virtualbox.org

I am using VirtualBox 1.6.0 on a Linux Ubuntu 8.04 Host
I've tried this with Windows XP & Windows Vista Guest Systems.

The 3 sounddrivers chooseable in Virtualbox are ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio.

When I choose PulseAudio, both host & guest can play audio, but guest plays audio CHOPPY.
When I choose one of the others while the host uses audio i get an error like
"Some audio devices (PCM_out) could not be opened. Guest applications generationg audio output or depending on audio input may hang. ... ID: HostAudioNotResponding"
As soon as the playback on the Host stops (or if there is none when the guest is started) the guest snaps on the audio output and can then play audio very well, but the host then is not able to play anything until the guest is stopped.

I know there are many threads on this topic, but i figured none of them matched my situation.
Has anyone expierenced something simular & has some advice how to make the guest & the host play audio simultaneous without having choppy sound from the guest?

Ah and btw - this whole situation in the first place seemed to me, as if my sounddriver can't cant handle 2 things at once, but there is no problem running 2 playbacks with 2 players on my host system simultaneous

I think for alsa you need a package like "pluse-alsa" or similar on the host.

I think your problem is your expection.

Sound in a VM is always not so good as native.

Shortly: Sound is nice to have, but forget a VM for games and multimedia.

Hello Stefan! Thanks for your reply!

Well whats useful and whats not in what context is another topic which isn't really what i want to talk about - but since Virtualbox supports audio i think its legitimate to try to use it. If you want to know what exactly my aim is having working audio support for my windows guests: MSN, since AMSN doesn't support the audio communications until now. Therefore i don't need best quality sound, but with the choppiness of my PulseAudio driver I won't understand what someone I'm trying to talk to is saying

What should this package "pulse-alsa" do? i have working alsa drivers, since my host uses alsa for audio output, and the PulseAudio driver seems to work too, except that the output is choppy

Best Regards, Thomas

If you have the pulse driver, packages like "alsa-pulse" or "oss-pulse" (dont know exactly name for *buntu) are for compability. But i dont think, with such a layer sound will be better.

In another thread a few days before there was someone with a usb sound card an playing sound on the guest to the usb device directly. this may be better.