fs_voice - [By Operating System] Updated Linux

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Try disabling compatibility mode, if enabled:

• Locate your desktop shortcut for Firestorm (if you use the pinned application on the task bar, make sure you pin the Firestorm shortcut, not the running viewer)
• Right click on the icon and select Properties
• Select the Compatibility tab
• Find “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” if it is set then disable this
• Make sure “Run as Administrator” is enabled (if this is greyed out, then you're probably already running as administrator, so you can ignore this step).
• Click Apply.
• Now log back into the viewer, and see if voice works (do you have the white dot over your head?). If not, go to Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice and disable voice; wait a few moments, then re-enable. ²⁾

On Windows 7, if you find yourself being able to talk but not hear what others say, then a possible solution is to use the sound drivers from Vista. (This needs further confirmation.)

Windows 10

1) Make sure to check all voice-related settings in Windows carefully.

• If you don't know how, Google how to operate the voice settings in your version of Windows.
• One tip: Check which application has control of your mic by hovering over the mic in your Task Bar:
  It should show SLVoice. Click it to find out what apps are allowed to use the mic:

2) Refer to the "Audio Issues" section of the Win 10 issues page for a possible problem/solution.

3) If voice works but sounds very distorted, see the "Voice Is Distorted" section of the Win 10 issues page.

4) If voice doesn't work when Skype is on, or sounds don't work while using voice:

1. In Windows Control Panel > Hardware & Sound > Manage Audio Devices
2. Select the Recording tab, select the microphone, select Properties
3. Select the Advanced tab - untick 'Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device' - click OK
4. Select the Communications tab
5. Select 'Do Nothing' - click OK

Mac

All Mac Operating Systems

Basic test for Mac connection to the voice process

• On your Mac, open your Activity Monitor
• In Activity Monitor, enter “slvoice” in the search window so that you see only SLVoice in the list
• While watching it, reset voice in the viewer. If it doesn't vanish for several seconds, then reappear, then the SLVoice process is no longer connected to the viewer.
• To fix this, log off Firestorm, force quit SLVoice if it doesn't quit itself, then log in again.

Voice issues plus other connection problems
If you are unable to connect to voice and you are also having problems with teleporting and/or loading your friends list, perhaps along with other things, then see the “Mac-specific” section of this page for instructions and more explanation.

Mojave (10.14.x) (but possibly could happen on others)

1) Check Mac System Prefs → Security & Privacy → Privacy → Microphone.

• Your current Firestorm version should be listed there. If it isn't, try relogging. If that doesn't help, try deleting just the Firestorm application from your Applications folder, then reinstalling it (there is no need to do anything with cache or settings folders).
• If there are multiple versions of Firestorm in System Prefs → Security & Privacy → Privacy → Microphone, find those versions on your computer and delete them. They should disappear from the list. Then relaunch your current Firestorm, and if that doesn't work, reinstall it.

2) If you seem to have voice working (voice dots and green speech indicators show) but can't speak/hear, and your device doesn't show in Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice→ Audio Device Settings, you may be able to use your Mac Audio MIDI Setup to fix this.

1. Go to your Mac Utilities folder and open Audio MIDI Setup.
2. Look for your headset/mic in the list.
3. If your device shows there, proceed:
4. Click the + sign and choose “Create Multi-Output Device.”
5. In the new Multi-Output Device that appears, select your headset/mic.
6. If you have Firestorm open, relog so it can find the new Device.
7. Go to Preferences→ Sound & Media -> Voice→ Audio Device Settings, and select your new “Multi-Output Device.”

• This fix has not been extensively tested. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
• Thanks to user Zuzu Zong for the suggestion.

See also this JIRA issue for other possible suggestions.

Linux

Every Linux distro is different; and each may have more than one window manager to further complicate things. So tips can't be “absolute”; you will need to experiment and see what works for you. The following have been suggested by some as effective. But first….

In the Firestorm install directory, there's a text file (originally from LL) with tips on getting voice to work in Linux. If you haven't read that, then you can try to see if it helps.

