No, I get it. I used to see the stuff they were doing on another website, so I know it's not just, point, click, and presto, insta-chat-fix. I know Xenforo has some pretty good options, but that would be a seachange here to fix a minor problem.

You could try integrating a discord chat server which offers not only chat, but voice chat, too, if you wanted to use it for your monthly ones. Audio quality isn't a big issue on discord, either, so no pops, buzzes, dropped or clipped words, or anything else. And it seems secure enough--I've not really heard of anyone having their discord server hacked, but I don't think it would be any more risky than this site's. That wouldn't be as big a pain to implement and change as much as would switching to Xenforo, either. And it's not a big deal to have a small discord chat window open while crusing the forums, so it's very accessible to older users, and for people who already are on discord and worry about anonymity, I believer there is a way to set up multiple profiles in one account, so that shouldn't be a worry, either. If you want more info, though, I would point you to email some of the guys over on nexusmods.com--they could give you a lot more information on discord and its pros and cons as a chat server host than I could. The owner, Robin, is pretty amiable and usually gets back to people.