Strange sound with VMWare Workstation

[Hopachi]

Hopachi, see my edit above .
As to vmw 8, I just haven't updated there, but I have and tried vmware 9.0.1 on a Win2003 host. It behaves the same.
I'll try it on the Win2008 host now anyway. It is a too-long-lasting issue and I'll give this a shot now, as the last thing I'll try because I lost too much time on this already.
I'm not interested in 8.0.5, we are on the 9.x branch already . If 9 (last version) hasn't fixed it, no reason to think 8 would have.

You're right, I see....

Well, since we're all on version 9, I'll see if I can get the intel HD sound driver on XP x64 (win 2003 core).

One of these days we'll get 9.0.2 since it's been a long time wait.
The good thing about 9.0.1 is that it lets me use Win98, ME again on i7 processor (9.0.0 crashed all the times).

Thanks

 

[tedych]

The Autohotkey script I just tested and it works (in this case to keep the timer at 2ms).

SetBatchLines -1  ; Ensures maximum effectiveness of this method.

SleepDuration = 1000
TimePeriod = 3

DllCall("Winmm\timeBeginPeriod", uint, TimePeriod)
Loop
    DllCall("Sleep", UInt, SleepDuration)
;DllCall("Winmm\timeEndPeriod", UInt, TimePeriod)

I had it run on the host (Win2008), and VMs play fine.
The script process uses only 2MB RAM, and the super negligible 80,000 cycles delta (1 sec) on my 2.8G cpu.
It can be compiled to an exe.

For me, it works when running on the host, but it can be set up to run in the guest (only), so the timer is boosted only when an XP VM is run.

 

[Hopachi]

At least that gives something nice!

Here I tested the XP 64 but no drivers exist for the HD audio. It's not Intel, it's Realtek but a customized one because the Realtek drivers don't apply.


This is the hd audio driver needed but missing in Xp 64.

this is something Win7 uses:

[COLOR=#333333][FONT=Courier New]sound.virtualdev = "hdaudio"[/FONT][/COLOR]

I've added it to XP64 and then I needed to find the driver... but no Xp version was found so I used the Win7 one.

If you use the drivers from Win7 (because I use the sound card from Win7) it's not gonna work (corrupted driver) although it installs successfully.

And since I'm on x64 VM I'm not gonna try the soundblaster 16 since it's old.

These are the 3 choices of sound cards:

[COLOR=#333333][FONT=Courier New]sound.virtualdev = "sb16"[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#333333][FONT=Courier New]sound.virtualdev = "es1371"[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#333333][FONT=Courier New]sound.virtualdev = "hdaudio"[/FONT][/COLOR]

Only one of those lines needs to be active for one VM.
For XP is "es1371" but the one in XP 32 didn't stuttered at all only in XP 64 I have this problem.

If no other drivers are available the we cannot use anything else but the default one.
AND even if we find HD driver for XP the chance is to work bad too since it's about those bloody timers we talked about earlier.

But, anyway we have found some stuff out even if no real fix exists... the script (made by tedych in previous post) should be considered as a fix for now.

 

[tedych]

Well, that's something new - you don't see the problem with XP x86's? I have only 32 bit XP/2003's here.
I have been testing the other sound cards before, with no luck either.
I'm already sick of experiments and time spent on this issue . My 7.1.4 serves me well and unless I need 8+ desperately for something, I'll put VMWare tests on hold for now, until 9.0.5/6 comes out (or you folks confirm a build has fixed the issue). I'd rather expect v10 before that. Amazing how many years vmware have not fixed this.
The AHK code from above is borrowed by an autohotkey's examples site and slightly modified by me. I've tried so many things that I've already forgotten where it was borrowed from. It can just replace the "mighty" WMPlayer in its function to keep the timer high.
Still, I'm not taking any chances with v9.0.x for now, until this is properly fixed OR I need something from what 9 has to offer desperately (no Win8 please ).

