Audio over Remote Desktop Rocks!

I was recently introduced to this nifty little feature of Remote Desktop of Windows XP - bringing remote audio to the local machine. I have to say that I just LOVE this creature comfort feature...

Now, I never knew nor thought about it earlier because I rarely use it while at work - the "remote" machine is usually a test machine, and my collection of music (all legitimately ripped from my own CDs, before anyone asks...) is already playing on my main machine at work.

But, when I am at home over VPN, the "remote" machine is usually my main machine at work... which has my collection of music... so now I just hit play and my local VPN access machine (usually my X41 laptop, which has no music on it) starts streaming music. How nifty! I have not tried this, but I'm guessing remote audio CDs play this way as well.

Hmm... I just notice that the underside of the laptop where the speakers are located gets a bit more warm than usual, but that's probably ok.

I know, I know, you probably all have your music collections at home, run ShoutCast or similar streaming server on your home network with an open Internet port, simply connect to it from the workplace over HTTP or appropriate tunnel with a proxy client, and have been doing it for years. So... I am just late to the bleeding-edge party. But, humor me for a moment. ;-)

I love the fact that I am lounging at home in front of my fireplace and VPN'd in a totally wireless manner (network, power, and mice) to my work machine and streaming music from it... while I am tapping out this blog entry and enjoying the sunny afternoon (oops, the sun just set).

Ahh... isn't technology wonderful? :-)

//David

P.S. Oh, if there is something better, let's hear that, too...

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2006
  www.orb.com

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2006
  So, how do you actually enable this? =)

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2006
  Thomas -
  1. Open the Remote Desktop Connection client ("mstsc" on the commandline).
  2. Click on Options>> to open the detailed settings dialog
  3. In the "Local Resources" tab, there should be an option for "Remote computer sound".
  4. Select "Bring to this computer"
  
  I'm using at least XP on both local and remote OS. Not certain if it works for W2K.
  
  //David

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2006
  me too.  I just tried this today and it rocks!  I knew that audio ouput could be forwarded to the client but I didn't expect mp3's to stream so well.  I want to try this from a Treo.

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2006
  idsanity - yeah, it's really quite awesome how everything streams over RDP. CDs, WAV, MP3, WMV...
  
  Add to that the forwarding of Smartcard and the encrypted PPTP which I used to RDP, it's all secured and I hardly ever type my user password anywhere.
  
  Life is good. :-)
  
  //David

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2006
  Back in this blog entry, I mused about the nice Audio over RDP feature. It is pretty sweet to have secure,...

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 19, 2007
  Is there away in any remote desktop program to have the audio play on both remote and local computers.

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2007
  Okay it works when using windows rdp client. But what if using unix rdp client...? coz i'm using suse but i cannot hear any music on my laptop.. Thanks for your advice

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2007
  titansgd - Sounds like a limitation with the Unix RDP client. //David

• Anonymous
  August 05, 2007
  I'm having difficulty doing this, can anyone help? I know how to set it up - but it's still playing on the host machine, not my client machine.

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  I have tried this, but no luck. Someone running Vista says they are able to get sounds, but I am not. There is no sound card on that server, but I was told that didn't matter

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 07, 2007
  Oh man I never knew about the remote desktop feature where I can basically play music from my laptop to my desktop (which has some awesome speakers btw).  If I knew about this feature earlier, I would not have bought my Airport Express Base Station!!!

• Anonymous
  March 31, 2008
  Strangely enough, when I RDC into Server 2008 from Vista, I get a "No audio devices found" error that I don't get when I'm physically logged in. (I have the audio service started.) So I can't even play songs from the server's speakers as long as I'm logged in via RDC.

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2008
  can any one tell how to play sound on the remote pc that is sound on the speakers connected to the remote pc

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2008
  arvind - you need to go into the Remote Desktop "Options" button, "local resources" tab, and determine whether to bring the sound to the local machine or leave at the remote machine. //David

• Anonymous
  August 06, 2008
  that sounds lije a fable to me, it' s fake. You need fiber to do this.

• Anonymous
  September 01, 2008
  it doesn't work on my computer. my server is Windows Server 2003 and im using windows xp. i guess this is because of some restriction settings but i dont know where to find it. Please help. thanks.

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2008
  anyone know if i can listen in on what other users, on the same server, are listenig to?

• Anonymous
  September 28, 2008
  its amazing when you are doing this over a wireless network.. awsome.

• Anonymous
  October 09, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 13, 2008
  We use Elusiva Remote Sound http://www.elusiva.com/products/RemoteSound.aspx for WTS based soft-phones and speech recognition. It's awesome and there is no dreaded latency.

• Anonymous
  November 19, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 20, 2009
  Chris - Audio drivers are notoriously flaky, just like video and network drivers. Why were they enabled on your production servers? Production servers should not have audio enabled for this precise reason. Windows Server SKUs since 2003 have not had Audio enabled by default, so it sounds like your Production server is not as stable as it could be when it comes to drivers, and Remote Desktop simply the messenger and you were the victim. Of course, all the defaults in Remote Desktop can be customized, so if you don't like something you can always change its default behavior. Just change default.rdp in your user's profile directory. Personally, I am more irked by remote desktop forwarding the print drivers to the remote system by default because obviously local printers will not be attached on the remote system. Having audio forwarded by default seems fine because the remote system's audio drivers are under control for stability. //David

• Anonymous
  April 25, 2009
  I concur...audio over remote desktop does rock, for sure. Digging deeper...i have audio production software installed on a remote computer but cannot hear the audio. WMP 11 audio and sites with embedded WMPs work remotely. I'm going through the motions as I  compose this comment and am wondering if I need a similar or better audio card on the local computer?(the remote comuter has an SB Audigy 2).

• Anonymous
  May 23, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 22, 2009
  I like this feature as well. Sometimes just sitting the on couch and having the computer in another room start playing music is cool. Then disconnect, change it the music output to the computer I'm at.  Having a network drive to play the files where you're at, but controlling another computer is very useful, and fun!

• Anonymous
  September 23, 2009
  stephen---------I commend these people on there quest for knowlege and feel pity for your soul.  If you feel you need to put people down because of your superiority, go right ahead.  We all know your one of those.

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2010
  thanks Preston, your post works 100% :)...

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2010
  Is there a tool that multiple users can remote a PC and all of the with have sound. As far as I know RDC is just for one-to-one connection. I hope someone would have an answer. thanks!

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2010
  Multiple cards denoted to indiv logins may work. I would imagine terminal services could make that happen but have never tried

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 16, 2010
  There is an easy to use alternative build into Opera called "Unite". You can use it to share files, pictures etc. with friends. It has a media player feature and you can even set up a web server and stuff with it. http://unite.opera.com/

• Anonymous
  February 07, 2011
  We use Elusiva Remote Sound - www.elusiva.com/.../RemoteSound We needed to run Nuance Medical and Dragon did not work even with Win7 and 2008R2. Elusiva's product worked with 2008 and even Server 2003.