Mumble

 Mumble  is open-source voice chat software, with clients available for both desktop and mobile, as well as web browsers. It has been sucessfully used for vHWC EU several times.

voice.sknebel.net
runs a Mumble server at mumble://voice.sknebel.net:64738. Pick a representative username, the server password is indie. Ideally, install a Mumble client (from https://mumble.info or for Android Plumble) before the event and go through the audio setup guide. Push2Talk mode (where you press a key to activate your microphone) is the most reliable, getting voice activation configured perfectly takes some time.

If you can not install a local client, a web client (running mumble-web) is also available: Link. (If it doesn't work immediately, try reloading, it is a bit fiddly)

This server can be used freely for all IndieWeb community activities, but for now comes with no guarantees of availability. Please contact (sknebel) in chat if there are any issues or you want to make sure it is available for an event.

TODO

 * investigate low-bandwidth bridge for users on mobile/slow networks.

external

 * https://guildbit.com/ offers free short-term servers

Experiences

 * used for vHWC EU 2017-10-18 and following ones, worked well
 * the web client has some audio quality issues
 * we recommend Push2talk as the sending setting if you haven't gotten voice activation perfect
 * When not using headphones there have been issues with echo cancellation not being good enough and voice from the speaker triggering the voice activiation again, causing bad echo/feedback
 * This makes Mumble problematic for talking to a group of users sharing one device (e.g. HWC Berlin 2017-11-17 switched to skype for better echo cancellation
 * echo cancellation seems to be missing on Mac OS https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1775
 * a lot of essential options are in the 'advanced' section, so it's better to check the box in the upper right corner, so you can find them