 

[garycase]

Just for grins, I checked out a few older versions of Windows running on VMWare Workstation v9 under a Windows 8 host:

Windows 95, 98, and ME all work fine -- sound is clear with no distortion.

Windows 2000 has the same problem as XP ... scratchy/distorted sound. The "fix" is a bit different than with XP. In XP, if you simply load Windows Media Player the issue goes away. In 2000, just loading media player doesn't fix it; you have to actually play something in Media Player -- THEN it's resolved.

Vista and Windows 7 VM's work perfectly (as I've noted before).

Definitely a WEIRD issue -- it'll be very interesting to see if it goes away with the next release from VMWare.

 

[tedych]

Please compare the OS timer resolutions when testing combinations of host and guests.
Ultimately check in Win2000 whether the resolution increases when WMP just running, and whether it increases when playing.
I was just moments away from taking the plunge and update vmw to 9.0.1 on my Win7. Something keeps its timer at 1ms and I had good feelings for it, but I'll wait.

Please check also your host timers when VM is idle and when playing. It'd be interesting to know.

Also does vmware know about this issue? I can't htink of a scenario which doesn't include testing with XPs. or maybe they've cut on budget so bad that they don't test at all. I think they screwed up something in the core with 8. Just like Photoshop after CS4 - 4 versions and 5 years they didn't fix the problem I (and many others) experience.

 

[garycase]

VMWare v9 works just fine on a Windows 7 host -- it's on my main machine. The problem is only with a Windows 8 host. [To be precise, it's Windows 8 Pro x32 in my case.] When I get a chance I'll repeat the tests again and see what the timer values are.

... I don't know if VMWare is aware of this or not; but there are enough posts about it on various forums (this one; a Windows 8 forum; and several other help sites) that I'd certainly think they've noticed it !!

By the way, just to confirm this wasn't just a VMWare Tools issue, I removed VMWare Tools from the XP machine, and tried several older versions of VMWare tools (from v6 and v7) ... but the issue's still there when running on VMWare 9.

 

[tedych]

So, maybe I'm rignt to believe that if I update on my Win7 host to v9, it would work without issues. Still, I'll wait a bit.
If this is not a problem for you, could you check the host timer of your Win7, both when idle and when a sound is playing in XP VM, also the timer of your Win8. It really would be helpful to know if the timer resolutions are showing consistent relation to the the issue at hatnd across OSes.

I have the issue with v9 both on Win2003x86/2008x64 hosts. The difference being that on Win2003 v9 causes all kinds of stability issues too.

 

[garycase]

If you're concerned about whether or not v9 will cause any side effects, I'd suggest you do what I ALWAYS do before installing any significant updates/upgrades: (a) Image the OS partition; (b) make whatever changes I'm considering and test them out; and then, if for any reason I don't like the results, just (c) restore the image.

 

[tedych]

Of course. I use an old 2009 version of Acronis trueImage Ent. Server from another OS to always image the sys partition before such changes. Still, I've never had an occasion to rely on restoring an image, hopefully . Also restoring an image is not always 100% safe operation - restoring/copying/transferring some 120GB (2x60 - read/write) is always dangerous - a small problem in RAM or hdd, could case some bits to get wrong, etc. so I avoid such things if not urgently necessary.
7.1.4 serves me well for now. I need strong proofs newer versions are ok before I take any chances. vmware is one of a software of its kind - all other softwares (almost) are just tested inside it without harming the host .

 

[leostone]

Found nice tool to adjust the timer resolution

Installs as service and can be configured to adjust the resolution when certain processes are running!!!

eg. vmware-vmx

Look here!

And thanks for all those investigative hours!!! Thx to you that i can work around my performance and audio problems in vmware.

 

[garycase]

Fix for distorted sound in VMs

This little utility resolves the issue very nicely as well:
LCS - VMAudioFixTray

 

[tedych]

What about 9.0.2? Has anyone tested it if vmware fixed the problem(s)?
Extremely unlikely but I had to ask.

