Download Mumble
Mumble @ Sourceforge

Installation

Installing Mumble is easy, in most cases just select the default prompts to get you going.

2a. Authentication Certificate

Instead of passwords being used to connect to your server Mumble uses certificates - encrypted files that identify you and your PC. That way you don't have to remember passwords for different servers. Since most of us just use it for BL, this part isnt that important. Can even skip the certification section.

The first screen you will be presented with is the Certificate Wizard. The defaults are fine but if you are interested personalizing the certificate, then select Create a new certificate.


Select New Certificate and click Next


Enter your name and email.


Next, Mumble asks you to back up your Certificate. After that, you're done with certifications and onto the actual part that you'll have to pay attention to in order to get the least amount of problems which is sound setup and sound quality!

2b. Audio Setup

Next, Mumble will walk you through your sound setup.

Click Next


For Input Device, you need to pick your microphone. On the Output device you pick either your headset or your speakers. On the bottom section you should see 2 things, "Positional Audio" & "Attenuate applications when others talk". Positional Audio isn't needed since FFXI doesnt support it. Mostly for FPS games for position mimicing which lets you hear other people from their relative in-game positions. The other option lets Mumble manage your system volume automatically. This will make it so that when other people talk, Mumble will lower your other system sound volume, so that you can clearly hear the person who is talking. This lets you listen to music or game sound without ever missing a word of what's being said on voice chat. Only works with sounds going into the same output device. Say you're playing music through your speakers and you listen to people through your headset. That option doesnt filter out volume stuff since speakers and headset is on a different listening device.


The next screen lets you adjust your buffer. If you have problems with choppy or distorted output, you will want to increase this a couple of notches. Increase the slider until the sound playing is no longer choppy or distorted.


This screen adjusts how sensitive your microphone is, and lets Mumble set up its automatic normalization feature. Make sure to follow the instructions here very carefully. This is where most of the crackles and scratchy noise you face if you don't follow this correctly. In advanced settings later, you can tweak it to fine tune it.


This screen lets you set up how you will send audio. "Push-To-Talk" I'd assume is what everyone should be using. The other two options will attempt to detect when you are talking, and only send audio then, but this does tend to send things like sneezes, background conversation, and the occasional echo out of your speakers.


Balanced is fine, quality is better than vent and still has low latency. You can change it in advanced settings later if people sound robot-like or distorted. Also the text to speech in mumble kinda blows so better off with the sound effects.

Once that is done, you're ready to start the synchronization with Guildwork. Next up is advanced settings but if you want skip this section and start setting it up with Guildwork, head to section 3.

2c. Advanced Settings

Mumble's normalization feature is really good as is but it offers even more options to fine tune it. To start playing with them, go to Configure in your menu bar, and select Settings. From there check the advanced button on the lower left.

Now you're ready to check out the advanced settings.

Audio Input

Transmit: This lets you change what causes you to transmit audio. "Push-to-Talk" is the norm.

DoublePush Time: This lets you specify how long Mumble will continue to transmit audio after you release your Push-To-Talk key. This is primarily useful so that if your finger slips off the button for a split second, other people don't hear an interruption of what you were saying.

PTT Audio Cue: People used to Ventrilo's "blip" sounds will probably want this on, at least to start with. This causes a sound to play whenever you press or release your Push-To-Talk key. What you'll find, though, is that you may not need these enabled, after all!

In Ventrilo, these sounds help to keep people from talking over each other, by causing them to delay about a half second between pressing PTT and actually talking. Because the Ventrilo protocol has a certain amount of lag built into it, this is necessary, or else everyone would talk over each other, and nobody would be audible.

However, Mumble's latency is so low, these sounds are not necessary. People will avoid talking over each other just as easily as they would in a natural face-to-face conversation.

Idle AutoMute: This will cause Mumble to automatically mute your microphone if you don't speak for a certain amount of time. Dragging this slider all the way to the left will disable this feature.

Quality: This is the quality at which Mumble will encode your voice. I recommend that you leave this at 40.0 kb/s. However, if other people report that you sound distorted, you can try raising or lowering this value.

Audio per packet: This is the amount of audio that Mumble sends at a time. A lower value means less latency, but might potentially introduce quality loss, if too low. I recommend that you leave this at 20 ms.

Noise Suppression: Mumble will automatically filter out background noise like fans, speaker noise, and small children. This slider will adjust how aggressively noise is filtered. If filtering is too aggressive, then your voice may become distorted.

Amplification: This setting controls how loud your mic is. If people report that you are too loud, lower this setting. Conversely, if you are too quiet, raise this setting. If you used the Audio Wizard, this setting should already be correctly set for you.

Audio Output

Default Jitter Buffer: If people sound distorted, metallic, or robot-like, try increasing this setting a notch or two.

Volume: Output volume. The volume at which Mumble will play in your speakers.

Output Delay: If people are distorted or are breaking up, try increasing this value.

Attenuate applications by…: This setting determines how much Mumble will reduce other applications' volume when people talk. A setting of 100% means to mute other applications; 0% means to not do anything to other applications. Additionally, you can select to attenuate when others talk, and/or when you talk with the "while other users talk" and "when you talk" checkboxes.

Loopback: This is a super handy feature for troubleshooting problems with your audio input settings. You can set Mumble to "loop back" to you, so you hear what you are saying the way other people will hear you. When troubleshooting, try setting this to "Server", and then tweak options in Audio Input and Audio Output to get your audio sounding just right. Remember to set it back to "None" after you're finished, or else nobody will be able to hear you.

Shortcuts

You can manage shortcuts here. Mumble is very flexible, and will let you bind all kinds of things to do whatever you want.

To add a new binding, click the Add button in the lower left corner of the screen. This will add a new row in the window, that says Unassigned. Click Unassigned to select what you want this shortcut to do, and then click the empty space under Shortcut to select the key binding to use.

If you want to prevent this key binding from doing anything in other applications, check the Suppress checkbox. This will make sure that they key press only goes to Mumble.

Messages

Here, you can configure how Mumble notifies you of things. Best to uncheck "Text-to-Speech" since it kinda blows and just use sounds instead.

You can alter what messages you get, and even make Mumble play a sound on certain events.

LCD

If you have a Logitech G15 keyboard, you can configure it with this screen.

Overlay

Mumble's overlay is nice except it doesn't work with FFXI. Something about Directx9+ support only.

Guildwork Synchronization

To sync up with Guildwork, you would have to first connect through your Guildwork site. You press the Connect link in either your Mumble page link or in the Mumble widget.

Once you're are connected, you should see the little A icon with a green + on the right. That means you are authenticated on the server. Now click on Server on the top right, then go to Connect.


Press the Add new button on the lower right and it should bring up a new window. The new window should have all of your server's info auto populated. As you would've noticed the arrow pointing at username. The default is session which you would have to change to your Guildwork username. You have to use the name you signed up with, not the name you have in FFXI if that is different.

Once you changed the username and press OK, you should have your Guildwork's Mumble server under favorites. You can now connect directly to the server without going onto your guild site. Oh, also first time you reconnect to the server without using the guild site, you'll be asked a password. The password is the same one that you signed up to Guildworks with.