• Make sure you have ALSA and/or FMOD Studio available. FMOD Studio is supplied with Firestorm, normally. If you look at Help → About Firestorm while logged in, you should see a line that resembles this:
  Audio Driver Version: OpenAL, version 1.1 ALSOFT 1.11.753 / OpenAL Community / OpenAL Soft: PulseAudio Software
  If that says “none” then you have no audio driver available to Firestorm and need to install one.

• Edit the firestorm shell script and remove the #. That will force LL to use FMOD Studio rather than ALSA. Some say this is how to get voice working.

#export LL_BAD_OPENAL_DRIVER=x

• Some swear that the problem is PulseAudio, so you can try to remove that from your system. Be warned, however, that this could cause more problems than it solves. Make sure you remove only Pulse and not half the OS.
• Be sure to have the correct devices select in Firestorm for voice:
  Preferences → Sound & Media → Voice → Audio Device Settings (button)
  Input and output may not work if left at default; they may need to go to a specific device like “ALSA Capture on [device name]”.
• Run ldd across all the vivox libraries and ensure no missing libraries are present (set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to your local firestorm lib dir before running this command so you don't get erroneous results). any missing libs need to have their 32 bit (i386) version installed.

Below are results for selected Linux distros, based on input from Phoenix and Firestorm users. This will be updated as more information becomes available.

• Ubuntu 18.04+ / Linux Mint 19 64-bit + FS64. You may need to install a few extra libs:³⁾

sudo apt-get install libidn11:i386 libuuid1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:i386

Note: If you experience the issue where voice connects and you are not able to hear audio from people speaking, you might need to install the libasound2-plugins:i386 package (for Debian based systems). The reason for this is that libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so is required on some systems. For non debian systems, install the relevant package that will add the 32 bit version of the library to your system (this might be alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 on RHEL based systems (CentOS, Fedora))

• Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit + FS64: The following command installs a few 32-bit libs and voice works after. Maybe you need fewer 32-bit libs but that needs further investigation.
  Apparently, arch requires these as well - or some of them - though the exact lib name may be different.

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio:i386 libidn11:i386 libuuid1:i386 libstdc++6:i386

• In the end you should have these libraries installed, in their 32 bit variant. The version numbers here are subject to change in later releases, but it should give you a good starting point on what to look for: ld-2.27.so libc-2.27.so libdl-2.27.so libgcc_s.so.1 libm-2.27.so libpthread-2.27.so libresolv-2.27.so librt-2.27.so libz.so.1.2.11 libXau.so.6.0.0 libasound.so.2.0.0 libcap.so.2.25 libdbus-1.so.3.19.6 libgcrypt.so.20.2.2 libgpg-error.so.0.24.2 libidn.so.12.6.0 liblz4.so.1.8.1 liblzma.so.5.2.3 libpulse.so.0.20.3 libstdc++.so.6.0.25 libsystemd.so.0.21.0 libuuid.so.1.3.0 libxcb.so.1.1.0 libpulsecommon-12.2.so

• Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia / Ubuntu 18.04 bionic: You will probably need to install libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386⁴⁾.

• Fedora: The following has been suggested⁵⁾:

#from root or with sudo:
dnf install libidn libidn.i686 libzip.i686 libzip alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686

cd /usr/lib
ln -s libidn.so.12 libidn.so.11

• A new option is a debug setting, FSLinuxEnableWin32VoiceProxy, which when enabled will cause Firestorm to launch the win32 version of SLVoice via WINE. To use this, you need to ensure that WINE is installed; install WINE with your package manager. An existing WINE profile/prefix is not needed, but will be used if present. Depending on your system, it may take several seconds before voice comes up.
  

NOTES:
* If you disable voice and then re-enable too quickly, WINE may not successfully restart and voice may fail to re-enable. If you get the warning that there was a problem connecting, you will need to relog before voice will re-enable. Thirty seconds between disable and enable should be enough.
* There is a known related issue here
* One user has suggested that Linux Mint 19.1 has an older version of Wine in its repos. You need to add the Wine stable repo for your version; then it works.