How do you setup audio when testing in a VM?

Hey everyone,

I am setting up an array of virtual machines with different versions of Windows for testing.
I am using VirtualBox and currently have an issue to get any sound when running a DAW (the JUCE Plugin Host and Reaper is what I am currently testing with) on Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 32bit and 64bit, testing with DirectSound and WASAPI in the guest and only have the option for DirectSound on the host OS (in the Audio Settings of the vm).

I think there is some detection for performance issues or jitter in the sound that automatically mutes it (if no track is playing I can hear the Windows sounds on changing the volume or on browsing the disk with the Explorer).

How do you usually go about audio testing in vm’s? Any specific setup or settings of the vm?
Thanks.

Cheers.

hello,

I often feel testing audio in a virtual machine is asking for trouble, or at least potentially quite different behaviour 2 a real machine. nevertheless I do it sometimes for convenience during development. I’ve actually had some good results using netjack in order to get low latency audio in the VM. but I’d recommend using a real machine 4 any serious testing.

oli

Yes. I also use a VM only for checking if stuff compiles and looks similar on Linux but getting low latency drivers work like on a native system is asking too much.

But actually I never had inconsistent behavior across different Windows versions, so I wouldn‘t spend too much effort in getting every possible windows build into a VM because the issues that come with running a VM vastly outweigh the differences between Windows versions.

I totally agree with you guys, I am not trying to test audio consistency. My main use is sanity checks of installation, running, UI, etc.

But I would still like to catch things that would be obvious audio issues if possible.
So added latency - not a problem, but as of now, I can’t hear literally any sound coming through.

Yeah, that’s what I found on the VirtualBox forum. Thanks. Will try it out.

BTW here is something I haven’t had the time to explore, yet, but have wondered about for a long time - has anyone figured a way to automatically test consistency between OS’s and DAWs? And by “figured out a way” I mean “took the time to create this complex build process”.

Like having an integration/regression test in your build server that would have an array of vm’s to request export of audio from different hosts and then compare the audio with some acceptable % of difference (threshold)?

I believe it is all doable (although It may require non-trivial amount of support, in such cases sometimes there is an opportunity for a new business, though).

IIRC, you need to use “bridged” networking with a physical router in order to get netjack to work with the vm as a client

Okay cool!!!