No sound on 5.2.32 (#18820)

[socratis]

There is a lot more traffic and discussion in the forums, I don't know what's it like elsewhere, but here that's the deal; most of the discussion and the analysis takes place in the forums. You can't really bump a ticket, but you already got a developer's attention, that's good™.

[hercc]

Hi.

I have no sound after update from 5.2.24/26 to 5.2.3x or 6.x.

• My current version is 6.0.14 and still no sound.
• No sound on both Linux (Ubuntu 19) and Windows (10) image.
• Sound works well on my linux host.
• The Guest Additions is outdated (5.2.2x) because I am not able to update "The network operation failed with the following error: During network request: Unknown reason". It works with manual installation. The Guest Additions is uptodate now.
• I have tried the step "Dumping audio output" of "Investigating audio problems". I can play the dumped wavs on host's temp folder without any problems.
• Log: see attachment.
• I use alsa and the default card was set through asoundrc.

Thanks.

[socratis]

00:00:00.296413 VirtualBox VM 6.0.14_Gentoo r132055 linux.amd64 (Nov 10 2019 23:39:23) release log

It looks like you're using the Gentoo-fork version of VirtualBox. You can either ask in their forums/channels for help, or completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Linux Downloads section of VirtualBox.

[socratis]

Thanks. I will do this but I'm afraid it's a VirtualBox bug. It sounds similar to the following problem viewtopic.php?f=7&t=93940 (cannot post urls). I can also confirm that there is no sound at >5.2.32 but 5.2.24 (or smaller) fixes the problem.

Any news on status?

[socratis]

Any news on status?

Any news would be in the thread/ticket that you linked to, there's nothing hidden...

[socratis]

Solution:

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Audio/CoreAudio/BufferSizeMs="100"

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18342

(Thanks to Section_8 from forums.gentoo.org)

[socratis]

Solution:

VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Audio/CoreAudio/BufferSizeMs="100"

That doesn't sound right, I made the same mistake in ticket https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18342. This command is for an OSX Host, CoreAudio being the audio engine. Since you're on a Linux/ALSA Host, the proper command should be:

VBoxManage setextradata global VBoxInternal2/Audio/ALSAAudio/BufferSizeMs="100"

It's all in the ticket, including me smacking my forehead...

[hercc]

@socratis:
Yes, you are right. "ALSAAudio" was the solution mentioned on gentoo forum I tried.

I just copied it wrong from another thread.

[hercc]

As you can see, this is a long-term problem that some users have been facing for a long time. Perhaps it makes sense to put this in some official tutorial?

[socratis]

1) No, the specific one is not a long standing issue; read the details in the ticket, 2) I'll quote you what a developer wrote in the ticket:

As audio is *very* timing sensitive (as it's realtime stuff to process), we still hesitate to change any of the default values for now, unless we get a better overview that the 100ms indeed works better than the current default of 250ms.

Audio has been an ongoing battle. No point at this ... point to have anything in the User Manual since it's an ever changing situation...

Now, someone could argue that the BufferSize used to be "100", but apparently it had to change because it was solving some other issues, and by doing so it broke something else. You fix one thing, two more break; that's what the audio battle is like...

[hercc]

@socratis
The problem here is how to make life difficult for some inexperienced users. The feature of good software is its ease of use and directing the user to the appropriate settings. The fact is that the value "100" is good for some users and bad for others. This fact could e.g. be marked in the audio settings. Otherwise, the inexperienced user is forced to browse through various portal, read bugzilla and other topics of which he has no idea.

[hercc]

Probably related viewtopic.php?f=7&t=95560

[socratis]

I'm pretty sure that everyone is familiar with your points. I'm even "surer" that the developers know about this and have made consciously the changes for a ReallyGoodReason™. Since audio is a moving target, I (personally) wouldn't include anything in the GUI, not until the dust had settled.

[socratis]

Probably related viewtopic.php?f=7&t=95560

I merged the two threads. I hope this isn't a mistake and I ended up merging two unrelated threads...

[socratis]

@nauved

Did the solution that 'hercc' proposed work for you?