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I am experiencing audio problems with VirtualBox.

Before trying to fix the problems, I have the following vboxmanage questions:

1. Option --audiocontroller ac97|hda|sb16
Is this setting based on the host hardware/OS/software or the guest OS/software?

2. Option --audiocodec stac9700|ad1980|stac9221|sb16
Is this setting based on the host hardware/OS/software or the guest OS/software?

Thank you so much for clarifying
Frank

Try typing out the whole command:

• 
  VBoxManage modifyvm audiocontroller --audiocontroller ac97|hda|sb16
  VBoxManage modifyvm audiocontroller --audiocodec stac9700|ad1980|stac9221|sb16
  

or read the User Manual, ch. "8.8.3 Miscellaneous settings", part of ch. "8.8 VBoxManage modifyvm":

• --audiocontroller ac97|hda|sb16: With this option, you can specify the audio controller to be used with this VM.
• --audiocodec stac9700|ad1980|stac9221|sb16: With this option, you can specify the audio codec to be used with this VM.

and ask yourself the same question again... Then think that all the hardware presented to the VM is virtual, and that you can do that without actually having a sound card on your host, and you'll figure it out.

Generally speaking audio is not at its best these days and they're trying to do an overhaul of the whole subsystem. Just don't make things worse...

Yes, but is also
VBoxManage modifyvm --audio xxx
a setting which is host dependent!

If the audiocontroller is the virtual sound card VirtualBox exposes to the guest, what exactly does/influences the audiocodec setting?
Which combinations of audiocontroller and audiocodec are sensible?
sb16/sb16 seems obvious, but can any audiocontroller used with any audiocodec?

Thanks for your patience!
Frank

FrankWiesner wrote:Yes, but is also "VBoxManage modifyvm --audio xxx" a setting which is host dependent!

I'm not familiar with that setting. Can you please point it out to me? And "xxx" stand for...?

FrankWiesner wrote:If the audiocontroller is the virtual sound card VirtualBox exposes to the guest, what exactly does/influences the audiocodec setting?

You'd have to check the source code for that, or see if anyone else knows anything more...

FrankWiesner wrote:Which combinations of audiocontroller and audiocodec are sensible?

The defaults. Not a lot of people have tried a lot of combinations. There's a lot more risk in messing things if you have no clue what you're doing. You're free to try, but do not expect that everyone has and can contribute their shared knowledge.

socratis wrote:I'm not familiar with that setting. Can you please point it out to me? And "xxx" stand for...?

You find this right above the --audiocontroller option in the manual 8.8.3. Miscellaneous settings:

--audio none|null|dsound|oss|alsa|pulse|coreaudio: With this setting, you can specify whether the VM should have audio support, and – if so – which type. The list of supported audio types depends on the host and can be determined with VBoxManage modifyvm.

Thanks for your time and patience,
Frank

FrankWiesner wrote:"VBoxManage modifyvm --audio xxx" a setting which is host dependent!

That's right, I remember now, thanks for the reminder.

This setting has meaning under very special circumstances. Except the "none" and "null" values which are valid for all hosts, on an OSX host you can only use "coreaudio", on a Win host you can only use "dsound" and on a Linux host you can use "oss", "alsa" and "pulse", depending on which sound system you want to use and (if I'm not mistaken) with which audio sub-system the application was compiled with.

That's what the host-dependent part means.