Problem with Sound under VMWare Workstation (running Starcraft 2)

[adja]

I run VMWare Workstation 7.1 on a W7 x64 Host with a VM running XP SP3, so far without any problems, my gaming VM even runs Games like World of Warcraft quite nicely. After installing Starcraft 2 however i get the following message as soon as i start Starcraft:

"The default sound device cannot be opened:

A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system.

Failed to connect virtual device sound."

After that everything is silent (obviously), a manual reconnect of the sound immediately triggers the same error pop-up as long as Starcraft is running. Once i exit Starcraft i can reconnect the Sound and everything works again.

I guess Starcraft does something nasty to the Sound Driver / Device which VMWare refuses to play along, has anyone a clue how to work around that and get Sound again, or at least what usually triggers that error message so i can atleast understand better whats going wrong?

Any help is greatly appreciated ...

[lksudoku]

I had the same problem and came up with a workaround

The workaround has a small sound delay problem, but it does allow for sound to be played

What I did is to install a virtual audio card named "VAcard" http://www.datanab.com/audio/VAcard.htm[/url] inside my virtual machine, the installation included the streamer and the receiver

Then, in the virtual card, I configure the streamer virtual audio card 1 to push its data to the local host "127.0.0.1" port 2020 at rate 48000

The receiver is configured to listen to port 2020 with playback device creative sound blaster

I start the reciever and then the streamer

When I run starcraft, in the sound options, I modify the sound card to vacrad 1 out

[adja]

Thanks, cheeky work around. I had a similar idea to just get a USB soundcard and attach it inside the virtual machine but was too lazy and cheap to actually go through with it, the Streamer/Receiver trick will definately help save me that effort, thanks.

On a side note: Did you ever find out whats happening under the hood when that error pops up?

[lksudoku]

As I was examining the audio "feature" more closely to provide some more details, I came up with a better workaround

The better workaround does not cause any sound delay and use the soud blaster driver directly

Here is the improved workaround description:

1. Install the virtual audio card named "VAcard" http://www.datanab.com/audio/VAcard.htm[/url] inside the virtual machine

2. Run starcraft, get to options/sound and change the output device to sound blaster

The result is that sound is played in an ordinary manner without streaming or delay

This is quite a weired behaviour, my guess is that on start of the starcraft game, it either tries to directly access the audio hardware (which is only emulated in the virtual machine), or, it tries to use the audio driver in a manner in which the emulated hardware cannot handle