VMware Horizon Community
Trichert2011101
Contributor
Contributor

View, USB bandwidth / VOIP issues

So I just upgraded to 5.2 to see if this would help and it hasnt my problem is this :

I have a View 5.2 environment on top of Vsphere 5.1b enterprise, linked clones all on SSD storage.  I have GPO set to allow basically unlimited audio bandwidth (1600kbs).  I can play music, video files etc and everything streams and sounds fine over my local speakers.  However, if i connect a usb headset (and i've tried 5 different ones) the audio is absolute crap, almost like its playing on 8kb i get little blurps of audio then static then silence.

Ideas/suggestions?  Ultimate goal is to do VOIP (Cisco IP Communicator) inside of View, but I don't need help with the Cisco part, at  this point just getting audio to work over the connected USB would be a huge help.

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SimonLong
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi the issue you have here, is that by using USB rather than "normal" audio devices you are moving the Audio traffic out of the PCoIP stream and into the USB stream. So all of the PCoIP optimzations you've done will not effect USB Audio.

To try and improve the USB Audio quality, look into QoS, or maybe WAN optmization to priortize the traffic.

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Trichert2011101
Contributor
Contributor

I don't think this is an issue.  The view client and esxi host are at the same facility connected by gig, so bandwidth/qos doesn't come into play here.  Something is artificially limiting the usb stream.  There is no router or firewall of any kind between the two.

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SimonLong
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Which version of View are you using? We made some USB improvements in v5.1 that might improve your situation.

Visit My Blog, The SLOG at: http://www.simonlong.co.uk
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Trichert2011101
Contributor
Contributor

See my original post .. 5.2 Smiley Happy  Server, agent, composer, client all running on the 5.2 release.

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SimonLong
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

In View 5.2 VMware made a few audio-out enhancments. Might be worth trying if you haven't already.

To enable the new audio-out enhancement, you need to set a registry key in your Horizon View guest desktop.  For best-quality audio, set the following registry key:

Windows XP: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\AudioOutDeviceFlags =   0×600

Win Vista/7/8: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\AudioOutDeviceFlags =   0×700

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InfiniVirt
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Contributor

I'm interested in your comment about Cisco IP Communicator. I've been reading quite a bit about Voice offloading to the end-user device, and the current options appear to only be from Cisco, Avaya and Mitel.


Do you know if you need to make a significant investment into these products to be able to use the VoIP in VDI capability? We don't want to purchase a full UC solution, nor do we need a Contact Center Suite as we already have one. 

For instance, with IP Communicator from Cisco do you need to have Call Manager, or can we use our current Asterisk box?

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kybf1
Contributor
Contributor


@SimonLong wrote:

In View 5.2 VMware made a few audio-out enhancments. Might be worth trying if you haven't already.

 

To enable the new audio-out enhancement, you need to set a registry key in your Horizon View guest desktop.  For best-quality audio, set the following registry key:

Windows XP: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\AudioOutDeviceFlags =   0×600

Win Vista/7/8: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\AudioOutDeviceFlags =   0×700


I'm trying to improve USB audio quality for our instant clone Windows 10 desktops (Horizon 8).
We're still using Teradici PCoIP zero clients and our USB audio devices (mostly headsets) are bridged (redirected) to the virtual desktops, so they can be fully utilized (certain non-audio features like dedicated buttons to manage calls, ringing base stations, etc. wouldn't be working otherwise).

Back in the Windows 7 / Horizon 6.x days, setting the AudioOutDeviceFlags registry value to 0x700 helped a lot, but this doesn't seem to be the case for Windows 10 / Horizon 8 anymore - it actually makes the audio quality considerably worse than not setting it at all.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any official documentation on this particular registry tweak (apart from a VMware blog post from 2013), but the fact that it actually affects to the audio quality in an up-to-date Horizon 8 / Windows 10 environment makes me wonder if it still could be useful in improving USB audio today.

Would appreciate any pointers, cheers!

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kybf1
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@jmacdaddy wrote:

https://teradici.com/web-help/teradici_virtual_audio_driver/1.2.2/


Unfortunately, the Teradici Virtual Audio Driver won't help in this case, as I'm bridging (redirecting) the USB device (see my previous post as to why this is necessary).

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