Investigating audio problems

Collecting information from the host

As always when it comes to diagnosing problems with VirtualBox the appropriate VBox.log is useful to have. To gather more verbose information about the actual audio state, please do the following:

Tip of the day: Best is to copy & paste the following commands to avoid typing errors.

• Shut down all VM instances and VirtualBox programs, including VBoxSVC.
  
  
  1. On Windows, run

     setx VBOX_RELEASE_LOG "drv_host_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+drv_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+audio_mixer.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda_codec.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_ac97.e.l.l2.l3.f" /M
     

     on an Administrator command prompt to set this on a system-wide level (required).
     
     
  2. On POSIX-enabled hosts like Linux, Unix or OS X (MacOS), open or run a terminal as root and run

     export VBOX_RELEASE_LOG=drv_host_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+drv_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+audio_mixer.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda_codec.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_ac97.e.l.l2.l3.f
     

• Close the Administrator / root terminal
• Open a new terminal as regular user
  
  
  1. On Windows, verify that the changes were applied correctly be running

     echo %VBOX_RELEASE_LOG%
     

  2. On POSIX-enabled hosts like Linux, Unix or OS X (MacOS) verify that the changes were applied correctly be running

     env | grep VBOX_RELEASE_LOG
     

• Start the VirtualBox Manager and start the VM you want to diagnose audio for.
• Perform and reproduce the audio operation.

Important: The newly created VBox.log log file must contain the line

Audio: Verbose logging enabled

Ok, all done! What now?

Please collect the VBox.log from the host, pack it (ZIP, RAR) into an archive and submit that archive as part of a new or existing bug report at our public bug tracker.

Note: Without the log file we cannot diagnose your issue, so please make sure to always attach that. Thank you.