Cannot get USB headset microphone working - View 4.5

[hakimzc]

Hello All,

I have a physical Windows 7 Enterprise machine with the View Client installed.

I am connecting to a virtual Windows 7 Enterprise machine, I can use either RDP or PCOIP.

I have a USB headset attached to the physical computer, bi-directional sound is OK, i.e. I can go into the control panel and successfully test the earphones and microphone.

However, on the virtual machine, only the earphones work. When I go into the control panel on the virtual machine, I can see the "playback" device - they appear as "Speakers - VMware Virtual Audio DevTap". Howver, under the "Recording" tab, there is nothing. On the physical machine the headset appears in thie "Playback" tab and I can test it an see that it is fine.

I have tried RDP and PCOIP, but the result is the same - it appears that the VM cannot detect the headset as a microphone.

I did notice that the VM did not have a (virtual hardware) USB Controller, so I added one in and rebooted, but no luck.

On the physical machine, when using the view client, when I click the "Connect USB" dropdown at the top of the screen I can see the headset OK.

Can anyone suggest why the virtual machine is not detecting the USB headset as a microphone?

Thanks All,

bbplc

[hakimzc]

A bit more information:-

The headset has a speaker jack and a microphone jack coming out of it, these plug into a USB dongle.

I just tried removing the speaker jack from the dongle (and leaving the microphone jack in place). The physical Windows 7 machine still detects the microphone OK. The View Client is aware that something is attached (as I can see the device in the "connect USB device" dropdown on the view client), but the device is still not being detected by the virtual machine.

Any ideas would be warmly received!

Kind regards,

bbplc

[hakimzc]

Just out of interest, has anyone got usb headsets working?

[laserjetyang]

I got both USB webcam and USB audio working through re-direct usb, but I don't think it is a good solution. It takes too much bandwidth on usb redirect.

Are you able to see your usb haedset on the redirect usb option?

I saw some zero client manual that the 4.5 should support bi-directional audio without re-direct USB, just like what Citrix did on the XenDesktop, but I haven't test it yet.

[hakimzc]

Hi Laserjetyang, thanks for replying!

I will check for sure tomorrow morning, but from memory I recall that a "device" does appear in the redirect USB, but it only appears in the VM as a speaker ( as opposed to both a speaker and microphone).

When you got it working, did your device appear as both a speaker and microphone in the control panel>sound on your VM?

Kind regards,

bbplc

[laserjetyang]

I used a USB camera which doesn't need to install driver. The USB camera has both audio and video features.

I did see a USB audio device on the recording device.

PS, I don't think the VMware 4.5 is a good solution for someone needs audio/video. Xendesktop has already supported audio which included in the ICA.

[hakimzc]

Thanks, maybe there is incompatibility with the device we are using for testing, I have just got another brand of headset, so I will give that a go.

Xen Desktop is not an option as we are commited to view in this instance!

[Christoph_de_Wa]

Hi,

you wrote you got USB webcam working. Can you tell me the model and maybe if you have already tested it if it works in a view 5.0 environment with a Win7 guest? Also would be very interesting for me what kind of SW you used the camera for. We use OCS/Lync and I have not found a webcam yet that would work.

Ciao

Chris