Seriously though...The CSN TF2 servers are great, have a good community and westbox has a low ping to my location, but there is a small problem. I'm running linux, and the native platform only supports steam's "new" voice codec. This is a problem since all the CSN servers I've checked are running with cvar sv_use_steam_voice set to 0. While this topic has been discussed before the relevance of the thread is not in this context.
Valve released this codec change back on 4/11/2011 (hatless update), it's the de facto standard in all the new source games (maybe a different cvar but same codec I think).
The codec is an upgrade to the voice communications: higher quality, lower bandwidth needed. Of course this comes at a cost, higher cpu utilized on the client to decode and encode, hence the lower compatibility.
The new codec breaks the ability of the mic spam programs to redirect a file to voice input.
Valve fully supports the new codec, and they run sv_use_steam_voice 1 on their servers.
I'm asking that sv_use_steam_voice be set to 1 on the servers. I fully understand that it's a slippery slope to make such a change, so maybe rolling (starting on westbox) to see how it works. No doubt that there will be issues (and even the unrelated ones will be blamed), but I'd really like to use my mic.
Valve is aware of this issue, but it has been present since the native client launched, and must be a low priority since the de facto standard works. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/33
--
TheSheriff
