I’m encountering an issue with Pixel Streaming in Unreal Engine 5 where everything works as expected except for the audio. Here’s my setup:
I run the .exe file with these arguments: -AudioMixer -PixelStreamingIP=localhost -PixelStreamingPort=8888.
I run the Pixel Streaming web server from the official GitHub repository.
The .exe running on the server has audio, and I’ve tested both audio from Blueprints and in-scene audio (importing audio in the Content Browser and adding them to the scene), but once I connect through the browser, there’s no audio at all.
I’ve tried multiple virtual audio solutions like VB-Cable, VoiceMeeter, and others, but none seem to fix the issue. The game runs perfectly in the browser on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, but the audio just won’t play, both local and from remote access.
Has anyone encountered this problem before or have any suggestions for fixing it? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I found a temporary workaround for the audio issue in Pixel Streaming, but it’s not ideal.
I added the PixelStreamingAudioComponent to the scene and set the browser (where Unreal + Pixel Streaming are running on the remote server) to use VB-Cable Output as the microphone and open the stream link (127.0.0.1). This allows the browser to capture everything from the system’s audio output and sends it to the PixelStreaming server.
To prevent a feedback loop, I disabled audio for the browser, Unreal, and Cable Output in the Audio Mixer.
There’s a slight lag between video and audio. This is a hacky solution, and a more native fix would be preferable, but I haven’t found one yet.
So regarding this issue, I suspect this is due to a number of windows services being inactive that certain PS elements rely on, such as audio.
RDP into the instance and run the following powershell script: Set-Service -Name Audiosrv -StartupType Automatic
Furthermore, open services.msc on the instance and search for WIndows Audio, Windows Audio Endpoint Builder and Remote Procedure Call and right click and restart each of them.
Given your manual adjustments using VB-Cable, VoiceMeeter etc, these services are likely already running, but restarting can help.
If you don’t want to struggle with virtual audio configuration, you can just try Vagon Streams. In traditional ways, you need to configure several audio options. However, they can conflict with your current application, even in the best scenario.
Vagon Streams offers a reliable and scalable pixel streaming experience, working on any device without any further issues or configurations. Just upload your .exe file, and start streaming within a few minutes.
We handle the rest, including audio transfers, network-based optimizations, and peak performance availability.
You can explore it yourself from the link below, or contact me directly to setup your experience. We would be happy to help.
@MWillWallT as soon as I am back to the project (on hold for now) I’ll check that. Eventually I’ll check also if new versions of Unreal solved the issue and I’ll come back to this topic. Thanks for the help.
@Serd your solutions looks interesting and I’ll keep it in mind next time. In this round, the client requires it to run on their servers/virtual machines, so I can’t really rely on cloud solutions. Thanks for the help, much appreciated.