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bobby32wf
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Audio issues with Windows guests on a Linux host

I have a Linux host:

$ uname -a
Linux hostname 2.6.36-gentoo-r5 #2 SMP Mon Dec 27 19:30:11 EST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

running VMware Workstation:

$ vmware --version
VMware Workstation 7.1.3 build-324285

with ALSA 1.0.23.

and a number of guests, including Windows 7 x86_64 and Windows XP x86.

First issue:

The XP guest is quieter than the Win7 guest when playing the same audio file.  Both guests have audio set to 100% in their respective Volume Control panels.  There are no obvious differences of the guests' sound configuration:

$ grep sound WinXP/WinXP.vmx | sort
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
sound.filename = "-1"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "35"
sound.present = "TRUE"

$ grep sound Win7/Win7.vmx | sort
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "35"
sound.present = "TRUE"

Even the louder of the two guests is quieter than the host, i.e audio level in host > audio level in Win7 guest > audio level in WinXP guest.  I would like to have a consistent audio level across the host and the guests, having the

Second issue:

The sound in the Windows guests is choppy whenever there's mouse  movement in the guest window, no matter the load on the host or in the  VM.  No issues with audio playback in the host.  The issue reproduces no matter how many cores/CPUs I configure in the guest (currently each has 1), and I do not have hyperthreading enabled in the host bios.

Google found a number of similar threads in the VMware forums, though I didn't find one that ended with a solution to either issue.

Any ideas how to resolve either would be welcome.

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Zeee2009
Contributor
Contributor

I have much the same issue - regards choppy sound - with Workstation 7.1.3 build-324285 running on Ubuntu 10.10 (kernel 2.6.35-22) x64 as host with Windows 7 x64 guests - very choppy sound.

Seems to be plenty of historical issues with Linux hosts and Win guests prior to Alsa support - I am finding sound is sufficiently poor as to be unsable within the guest with above config.

If anyone has any experience of resolving similar issues with Workstation 7 would be interested to hear

Thanks

Zeee

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