Sound Problem With VirtualBox -5.2.x branch

[gcshum]

Hi croniccorey,

Do you have a solution for WinXP guest.

Thanks.

[DrJim]

Can I downgrade to 5.0.40 and still keep the guest OS I've installed and customized?

[socratis]

@DrJim
If you've installed the Guest Additions (GAs) I'd suggest to remove them and if you downgrade to 5.0.40, which BTW is completely unsupported, you might have a better chance.

But if you do, you're on your own, no more "support" here I'm afraid...

[DrJim]

I'm having the same problem. I'm using VB 5.2.24 and was pleased to discoverer that the lip sync problem with the previous vs had been corrected. Unfortunately it had been replaced by a static crackle every 2-3 minutes.

Hopefully this will be corrected in the next vs. I do appreciate having VB available. Is there a way to make donations?

[Raster]

It appears that the crackling sound issue of the 5.2 series and other sound issues I was experiencing with 6.0 have been fixed with 6.0.4.

Fix possibly related to: "Audio: implemented time scheduling for the AC'97 device emulation to keep audio and video in sync"

thanks, VirtualBox crew!

[Raster]

aaaaaand it's back. It just stays clear for a while, maybe a few minutes, but that the audio has a fairly constant, pulsed, crackle, seemingly related to the volume. 6.0.4. is just as busted as the others.

[RikR]

I am running VirtualBox 5.2.26r128414. Running Ubuntu 18.04 VM. I am having the same problem with audio.

With AC97 audio controller selected the audio is always distorted.

With Intel HD Audio selected, the audio is much better but cycles from clean to distorted occasionally, then back to clean.

[robinemery]

I was experiencing choppy audio issues with VB on MacOS, but I just updated to v6.0.4 and I no longer have any problems.

There is still some video lag, but at least I no longer experience bad audio.

I've not yet tried updating my Windows 10 desktop to see if this cures the issue, also.

[ZeroLabs]

I run Xubuntu 16.04.x LTS throughout. I have been struggling with this choppy sound problem for years. It affected any windows guest system with virtually every version of Virtual box, with very few exceptions. When I did find an exception to the rule I always disabled updates and stuck with that version until kernal updates broke it. (Such is the case it seems with ALL flavors of Ubuntu 16.04.x and ALL versions of Vbox from 5.1.x-6.0.x EXCEPT FOR 5.1.38 from the official repository. But THAT'S a topic for another day!)

Back to the audio problem, last night I dug my heels in, started reading every thread I could find, trying every solution people thought they found. My conclusion is they stumbled onto things that may have made enough of an improvement to call it "fixed", but not really. While it makes sense that the matching extension pack and guest additions iso should be installed, for me they were NOT the root cause. For me, the answer was so stupid simple it's embarrassing.

In the virtual machine Audio settings, do not use Pulse for your Host Audio Driver! Use ALSA instead. Yes, it's really that simple.

I hope that I save others the same countless hours that I wasted with this nuisance problem.

Cheers,
Z

[NoNoNo]

...With Intel HD Audio selected, the audio is much better but cycles from clean to distorted occasionally, then back to clean.

I have similar experience with intel HDA, most times VMs no sound, very few times VMs sound very clear. When VM is soundless, I reboot it and hope audio back to work... I'm tired to do this.

Fortunately AC97 controller still give me clear sound, one exception is vRDP, it's totally break in my setup of VBox 5.2.28. (Debian 9 HOST / Debian 8 & 9 GUEST)

[guestin12]

Virtualbox: 5.2.34_Ubuntu r133883

Host: Linux Mint 19.3

Guest: Windows 10 x64

I have migrated my system to new hardware and I opened my Windows 10 machine on Virtualbox, it works but the audio seems to go slower than on my host (tried with multiple video/audio files).

Is there any solution for my specific case or workaround that I can try?

Thanks