Poor sound quality with Windows 7 - too small buffers?

[Peter Åstrand]

Basic setup: Linux as host, Windows 7 as guest, AC97 driver and PulseAudio backend. This setup seems to be very sensitive to timing issue. It doesn't take much to get a very "choppy" sound output. This is my test case:

• Enable PulseAudio TCP support (using paprefs)

• export PULSE_SERVER=localhost:4714

• ssh -L4714:localhost:4713 localhost -fN

• Run VirtualBox, activate PulseAudio audio backend. Boot Windows 7.

• Try a Youtube video (​http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrodCAPrg0A is audio only)

On one machine, this *almost* produces OK audio output. You can clearly hear glitches, though, and starting, say, Windows Update makes the quality worse. This is a Dell E6400 laptop.

On another machine (Dell Optiplex 760), the glitches are even more common; you can barely hear the lyrics.

Both machines are running 64-bit Fedora 14. Windows 7 instance is 32-bit.

[Peter Åstrand]

Same problem with 3.1.6.

[matteo sisti sette]

This seems like a duplicate of 6816, which is still an issue in 4.0.12

[Quickbooks Office]

Host Fedora 20 - Gnome Desktop.

When watching Netflix on Windows 8.1 in Internet Explorer, the sound is static sometimes, or the sound breaks, or choppy / jittery.

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.