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I made a guide on getting oriented and configuring Ventrilo™. Basically, it's a program that you run which connects to VoIP servers and sends/receives voice communication. The Ordo Imperialis officially uses Ventrilo, we have our own server and have maintained it for years. Second Life Voice is alright but it's not our "official" mode of voice communication-- as the major drawback is it has a local hearing capacity only. To get started: Request a username and password from a Ventrilo Admin. Download and install the proper Ventrilo client for your computer from their official website. Start the program, then click the arrow button at the top right. In the new window that came up, click "New," then type your Second Life name (Exactly as it appears in world). You may have noticed that I have inputted a butchered version of my avatar's first name in the "Phonetic" field. The Ventrilo client employs the use of a computer-generated voice named "Microsoft Sam" (or "Microsoft Anna" for newer clients) to announce certain events. Microsoft Sam/Anna doesn't pronounce my avatar's first name correctly, so I had to experiment with letters to get "Intus" to be pronounced correctly. Click "Play" to test the pronunciation. Warning: Some new installs of Ventrilo won't have Microsoft Sam/Anna enabled, so the "Play," button won't do anything. You can enable this option in the setup menu which will be covered later in this configuration. Now, leave the "Description" and "Work Dir" fields blank and click "OK." Now click the arrow button one down from the previous. A new window will pop-up, which is the connection/server window. Click "New," then name it something to help you identify what connection/server it is. I conveniently name it the location (you don't have to). Next, make it look like the one below. Server: vent2.ugt-servers.com and Port: 4784. Your password will be given to you by a Ventrilo admin. Click "OK," when finished. Don't worry about the third arrow down. If you've done the above steps correctly (including having requested the creation of your username/password), you'll see "MSG: Server is available. Press Connect." in the status area. Press connect, and you should be connected to the server now. Click Setup. A new window pops-up. First tab is called "Voice," and it's the most important. RED SQUARE: Make the checkmarks look like the image below, then click on the "Hotkey" field and press, literally, any button on your keyboard or mouse that you want to use to push-to-talk. YELLOW SQUARE: Next you want to make sure your Output and Input devices are set to the proper hardware. In my configuration I actually chose the hardware I want to use, but leaving it as "Windows Default" is fine as well. BLUE ARROW: To make sure it works, click Test, press your talk hotkey and say something, then it should play back to you. If it doesn't, perhaps your Microphone or speakers aren't connected or are muted. When you can talk and hear yourself talk, at the top click the "Events" tab. This new tab has what's called "Events." Events are the sounds you hear when people connect/disconnect, you connect/disconnect, you and others leave/join the channel that you're in, etc. This is largely based on personal preference, I have mine set to play a sound when people make a comment, and have Microsoft Sam/Anna tell me the name of someone joining the channel I'm in (Text-to-Speech). Set it how you want it, then at the top click on the "Speech" tab. Make the speech tab look like this. Your voice may be "Microsoft Sam" rather than Anna. If you have both then choose whether you want a male voice (Sam) or a female voice (Anna) speaking to you. You're done! Click "OK" to save options. Join the main Ordo Imperialis channel and it'll ask you for a password (or at least it should). The password is "candycanes". You can mute Ventrilo at any time by clicking the "Mute Sound" checkbox at the bottom left of the main window. Hopefully I hit most questions-- if I didn't please make a post! Also, if you want to normalize the volume of people speaking (make everyone the same loudness, so there's no overly loud people and overly soft people) check out this thread. Thanks for reading.

This is a good article because it stops people from saying "Bob you're loud" or "Bob I can't hear you". It also makes Ventrilo a little more bearable on the ears. I highly recommend it. Select the Setup button, Enable Direct Sound, Select the SFX Button Select Compressor and click Add. Open the Compressor Properties Gain: Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use 15) Attack: 0.01 Release: Around 500 Threshold: Around -30 Ratio: 100 Pre-delay: 4.0 What the settings do? Gain - How much volume you feed into the compressor. Not really relevant unless everyone is too quiet, then you can turn this up a little; turning it up too much will reduce audio quality. Attack - How fast volume change will happen. example: setting this to 500 means that anything coming in will only be dropped in volume after a half a second. for vent this should be set as low as possible. Release - How fast the compressor stops changing things. not really that relevant with vent, setting it around 500 is good for voice material. Threshold - This sets the point where we actually start changing what’s coming in. Whereas 0 is the absolute loudest you can have for an input, -60 is super quiet. Average users will probably come in somewhere around -25 to -15, with the occaisional few being really quiet, which is why I have this set so low. Ratio - How much any sound below the set threshold gets compressed and/or modified in the volume department. If you still want to hear SOME volume variation then set this lower (2-4)... the higher you set it the closer in volume everyone will be. Pre-delay - Mostly just deals with processing; with computer and digital processors they can look ahead a few milliseconds to see what needs to be dropped in volume or changed before it actually comes through the speakers. Highest is ideal.