Choppy audio under resource load

[Neurokinetics]

Hi,

I am running an Android x86 guest on Mac OS X guest.

I've noticed choppy audio - but only when I have more than 3 apps open in the host OS.

What's strange is that there seems to be a threshold past which the audio becomes terribly choppy. The lag is not gradual - it seems that once RAM is filled to a certain extent, something funky happens with the virtual images.

Any ideas on how to prevent this?

cheers

[loukingjr]

hmmm, don't run more than 3 apps at a time on the host?

[Neurokinetics]

hmmm, don't run more than 3 apps at a time on the host?

What a worthless comment.

[loukingjr]

the point is the host, along with the guest may be too much load to handle.

[Neurokinetics]

the point is the host, along with the guest may be too much load to handle.

Yes, that seems to be the case.

I could make do and keep only a few programs open, but I have 16 gb of memory so it shouldn't be much of an issue.

I guess my real question is, does virtualbox run any sort of memory compression on guest OSes left running in the background - and if so, how to avoid the virtual machine becoming demoted to a background process? I'm not sure how Mac OS / virtualbox handles this, but if there is a solution, it would be to keep the virtual machine in the foreground.

[loukingjr]

it's not just the memory taken up. it's also how demanding each app is on the CPU.

[Neurokinetics]

it's not just the memory taken up. it's also how demanding each app is on the CPU.

Thanks, good thinking. I'll try to renice the virtualbox process and give it some more CPU priority.

edit:
ran

Code: Select all

 sudo renice -10 [PID#] 

with little noticeable effect.

It's possible I got syntax wrong, but for now I'll put this problem on the shelf.

cheers