Bandwidth Requirements

The table below details the audio playback and capture bandwidth requirements to transport audio under each of the selected formats.

Audio format	Network bandwidth requirement
44.1 KHz, 16bit stereo	176 KB/s
44.1 KHz, 16bit mono	88.2 KB/s
2.05 KHz, 16bit stereo	88.2 KB/s
22.05 KHz, 16bit mono	44.1 KB/s
11.025 KHz, 16bit stereo	44.1 KB/s
11.025 KHz, 16bit mono	Audio 22.05 KB/s

In practice, the bandwidth used when an audio device connects to a target is higher due to the keyboard and video data consumed when opening and using an audio application on the target.

A general recommendation is to have at least a 1.5MB connection before running playback and capture.

However, high video-content, full-color connections using high-target screen resolutions consume much more bandwidth and impact the quality of the audio considerably.

To help mitigate quality degeneration, there are a number of recommended client settings that reduce the impact of video on audio quality at lower bandwidths:

Connect audio playback at the lower quality formats. The impact of video consuming bandwidth is much less notable at 11k connections than at 44k
Set the connection speed under Connection Properties to a value that best matches the client to server connection
Under Connection Properties, set the color depth to as low a value as possible. Reducing the color depth to 8 bit color considerably reduces the bandwidth consumed
Set Smoothing, to High. This will improve the appearance of the target video by reducing displayed video noise
Under Video settings, set the Noise Filter to its highest setting of 7 (highest value) so less bandwidth is used for target screen changes