Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.

voice/video rooms are planned for June.

Great to hear! I'd love to be able to recommend Matrix/Element as a Discord alternative.

However, actually competing with Discord will require a tonne of hard work in Element. The little things like automatic voice activation, echo cancellation and volume normalization are the reasons Discord are as fantastic as it is, so Element will need to be excellent with those to compete.

The first cut will be using Jitsi as the engine, albeit with more appropriate UI, which gives you AEC (echo cancellation) from WebRTC and some level of AGC (normalisation). But we have plans to go far beyond that, and are very aware it’s hard work. However, pre-Matrix, the core team professionally built VoIP stacks, so we have some experience here (and our own WebRTC implementation should we need it :)

I would love to see you use Jitsi and contribute back, where possible.

Also, if you move on for reasons that aren't bike-shedding then I'd love to know what the architectural/technical reasoning is.

The main reason to consider something different to Jitsi is to directly use Matrix for decentralised e2ee signalling to manage the media streams, and allow hybrid SFU and MCU models (like hangouts or zoom) rather than pure SFU like Jitsi. We do like Jitsi though and already contribute directly and indirectly - Jitsi’s E2EE is derived from Matrix, and the Matrix community just contributed a tonne of a11y fixes to it that just landed. But we’d still like a fully decentralised Matrix-native group call solution eventually.

Wonderful! I think you've answered any questions I might have already.

If you do AGC, you'll already be more usable than Discord, who apparently refuse to implement this. Whenever we're voice chatting in my group, it's extremely annoying that one person is quiet as a whisper and the other is AT 200% VOLUME AND CLIPPING.

The risk on AGC is that unless combined with good voice activation you can end up amplifying background noise and then deafening people when they start speaking. But yup, we'd definitely want to do this.

Oh, sorry, you meant input normalization, of course. Please please please also add output normalization, so all people in a room sound at the same volume!

I think it depends on which perspective your inputs/outputs are coming from ;) The way for all people in a room to sound at the same volume is to normalise the audio you capture from them. If you normalise the mixed signal you play back to the other users in the room, it's too late (at least if they speak over the top of each other), plus it'd be too hard as you'd be constantly yoyoing around.

Oh hmm, that's true, thanks for the clarification.

> automatic voice activation

Voice activation is a client side thing.

Yes, and Arathorn works on element, does he not?

he is one of the founders

That's amazing! This is such a smash-hit feature from Discord that no other messenger has gotten right yet.

Feels like a needed step for community-building after having used Discord for so long. You are doing awesome work.

Can someone remember to post this to HN when it happens I will definitely forget

Cool! Is there a way to try the feature already? Can I just install the development versions of synapse and element?

Many thanks for the work you do!

This has been the main thing preventing me from switching to matrix full time, very exciting!

I would love to ditch slack/discord for matrix. Unfortunately many communities are reluctant to maintain a bridge