Discord - some company when you Zwift

We want being part of Team TFC to strongly enhance everyone’s experience on Zwift. We use Discord as a method to easily communicate with one another when riding live in Zwift. Below is a quick tutorial to show you how to get set up and running with Discord and join the rest of us in an audio chat during a ride. Thanks to Eric Schlange of Zwift Insider (and previous Team TFC Captain) for allowing us to reproduce this (original available here).

Before we get started on the tutorial – here is a livestream video of one of our members riding Zwift with Discord and you can see the benefit of the interaction to make the ride a lot more enjoyable. We also use Discord to discuss race tactics during the Team TFC race and other events that we enter together.

Before you begin - hardware requirements All you need to get Discord working is the device to run it (your mobile phone or computer), a microphone, and speakers. A standalone phone will do the job, but isn’t ideal due to poor speakers and mic positioning. The most common setup is earbuds with a built-in mic running to your phone. I don’t like a lot of cords hanging around, so I upgraded my stock iPhone earbuds to a set of wireless bluetooth headphones like the Jaybird X4

STEP 1: INSTALL THE APP

Discord runs on mobile devices as well as Windows and Mac. Installation is simple: just search for “Discord” on your mobile device, or visit https://discordapp.com/ on your computer and click the link to download the app.

STEP 2: CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT

Just click “Register” and enter your email and desired password. Easy!

STEP 3: ENTER THE INVITE CODE

To join a Discord server you must have an invite code.

We try keep the Team TFC Discord server just for team members and hence you can find the link on Facebook after you have joined the team. It will look something like the links shown in the image.

STEP 4: HERE'S THE TRICKY PART

Discord automatically places you in the text chat channel, which isn’t where you want to be. Click the hamburger menu (3 lines at top-left) or the Team TFC logo to view all the channels on the server. Click “All – Livestreamable” under voice channels, then click “Connect to Voice” to join the main voice chat. Generally you should look and join the channel with the most people in it.

We call the channel ‘Livestreamable’ as a warning that some members in the team livestream their rides / races and this Discord channel is permitted to be broadcast on those livestreams. There is also a ‘Private’ channel and we ask that those who livestream do not broadcast this channel. Do remember though that by default the Discord is public.

Finally – we have a number of channels that can be used in races to discuss race tactics by category. We use these in races where we have a lot of members in attendance.

STEP 5: AUDIO INPUT SETTINGS

We request that most members set their audio input method to ‘push to talk’ – particularly for races. Needless to say we are all likely to be racing hard and heavy breathing can be enough to activate the Discord audio. Sometimes listening to Ryan Miller’s heavy breathing can be quite soothing but for the good of us all we request ‘Push to talk’. This means you need to press and hold a button for your microphone to be broadcast.

YOU'RE ALL SET

When you can see yourself among the names of people on the channel you’re all set to broadcast on Discord.

Have a look around at the settings and controls so that you know how to use the app. If you use a PC/Mac you can set up keybindings so that pressing a key activates your audio.