diff --git a/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/Demuxer.ts b/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/Demuxer.ts
index e8b336d..f9d973b 100644
--- a/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/Demuxer.ts
+++ b/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/Demuxer.ts
@@ -155,8 +155,14 @@ export async function demux(
   audio: DemuxedStream | undefined;
   close: () => void;
 }> {
-  const vPipe = new PassThrough({ objectMode: true, highWaterMark: 128 });
-  const aPipe = new PassThrough({ objectMode: true, highWaterMark: 128 });
+  // objectMode pipes carrying one frame per item. HWM 2 keeps backpressure
+  // near-instant: at most ~1-2 frames in flight (~66ms @ 30fps) before the
+  // encoder is throttled, so the viewer sees near-live video instead of a
+  // multi-second backlog (the old HWM 128 held 128 frames ≈ 4.3s of lag).
+  // BaseMediaStream below has HWM 0, so the chain is tightly coupled to the
+  // WebRTC sender's real pace — faithful to @dank074/discord-video-stream.
+  const vPipe = new PassThrough({ objectMode: true, highWaterMark: 2 });
+  const aPipe = new PassThrough({ objectMode: true, highWaterMark: 2 });
 
   const isStream = typeof input !== "string";
   // NUT/matroska input (prepareStream with includeAudio) carries audio; the
diff --git a/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/prepareStream.ts b/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/prepareStream.ts
index 15e426c..ba8ef50 100644
--- a/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/prepareStream.ts
+++ b/services/discord-gateway/src/goLive/prepareStream.ts
@@ -369,6 +369,10 @@ export async function playStream(
     console.log(
       `[goLive:playStream] audio stream attached (${audio.codecName})`,
     );
+    // A/V sync (faithful to @dank074 newApi.js): audio is the master clock.
+    // Video sleeps/wakes based on ptsDelta(video - audio) so they can't drift
+    // apart under variable encoder throughput.
+    vStream.syncStream = aStream;
   }
 
   const cleanup = () => {