Sound broken with Ubuntu 9.10 guest

[jeffbarish]

Under VMware Workstation 6.5.3, sound does not work with Ubuntu 9.10 as a guest. I have seen reports of sound not working for Ubuntu 9.10 as a guest under Fusion 3.0.0 (e.g., in this thread nosoundinfusion), but I though it worth mentioning that the same problem arises with Workstation 6.5.3. Uninstalling pulseaudio (as suggested in that thread) helps, but I find that the sound is still jerky. Anyone know whether Ubuntu 9.10 works under Workstation 7? Anyone know whether VMware will fix 6.5.3 even though 7 is out?

[Student_Driver]

"Sound does not work." Does that mean, as it's written, that there's simply no sound at all?

I'm using WS7 with 9.10, and sound works OK but it isn't smooth. I've had many issues in the past with pulseaudio on direct hardware, so I've never been terribly impressed with it. I can't play an MP3 smoothly on it using the laptop in my specs, but it sounds almost exactly the same as when I had 9.04 Netbook Remix on my Dell Mini 9. On the Mini 9, I removed pulseaudio and the sound was perfect. Not sure what I'm going to do with 9.10 yet, as the OS works wonderfully for what I want to do and I can hear regular sounds without much issue.

Dell SXPS 1340, P9600, 8GB RAM

MCSE/MCSA 2003, MCTS, RHCT

[jeffbarish]

Yes, "sound does not work" means no sound at all. When I remove pulseaudio, I get sound, but it is jerky -- probably the same as your description "not smooth". It helps to know that Workstation 7 is not a silver bullet, though it would still be interesting to know whether anyone gets smooth, sustained plays on Workstation 7 by removing pulseaudio. In the past, it has taken VMware 4 months to fix problems related to new releases of Ubuntu, so I figure that we have 3 months to go -- and even then I might be forced to upgrade to WS 7 just to get back to where I was.

[Student_Driver]

As I posted in another thread:

" I just fired up my Fedora Core 12 VM; it appears to play MP3s just

fine, and it uses pulseaudio as well. So, I have to wonder what's so

different about Ubuntu's implementation that makes it so sketchy on my

Dell Mini 9 and inside the VMware products."

In that other thread, another person found that 9.04 was fine in Parallels, yet 9.10 has sync issues and other problems. It looks like 9.10 just has something different going on in its audio setup. It would be nice if they could just get to a configuration option and stick with it, but I suppose this is the risk you run when the OS expects major changes every 6 months.

Dell SXPS 1340, P9600, 8GB RAM

MCSE/MCSA 2003, MCTS, RHCT

[Student_Driver]

I just wanted to update this and say that I installed Ubuntu 9.04 again, and this time paid attention to the sound. It works perfectly with my Win7/WS7 combination, and I think it still worked in 6.5.3. I also noticed that you don't get the application mixer in 9.04 like you get in 9.10, which I'm sure is just the surface of their change to using a sound server (pulseaudio) that they finished up with in 9.10. Well, I hope it's finished, because if it isn't then I expect it to be broken again in 10.04 in VMware WS7.

Dell SXPS 1340, P9600, 8GB RAM

MCSE/MCSA 2003, MCTS, RHCT