Workstation 8.0.6 and Win10x64: crackling audio - timekeeping problem?

[emusic]

I'm using WS 8.0.6 under Win7x64 on Clevo P170EM laptop (3610QM CPU, 16 GB RAM).

XP, Vista (32/64), Win7 (32/64), Win8x64, Win8.1x64 guests run extremely fine, no problem at all.

In all Win10x64 guests (from pre-releases to latest 10586), audio is very choppy, with or without VMware Tools installed.

Tested with internal "Test" button and popular players (WinAMP, Foobar2000) using MME, DS and WASAPI interface. Even with 2000 ms buffering, there is no clear sound. In all previous Windows versions (up to 8.1), 200-300 ms of buffering is quite enough.

DPCLat shows 1200..15000 us latency, average 1100..1200.

I'm afraid there are some guest timekeeping problems.

What timekeeping technique had been changed in Win10 relatively to Win8.1?

Can WS 8.0.6 be tuned to fix it, or I should upgrade my WS to a newer version?

If to upgrade, which WS version to choose? I saw here some complaints to WS 10 and WS 12 related to audio stability.

[emusic]

Attached a screen movie from the VM.

The second hand moves normally until I start WinAMP playback (MME, Speakers/High Definition Audio). As playback is started, second hand becomes to move slower. As playback is stopped, second hand moves slowly up to 19 seconds, then jumps to 27 seconds and continues to move normally.

Have the previous (10240) Win10x64 release running under VirtualBox 5.0.6 and 5.0.10 (installed under WS 8.0.6 then moved VMDK to VirtualBox), no timekeeping problems. Time moves smoothly, audio works without crackling.

[emusic · Accepted solution]

I discovered that in Virtual Hardware 8, HPET is enabled by default:

hpet0.present = "TRUE"

Disabling HPET eliminates audio crackling and timing problems in Win 8.x and 10:

hpet0.present = false

(or you can simply comment this line out with "#").

Most likely, Workstation 8 does not virtualize HPET properly.