TSL blog

I’ve had a little problem few days ago with a client. The problem involved audio in Terminal services environment.

They wanted to redirect audio from Terminal server to client machine via RDP connection. This is not a big deal since Windows 2003 supports audio redirection over RDP.

Both computers need to have a sound card. No sound card = no sound. It may sound confusing but sound card on server is required because we are going to redirect the sound to the client over RDP connection.

Sound card on the server is needed because we will redirected sound from audio driver that is generated on the server over RDP connection to audio that is on the client. It is little hard to explain but sound must exist on the server to forward it to the client.

Default settings:

By default RDP audio is disabled on the server. Please check your options on Terminal services configuration in Administrative tools. Option for controlling RDP audio is under client settings (on the bottom). By default this option is checked which means audio over RDP is disabled.

Step by step server configuration:

1. Go to Terminal Services Configuration in Administration tools.
2. In Connections choose properties for RDP-TCP protocol
3. Go Client Settings tab, and under “Disable the following:” UNCHECK “Audio mapping” option.
4. Confirm everything.

Step by step client configuration:

In Remote desktop client go to the local resources tab and then make sure “Bring to this computer” is selected under remote computer sound.

Now open a connection to your Terminal server. You will be able to hear sound played on your server.