I’m trying to record audio that is received via Dante Virtual Soundcard. When I log into the workstation locally, all Dante Virtual Soundcard channels are available. However, when I access the workstation remotely through Remote Desktop Protocol, “Remote Audio (loopback)” is the only recording device available.
Is it possible to record from Dante Virtual Soundcard when accessing the workstation via Remote Desktop Protocol?
Here’s the audio information I see when I access a 64-bit Windows 10 Pro workstation that is running Audacity 2.1.2 remotely, using Remote Desktop Protocol from another workstation:
Audio host: WASAPI
Recording device: Remote Audio (loopback)
Recording channels: 2 (Stereo) Recording Channels
Playback Device: Remote Audio
Audacity doesn’t get along with networks very well. It doesn’t understand network delays, communication and priority negotiation. Even if you do manage to force it to work, it may not be stable long enough for active recording or production.
When you say that “Remote Audio (loopback) is the only recording device available”, where are you looking?
What recording and playback devices are available in the Windows Sound Control Panel of your local machine?
Audacity is designed to record audio from a local sound card and write the data to a local hard drive. It ‘may’ be possible to record from a remote stream IF the remote stream is presented to Audacity as a local audio input device. If there are unexpected interruptions to the audio stream while Audacity is recording, Audacity is likely to freeze and then require force quit and restart.
What’s the job? Are you doing this out of curiosity or is there a specific reason that you need to be able to do this?
I think that there’s some confusion as to the scenario I tried to describe. Let me start again. If I log into workstation “A” locally, and run Audacity there, it works fine. I can choose a set of Dante Virtual Soundcard channels as the audio source, and recording proceeds successfully. The problem arises when I use RDP to access “A” from workstation “B”.
When accessing “A” from “B” and starting Audacity on “A”, the only Audacity Recording device, shown on “A” in the Audacity Device Toolbar, is “Remote Audio (loopback)”. The Windows Sound Control Panel on “A” says “No audio devices are installed” on the Recording tab.
I think it’s important to point out that, when accessing “A” from “B” using RDP, program execution still occurs on “A”. Only the display output and keyboard/mouse input involve “B”. For example, when running Word in this scenario, Word would still execute on “A”, and documents would still be saved on “A” by default. “B” is used only to operate “A”. I expected that Audacity would execute on “A” as though it were being started locally, and local resources would be used.
So, are there any settings that I can use to run Audacity via RDP so it will still behave as though it were being run locally?
Some clients don’t do audio really well. They just imagine you’re accessing the distant “local” audio system and show no connection available if running the client on the server. Others never let you access the local audio, confusing naive users who expect to get audio from the local speakers. And so on. RDP isn’t very good for audio in some cases.
You need to delve into the client’s docs, if they have any about audio.
Also, having built several of these remote recording devices (although not with a Dante input), you might want to look at Reaper. It has a built-in webserver, and if you can provide the HTML, you can do anything. No need for a server OS, either. And you can run plugins on other hosts, which makes it easy to add a lot of horsepower. Reaper is only 60$…