Hi all,

Garry’s Mod is a lot more fun with a group of friends and voice chat. Here are some tips for a good voice chat experience.

The Steam Chat voice chat option is… worse than you’d think if you’d never used it. I would avoid it.

Some games, including Garry’s Mod, have a built-in voice chat protocol. In Garry’s Mod, the default key is X.

Skype is another good option.

If you want more advanced features and are willing to pay for server time, Ventrilo or Teamspeak have some neat settings that allow you to spatially orient other players around you, group them into teams, assign commanders, etc.

I’m not a big fan of gaming headsets. They usually don’t have a very high value/price ratio, and I find that type of headphone uncomfortable. That being said, if it works for you, go for it. Because it includes headphones and a microphone close to your mouth, you’re doing your part.

The best microphone in the world is going to sound like garbage if it’s far away from your mouth. I highly recommend a scissor arm stand like this one[www.amazon.com]. It’s very affordable, and even the cheapest microphone will sound much better when close to your mouth. On that note, you can turn your gain way down because you’re comparatively louder. This has the secondary benefit of reducing background noise.

And get a pop filter. This is essentially a cloth screen between your mouth and the microphone that cuts out the really annoying pop sounds the microphone picks up when you say something like “popcorn.” If you’re cheap, you can get some of the benefit from covering your microphone with a sock. To get the full benefit though, the filter needs to have some space between itself and the microphone.

If you want a nice microphone you should get one with a cardioid (heart-shaped) pickup profile so you can point it at your mouth. An omnidirectional pickup profile will pick up a lot more keyboard noise, etc. The Blue Snowball iCE[www.amazon.com] is probably the best value to the dollar for this sort of application. But like anything else, you can spend as much as you want and get some pretty fancy gear if you feel like it.

You can get whatever headphones you want, just make sure they’re comfortable for long periods of time or you’re not going to like them. Although they aren’t the best for blocking out sound, I find that ear-clip style headphones are the best for me because they don’t squeeze my head, never make my ears hot, and they allow plenty of airflow. I recommend some super-affordable and well-regarded ear-clip headphones like these[www.amazon.com].

If you don’t have headphones, it is absolutely critical that you only use PTT (Push To Talk) mode for your voice chat. Even then, if two people try to talk at the same time you’re likely to get unpleasant feedback. Do everyone a favor and wear headphones while voice chatting.

If you have to eat or drink, go back to PTT either way. Nobody wants to hear that.

Other than that, just be cool, don’t shout, don’t cough into the microphone, and have a good time.