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Aleksandros89

Member

From: Cluj-Napoca, RO

Registered: 2026-02-04

Posts: 3

Crackling and popping sound when RDP to VDI

Hello everyone,

I’m having the following issue. I need to connect to a Windows 11 VDI. It’s where I do most of my work. The problem I’m facing is with the audio:

1. Sounds played by the OS (for example when trying to click outside a modal window) are popping and crackling

2. Other members in calls complain that my audio keeps popping and crackling - Teams

3. During Teams calls when there are many participants and they have their webcams on, my audio and video freeze for a few seconds and then it’s played back in fast forward. This happens intermittently during the call. When this occurs, my ping to my router also spikes to 100-500ms

During calls with many participants with their webcam on, my bandwidth consumption is around 300 KB upload, 1 MB download. Max Bandwidth is around 7 MB. Initially I though router issues, but my router was replaced a few days ago and the problem persists.

I’ve used easy effects for microphone input to mitigate some of this, but it’s still bothering people. EE adds about 300 μs (micro seconds) overhead so not much. The below configurations have eliminated crackling, popping and stuttering locally (which was a problem in some instances).

I'm connecting through Google Chrome (I know...) and xfreerdp3 is installed, which I assume is used for the RDP connection.

So far I’ve tried:

Wireplumber keep alive sinks. Sadly the application node keep alive doesn’t work:

monitor.alsa.rules = [
  {
    matches = [
      {
        # Matches all sources
        node.name = “~alsa_input.*”
      },
      {
        # Matches all sinks
        node.name = “~alsa_output.*”
      },
      {
	application.process.binary = “chrome”
      }
    ]
    actions = {
      update-props = {
        session.suspend-timeout-seconds = 0
      }
    }
  }
]

pipewire.conf quantum configuration:

    
default.clock.quantum       = 1024
default.clock.min-quantum   = 512
default.clock.max-quantum   = 2048

Any ideas I might try?

Last edited by Aleksandros89 (2026-02-04 18:30:37)

Aleksandros89

Member

From: Cluj-Napoca, RO

Registered: 2026-02-04

Posts: 3

Re: Crackling and popping sound when RDP to VDI

Did some digging. My wifi router was set on a very crowded band, which caused interference and latency / ping spikes. Configured the router to a less crowded band and the VDI calls improved significantly. No more complaints about my audio.