Appalling quality audio when a Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection is active

[ProNotion]

Plan: Free

Country: United Kingdom

Device: MacBook Pro Mid-2015

Operating System: macOS Big Sur v11.4 (20F71)

Audio quality is good and clear when listening on my Mac but as soon as I remote desktop to my office machine the quality drops to a terrible level. Spotify is not running on the remote machine and audio should not be passing through to the remote machine either. Spotify in this scenario is still set to play on the local machine. As soon as I kill the RDP connection the audio quality returns to normal levels.

Bandwidth should not be an issue as I have a 200MB connection and this only recently became a problem.

Any ideas on how to rectify this would be appreciated. I have tried reinstalling and it didn't help.

[Mihail]

Hey @ProNotion,

Thanks for searching for the answer you need here.

Just to confirm, have you tried a clean reinstall of the Spotify app on your device? We recommend the steps in that guide, as they’re very thorough and make sure no damaged leftover files remain. These changes tend to solve issues like the one you're experiencing. Give your device a quick restart as well before you open the newly installed app. 

It's also worthwhile disabling Hardware Acceleration from the app setting and changing the Streaming Quality to see if that makes a difference.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted how things work out.

[ProNotion]

Thanks for the reply but the problem went away. If it happens again I will follow the steps you suggested.

[Alex]

Hey there @ProNotion,

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Let us know if the issue returns.

If you have any questions, you can always reach out again 🙂

[ProNotion]

The issue has returned. I really can't understand why this would only happen when a remote desktop session is running unless Spotify is for some reason routing the stream through the remote connection (which it shouldn't be).

[Alex]

Hey @ProNotion,

Thanks for your post.

Did anything in your set up change recently? Also, can you let us know what troubleshooting you've done so far.

Cheers.

[ProNotion]

No, nothing has changed. I followed your instructions for removing and doing a clean install with no luck. The only way to make the problem go away is to end the remote desktop connection which I can't do as I am working remotely. About 5 seconds after disconnecting the audio returns to normal, when I reconnect to the remote desktop it immediately degrades the quality again.

[Alex]

Hey there @ProNotion,

Thanks for the reply and the info.

Could you try logging in with a different account, like a free one and check whether you get the same decrease in quality. This will help us check if the issue could be account related in any way.

Keep us posted.

[ProNotion]

I set up a new account and the problem still exists. However, through some trial and error, I have discovered that my Remote Desktop (RDP) connection is not directly causing the issue. The problem starts when I connect to my company VPN in order to use Remote Desktop. The VPN is configured so that it doesn't route all local traffic through the VPN but it seems Spotify is potentially somehow routing traffic through the connection.

[Mihail]

Hey @ProNotion,

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Note that Spotify doesn't officially support VPN. Because of this issues with its use are expected behavior. We would recommend contacting your system administrator for more info on how to exclude Spotify from your company VPN.

Keep us posted if afterwards the issue persists. We'll keep an eye out for your reply. 

[ProNotion]

Update: The problem never really went away. The quality of the audio is abysmal and I can only liken it to that of AM radio. I can connect to my OpenVPN connection and audio quality is fine. As soon as I connect via Microsoft Remote Desktop to my windows office PC the audio quality drops.

I am continually asked to keep coming back as a premium subscriber and just cannot justify doing so with such poor audio quality. What are my options now?

[CarlosE]

Hi again @ProNotion,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

This seems to be related to remote connection, but since that's a particular setup, it's quite difficult to pinpoint what the cause might be. In this case, as @Mihail mentioned above, we suggest contacting your system administrator to see if they can provide more info about it and a possible solution.

The Community is here for you in case you have any questions.

[ProNotion]

I am the "system administrator" - it is my office and my PC that I am connecting to.

The VPN is not the issue and the only traffic using the VPN is the connection to the remote PC. There is no problem with Spotify when connected to the VPN that is not the issue, it occurs only when the remote desktop connection is established.

[Alex]

Hi @ProNotion,

Thank for the reply and the info.

Something else you can try is using the Web Player, and check whether the audio quality is better there.

Alternatively, you can check the computer's sound settings if anything changes when you connect to the VPN. This might work if the issue is not entirely network related. If it is, there is not that much we can do from our end.

Let u sknow how it goes.