 

[Hopachi]

What about 9.0.2? Has anyone tested it if vmware fixed the problem(s)?
Extremely unlikely but I had to ask.

It's the same after what I heard in XP64.
For the rest not much.

I used UEFI VM's and backups... then I switched back to VirtualBox for now, was a local issue on my install, I guess, and Player 5.0.2 was working very slow and the VM window said not responding a lot but only during boot and I never could go into its BIOS.

 

[garycase]

No, v9.0.2 didn't change the issue at all. But the utility I mentioned earlier (post #52) is a simple workaround ... it loads very quickly, so the sound is generally fixed before the startup sound even begins to play => occasionally the first note will be a bit distorted, but as soon as VMAudioFixTray is loaded sounds are perfect. Obviously not as good as a REAL fix within VMware -- but until (and if) they fix it, this works well. What's frustrating is knowing that the fix is so simple, they could EASILY come out with an updated VMware Tools that included this fix [although if they fixed it that way, you'd have the same issue as with VMAudioFixTray -- the "fix" wouldn't work until VMware Tools loaded, so you could have a bit of distorted sound if you have startup sounds enabled.

 

[tedych]

Well, I wouldn't speculate as to how easy or not is for vmware to fix this seemnigly small bug, but the fact is it was (is) working fine in up to 7.1.x branch. This is an introduced bug and from that perspective it should be easy to fix anyway..
Well, I could live with that and the workarounds available, given the stability of VWorkstation is good and doesn't cause OS instability. I've experienced severe instabilities with versions starting with 8.0 on Server 2008, so I'm still not taking any chances on my main OS (Win7).
Maybe I should wait another couple or two years before a better version matching 7.1.x's stability is out.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Actually I found a really simple solution on my system.

1) Lower the HOST volume -- having the HOST volume at too high a level caused distortion on the volume on the Virtual machine.
2) Adjust the volume on the Virtual machine accordingly.

(Of course ensure you have the correct sound drivers installed on the Host and VMware tools installed on the VM).

I'm using VMware workstation release 9.02 build 1031769 - as per screen shot

Cheers
jimbo

 

[tedych]

Just decided to take the plunge and installed the latest VMWare WS 10 on my main Windows 7 x64 rig. It replaced the old 7.1.4 finally. First I tested it on another machines (Win2003/8) where I found no apparent changes from v9, and the XP sound stuttering issue was still there.
On my Win7 however, the stuttering is missing and all is Ok with the XPs. Before I installed v10 I made a simple research about the timer resolution on my Win7 and what keeps it at 1ms all the time, as this was the apparent culprit on the other machines/OSes. As we know, lowering the resolution from the standard 15.6ms in either the host or guest OS fixes the sound issue.
There is a command like this: powercfg -energy -output reportfilename.htm -duration 5 which analyses among other things which process/executable requested increased timer resolution on the system (lower than the standard 15.6ms).
I was able to discern that SQL Server 2008 holds it at 1ms all the time and I could speculate it is the reason I have no problems, but I'm lazy to close it and test the sound. By the way the other day I closed it and the timer went at ~8ms and the analysis revealed the svchost.exe requested this resolution (some service hosted in it), among the possible services this process contained, maybe the MMCS (Multimedia class scheduler service - check it is it's started for you) is the one but I'm not sure. That said, sql server seems to keep me trouble free here so no workarounds needed in my situation .
v10 seems to be quite Ok to me for now.

Edit: It seems guest XPs and older OSes are totally abandoned by vmware. I mean they only destroy stability for them.
After the sound bug I found another one, an OpenGL game that worked like a charm for 3 years in 7.1.4, now in 10.0 it totally freezes the guest OS when exiting the game, leaving a semi-recovered desktop still image. I don't see any performance improvements in 10 compared to 7.1, only introduced bugs . Autoresizing the main window when the guest changes resolution, works bad and flashes the window multiple times as if VMware can't decide fast what resolution the VM will set..