In all the years I’ve used it I never noticed any latency. In fact, I didn’t even know that could be a ‘thing’.

I haven’t used it in the past year, but if I were to guess I’d say it’s in the tens of milliseconds, definitely not higher.

I used it (on Android the app was called Plumble) over tor, because of tor latency there were lag spikes at times, but in general, it worked quite well.

The sound quality, low latency, self-hosting, FOSS, and customization are each plus points compared to the predecessor, Ventrilo. However, something like self-hosting isn't what everyone wants. Some just want to rent a server without having maintenance. I believe that, plus the interface, is why Discord is so popular. That, plus the network effect. Which Ventrilo once had. And Altavista, for that matter.

There's dozens of hosts providing Mumble servers. People want Discord because of (in this order): network effect, access from the browser, polished UI.

Agreed, and because people like free as in beer (while not knowing the repercussions of paying with privacy).

The biggest contributor to latency in any VoIP solution is the underlying network latency. Even though Mumble uses modern low-latency codecs such as Opus, it is difficult to compete with Zoom/Webex/others because Zoom and Webex are not only clients, but also the backbone network. If you want to use Mumble (or any other similar service) in an international firm, you'll need to invest in a low-latency network with proper QoS to deliver an experience similar to Zoom/Webex. I guess it would be cheaper to just use Zoom/Webex in this case - we spent millions each year for our 10-20 Mbps MPLS network at one of my prior jobs (not including the cost of the engineers). However, it might work for a smaller company.

With P2P sound there is no need for expensive slow servers serving free tier users. Scalable! But companies have a hard time letting go of control and 'value add'.

For some markets P2P is not acceptable. For example in "gaming" markets people will DoS any IP they see so hiding your IP behind a relay service like Discord is essential.

Sure but it should not be a problem for friends or teams.

I use Steam voice chat to talk to my brother and I find it by far the best one. Low latency and no filter BS. I don't think it is P2P though.

I and my friends used Ventrilo earlier and the level of QoS you get from hosting on a low load computer with like 4ms ping to each node is insane compared to modern alternatives ...

For a two way call Ventrilo is essentially P2P.

But everyone generally accesses Zoom/Webex/et al over the public internet, right? Do they implement a CDN-like series of endpoints and have some special sauce low latency network in between nodes? Genuinely curious.

discord has a higher latency and sometimes when you start a new discussion you overlap sometimes, which is akward. but discord has one of the best noise cancellation, which makes it the favorable solution for me.

It's low, like 100-200ms.

I used mumble for a few years to bridge a VHF radio between an airport and a remote site via the internet. The tricky bit was getting the push-to-talk on the radio to work, which required some circuitry and some source code tweaks...

Yes would love to see some concrete numbers vs the typical solutions