Voice Normalization for Ventrilo

I thought some of you gamers might light a ventrilo normalization set up.  This way you can set up your ventrilo for even sound, and not get quiet voices and screaming voices in your ear driving you a bit crazy.

1. Go into Setup under the Voice tab, and on the right you will see settings for the input device. If you have DirectSound you will be able to check "Use DirectSound," which activates the "SFX" button in the corner.

2. Clicking "SFX" (short for Special Effects) brings up a window that lets you add and remove effects from Ventrilo. Adding "compressor" will open its Properties window.

There are 6 settings for the compression effect.

·        Gain 0
This can usually be left at 0, unless you're having difficulty hearing most of the people on the channel. Gain controls how much volume is sent to the compressor. Turning it up a little (10 or 15) may help, but turning it up a lot causes significant sound degradation.

·        Attack 0.01
Attack determines how quickly the effect is applied to the sound, in milliseconds, and can be turned down to the minimum of 0.01. The default is 10, which is also quite fast. The maximum of 500 creates an unpleasant half second delay before a loud incoming sound is adjusted.

·        Release 200 - 500
The length of time the compressor remains on after the sound has stopped is determined with the Release setting. The default of 200 milliseconds typically works, but some people turn this up to 500 or even 1000 (1 second).

·        Threshold -30
The level at or above which the compressor kicks in is the Threshold. -30 will make the quiet people a bit more audible, while still keeping the loud types from blasting you. This setting is measured in decibels, with 0 being very loud and -60 being very quiet.

·        Ratio 100
Ratio sets how much variation in volume remains after the compressor has done its job. Most people put this right up to 100 so there is as little variation in volume as possible. Although the default setting of 3 leaves some variation in, it also works.

·        Pre delay 4.0
This is a digital sound processor function that determines how far your system "looks ahead" for sounds that need adjustment, again in milliseconds. This is best left at the maximum of 4.

Note that you can also apply special effects to users individually, which will override the general special effects settings. You can do this by right clicking on their names and selecting "Special Effects" from the "Miscellaneous" menu, giving you access to the above controls for each user.