Upgrade Voice to WebRTC
in progress
Signal Linden
We're working on upgrading Second Life’s voice system from to WebRTC, bringing better audio quality, noise cancellation, and automatic gain control while also enabling voice on mobile clients.
Why the Change?
- Our current Vivox implementation is outdated and lacks modern audio enhancements.
- WebRTC will improve voice clarity, spatialization, and performance across devices.
What’s Changing?
- Spatial Voice: We’ll use open-source solutions to maintain and enhance spatialized audio.
- Group & P2P Voice: A new server infrastructure will support these features.
- New Features: Improved voice clarity, better volume management, and potential for enhancements like reverb effects in certain regions.
What to Expect?
- Viewer Update Required: Upgrading to WebRTC will require an updated viewer.
- Better voice experience: Lower latency, clearer audio, and improved support across devices.
We’re finalizing the technical details and transition plan—stay tuned for more updates!
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Hadet Sonnenkern
Currently users of my sandbox are reporting and myself included
+ Their Windows Audio randomly changing the input device volume at a system level
+ Random drops in audio quality where some people sound like they're just constantly dropping packets, whereas this did not happen with Vivox
+ Voice Randomly stops working despite it appearing people are still connected to the voice server.
+ The voice particles for the voice dot are radically different in terms of volume appearance between WebRTC and Vivox
I have a week off coming up soon and I would like to be able to assist with debugging some of these issues but other than the volume changing issues most of them appear to be server side. So far as I can tell none of these issues are present when I connect to voice through mobile. This also doesn't seem to be isolated to my private simulator. There have been numerous "Wave a dead chicken at it" fixes Including
+ Setting Draw Distance to 1 or 0 and zooming all the way out and back in
+ Disabling and re-enabling voice
+ Windows users manually killing the Vivox binary (SLVoice.exe) in task manager
I have had varrying results with these fixes on my Mac and Linux desktops. As no viewer works with Windows 11 ARM currently I have no been able to test Windows and rely on less technically savvy people for feedback on this. The random drops in voice audio quality for people started happening about a month ago and were not present when my simulator was initially transitioned to WebRTC. When the service is working correctly it's great because people aren't constantly competing to "Voice priority" but it's had a fairly negative impact on my simulator traffic because of the above issues. Going from around 10-12K Traffic average to around 1-3K.
Zeth Starlight
When is the switch happening to WebRTC? I've been hearing for months that this was going to happen with like no word when the official switch is happening?
Lita Jannings
I was asked by Orthos Linden to post feedback here, it seems with all the changes that Voice Morphing no longer works in Second Life. Voice Island has been taken offline. So, the question is: is Voice Morphing going to be permanently gone from Second Life. Currently you can't subscribe to get the voice packs. Unless there is a fix that I am unaware of being done.
VenKellie Resident
any update on this work? Vivox is really starting to become unstable, i keep losing my voice dot as well as my friends.
Signal Linden
in progress
Kassina Wylie
I thought we had already started the process... A few months ago we started having issues where we don't have our Voice Dots and Sound for like 2+ mins every time we Rez in or Teleport.
Annryk Resident
I hope that by the time we fully switch to this service, the incompatibility with sound cards will be fixed Sound Blaster AE. Otherwise I will be left without voice:/
Hadet Sonnenkern
Annryk Resident This sounds like a Windows soundmixer problem. I've had no problems with soundcards or external DACs on anything on Linux or MacOS. You can't select your sound card from the dropdown menu?
Annryk Resident
Hadet Sonnenkern The problem is not in the mixer, in the viewer the input and output of the sound card is displayed correctly and can be selected, but there is no sound at all, I only see how others speak but I do not hear and they do not hear me either, this is a software compatibility problem Sound Blaster Commands which controls the sound card. Most likely the audio stream format is not suitable for him which is used on Webrtc. This only happens when the viewer switches to webrtc in a region with this service.
Annryk Resident
My voice on webrts worked on versions
7.1.12.13550888671 (only with it turned off Echo Cancellation)
Firestorm 7.1.12 (77610) (in all modes)
Thank you for your work!)
RestrainedRaptor Resident
I thought this was already in progress last year. Surely its status should be 'tracked' at the very least.
Nyx Onyx
Perhaps if there's still delay due to too many being on old viewers, perhaps we could have an ability for Estate Managers / Region Owners to turn it on through support tickets, or even better, through the region console?
VenKellie Resident
i wondered where my post went too ty. Ya im sick of Vivox being unreliable, im even noticing issues of its use in other games that use it, notiably World of Warcraft. If those on firestorm 6 use voice, then its either upgrade now or lose voice, enough is enough of waiting while the rest of us on a 7 viewer have to deal with unreliable service.
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