Voice Chat Issues

The most common report: after landing on a moon, some players can't hear one or two others, while everyone else hears them fine. It feels random, it never happens with 2 players, and the affected person has to rejoin the lobby to fix it until the next landing.

This page explains what it is and what actually helps. The short version: it's a limitation of the game's built-in voice system, not the modpack, and it can't be fully fixed from the mod side, but a few habits cut it down a lot.

Why it happens

Lethal Company's voice chat runs on a library called Dissonance that's built into the base game. Two things about it matter:

• There's one voice connection per pair of players (voice goes directly between players, and through the host when it can't connect directly).
• Voice packets are sent in a way that tolerates being dropped, to keep latency low.

When someone pulls the lever, the PC loading the level freezes for a second or two to build the moon. During that freeze it stops handling the network, the voice packets on one connection get dropped, and Dissonance kills that one connection. That player can't hear that one person again until they rejoin.

That's why:

• It's lopsided - only one connection died, the rest are fine.
• It's random - whichever connection was weakest at that moment drops.
• It needs 3+ players - with 2 players there's only one connection, so there's almost nothing to drop.
• It happens right at landing - that's when a PC freezes.
• Rejoining fixes it - it rebuilds the connection from scratch.

The loud pop at landing is a separate, harmless thing: the audio engine choking for a moment while the level loads.

What actually helps

None of these make it disappear completely, but together they cut it down a lot:

1. Host on your fastest, least-loaded PC on a wired connection. The host does the heaviest work each landing, so a fast host means a shorter freeze for everyone.
2. Use Push-To-Talk and stay quiet during the landing (from pulling the lever until the ship touches down). If nobody is talking on a connection while a PC freezes, there's nothing to drop. This is the biggest free fix.
3. Help the weakest machine - the slowest or worst-connected player destabilizes their own connections no matter who hosts. They should lower in-game graphics, get on a wired connection, use an SSD, and close background apps.
4. When it happens, rejoin - it's reliable and quick.

A couple of players also report better luck after turning off Steam's audio processing: Steam > Settings > Voice > "let me use advanced settings", then disable Echo Cancellation, Noise Cancellation and Automatic Volume/Gain. Worth a try.

What does not help

• VoiceFix - it's broken and AI-generated, don't use it.
• Removing cosmetics, MoreCompany, or LandFromOrbit - tested, no effect.

Want the deep dive?

The full technical write-up, the 4-player test that confirmed the cause, and the sources are tracked here: Issue #37.

If you hit this, a detailed report (player count, host, who drops, specs) really helps. Open an issue.