ask the 'boss' questions and getting replies is a great idea. Actually speaking to him is a brilliant idea. The present implementation leaves a lot to be desired though.

I'll bounce the next town hall from another server if that would help ;0

This was only my second Town Hall, but the audio worked fine again. I used Windows Media Player 10 and other than the early drop of the feed which required re-opening the URL, both times the feeds ran un-interupted for their hour plus lengths.

Yes, there is no comparison between text and voice. Second Life has been a tech generation leap backward for me coming from Xbox Live where we've expected and enjoyed voice for three years in everything from chat lobbies to in-game action.

It's nice that you had no problem with the audio stream. But it was clear though, from the local chat at Pooley Stage, that a significant number of people there were having the same sort of problems I encountered. And the problems reported sounded a lot like server bandwidth restrictions.

It is strange you say that VOIP is used quite widely elsewhere (I've led a very sheltered life to date) but not in SL, where using it would seem pretty much a no-brainer - Philip did touch on this in one of his replies, but started burbling on about 'Filtering', 'Gender Changers', 'Age Changers' and so forth which completely lost me.

After all, if anyone wants to play games with their voice there are plenty of hardware/software solutions out there which could easily accomplish that from the users end - why does LL need to worry about that?
If a middle aged man wants to play as an 18 yr old girl, fine, but sort your own voice out - it's hardly LL's problem, is it?

Just a nice simple stable and reliable VOIP would be a great addition to SL. Why make it so complicated you can't see how to do it?

Is there an url for the recorded audio?

When I fired up SL at lunchtime on the town hall day there was an url for the audio shown in a message box that you couldn't copy the URL text from. Sigh. Text that can be copied for pasting is much more useful than text that can't be.

Im waiting for the mp3/stream too.

It's certainly possible that it was server bandwidth Inigo, though I did arrive late to the party and fired it up right away. I was standing near the stage and helped a few people connect by suggesting options and re-pasting the URL. Of course we're in the old tech trap of "works fine on my system".

Yes, online voice is standard on Xbox (over three years and now over 2.5 million paying subscribers) and supported by the vast majority of online PS2 titles. I would never suggest it as a replacement on a system with a typing standard like SL, but using external programs takes away part of the experience. Newer MMOs including "Auto Assault" come out of the box with both voice and type support and I hope to see that in SL. Integrating it allows support for proximity voice, group chat, and no additional configuration/software choices for anyone you may run aross. Like any kind of kludge, it will never be seen as a standard.

Philip's comments were obviously concerning the effect on role-play in general in SL, and that's fine, but no reason to hold back compelling technology. If you need to disguise your voice, just don't use voice. Putting the foundation in earlier rather than later establishes a precedent for use and later as his request for better masking technologies becomes available, you add those in. Xbox Live has upgraded its voice masking feaures twice that I can remember, but as he said, it's still not effective and most people tell users to turn it off or get out. But I can honestly tell you once you go voice you'll find it "quaint" at best to return to typing.

I never got the feed working at all.

The lack voice support in SL is strictly a social issue. LL made the mistake of facilitating game like anonymity under the theory of fostering growth of the project by making the software fun to use. Now they're stuck catering to a vast community of people that want to continue playing Second Life as a game forever.

Anonymity <> voice, it's as simple as that. It's too bad that such silliness may prevent the project from every reaching profitability.

Well there IS some very convincing real time voice changing hardware out there, I know because a friend who makes kiddies audio books uses an example from a German firm. I certainly can't tell the difference between it's effects and the real thing. So it is 'doable'. Yes, it costs money, about US$700, so? What does basic SL hardware cost?

I don't see the inability of LL to provide hardware quality 'masking filters' in software as a good reason not to provide audio.
Straight audio would be great - then people who want to play outside their RL parameters can either make the necessary arrangements, or type.
But why should everyone else suffer the lack for the convenience of a minority?

Jeska said Monday for an official mp3 ;0

Whenever the taped audio of the townhall meeting is available, post the link up

)

Sooo.. Its Tuesday, anyone know where it is or if its done?

Seconding this.

;0

The Town Hall podcast will show up @ http://secondlife.com/community/media.php tomorrow. There'll also be an announcement in Announcements & News as usual.

HTH.

Torley strikes again ! ;0

Double awsome, thankies Torley.

Happy smile hello! ;0

You're super welcome!

"July 7th Town Hall with Philip Linden" is now up for download (click here for MP3).