Further Troubleshooting Ventrilo

I get quite a lot of readers on my Troubleshooting Ventrilo page. It's by far my most popular post.

Several people have responded to that post with various other issues, and I've never really taken the time to address any of those directly. So, here I will try to help were I can.

By the way, I've started a new website for issues like these. It's Home Tech Lab. Have a look!

One person asks why he can't hear anything that other people are saying. I've run into this problem myself on occasion, and every time it happens, I discover that I've accidently MUTED vent. This is really easy to do because all you have to do is activate vent and hit "m". For example, when I'm playing World of Warcraft, and I want to bring up the map, I hit M. But, if I've forgotten that I've alt-tabbed over to vent, and I hit M, I end up muting vent without noticing it. that would be the first thing to check.

Another thing that happens is that someone else is just too quiet. You can adjust how loud someone else in vent using special effects. To do this, you right click on someone in vent, select Miscellaneous, and then Special Effects...

One of the effects you can select is Volume. You find it in the Right hand side of the window, then select it and click Add. Next, a slider control pops up that lets you adjust how much you want to adjust them. Be careful, though, because the slider scales ALOT! Try setting it to +200% first if someone is too quiet. If that doesn't fix them, try a higher setting.

When you've set a special effect on someone, you will always see a "S" in front of their name in the main vent window.


Another person says he can't find the vent window. It sounds like it's off the screen. This can happen to any program, but the fastest way to fix this is to Alt-Tab until the program is selected, then hit Alt-Space, M, then Up Arrow. Now, move your mouse around and the missing window should be stuck to it.


Another reader says he can't get past the "msg: Contacting server..." message. I assume this is in the New 3.0 version of vent, since the old version didn't say this. There's a couple of things that might cause this, but the most likely is that the server you're trying to connect to is still running the OLD 2.0 version of vent. when 3.0 came out, it couldn't connect to the older server for some reason. There could also be a problem with a firewall blocking the port, so you could check that.


Another reader says he can't seem to adjust his mic volume in his windows Master Volume control. He says he's got a Realtek HD Audio device.

I recently upgraded my Motherboard, and I too have this same type of sound card now. It works differently than my older card, in that it doesn't take input from just once source, it actually takes input from ALL sources. When I select my audio input, I get a control panel with many sliders that are all greyed out, and check buttons for Mute below each one. This is window's way of telling you that you can select which inputs will be "listened to" by the recording input, but you can't adjust them individually - at least, not from the recording control.

On my sound card "Recording Control", I have a master slider called "Recording" and four greyed out sliders called "Aux Volume", "Mic Volume", "Line Volume", and "Stereo Mix". The mute check marks at the bottom let me control which sources my recording control picks up, and I usually keep Aux, Line, and Stereo Mix checked as Muted. My Mic Volume is not muted. This means that normally, only my Mic is picked up by the recording input. In this case, the "Recording" slider, the main one all the way on the left controls the input volume of my Mic. Programs like Skype can automatically adjust this "Recording" slider (unfortunately, I often have to fix the setting because skype turns it down to far)

Occasionally, I like to mess around with people on Vent, so I've discovered I can unmute the Stereo Mix setting, and then the recording input picks up anything that my soundcard is currently playing, and pipes that back into my input. That means I can play an MP3 using iTunes or whatever through my usual speakers, and that same audio gets sent back into my recording input and sent out through vent - in addition to my voice over the mic! This let's me play background music and soundbyte "drop-ins" in vent! Lots of fun can be had this way.


Ok, Another reader says that his PTT (push to talk) key isn't working. I've noticed that there are just some keys that don't work right with vent for Push to Talk. (at least, in the old version). My only suggestions here are to try different keys until one works, or try changing the setting of "Use Direct Input to detect Hotkey". Also, make sure the game you're playing isn't stealing that particular key for something it needs to do itself.


That's it for now, I hope that helps more people with Ventrilo!