# VirtualBox 3 and sound



## aragon (Sep 17, 2009)

Hey all

I was wondering what the situation of sound is with VirtualBox on a FreeBSD host?  I have the sound device enabled in the VM settings and windows sees an AC97 device, but no sound works.

Is pulseaudio the only option right now?


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## adamk (Sep 17, 2009)

Audio works here in windows XP guest with the OSS Audio Driver, showing up in XP as ICH AC97 in XP.

Are you sure the sound isn't muted in the host or guest?

Adam


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## aragon (Sep 17, 2009)

Strange.  Yea, not muted anywhere.  Native apps running on the host produce sound (eg. mplayer), and nothing muted in the winxp mixer.

Here's my vminfo:


```
Name:            WinXP
Guest OS:        Windows XP
UUID:            9b3e9b53-7202-4b82-8c98-9de619d50f07
Config file:     /data/VirtualBox/WinXP/WinXP.xml
Memory size:     3072MB
VRAM size:       8MB
Number of CPUs:  1
Boot menu mode:  message and menu
Boot Device (1): DVD
Boot Device (2): HardDisk
Boot Device (3): HardDisk
Boot Device (4): Not Assigned
ACPI:            on
IOAPIC:          off
PAE:             off
Time offset:     0 ms
Hardw. virt.ext: on
Nested Paging:   off
VT-x VPID:       off
State:           powered off (since 2009-09-17T15:09:08.000000000)
Monitor count:   1
3D Acceleration: off
Floppy:          empty
SATA:            disabled
IDE Controller:  PIIX4
Primary master:  /data/VirtualBox/WinXP/WinXP.hda (UUID: 448dfb66-bf75-4dcc-9347-336180f09109)
DVD:             empty
NIC 1:           MAC: 0800276B37CA, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: Am79C970A, Reported speed: 100 Mbps
NIC 2:           disabled
NIC 3:           disabled
NIC 4:           disabled
NIC 5:           disabled
NIC 6:           disabled
NIC 7:           disabled
NIC 8:           disabled
UART 1:          disabled
UART 2:          disabled
Audio:           enabled (Driver: Null, Controller: AC97)
Clipboard Mode:  Bidirectional
Shared folders:  

Name: 'data', Host path: '/data' (machine mapping), readonly
Name: 'share', Host path: '/data/VirtualBox/WinXP/Share' (machine mapping), writable

Guest:

Statistics update:                   disabled
```

How does that compare to yours?


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## adamk (Sep 17, 2009)

I'm not finding a 'vminfo' command so I'm not sure how you got such a nice print out that information.

However, the only real difference I'm seeing is that VT-x is enabled here (it's not possible to disable it, but I dont't think it really does anything when FreeBSD is the host) and I have 32 megs of VRAM instead of 8.


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## aragon (Sep 17, 2009)

VBoxManage 


```
VBoxManage showvminfo <name>|<uuid>
```


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## adamk (Sep 17, 2009)

```
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.0.51_OSE
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Name:            Windows XP
Guest OS:        Windows XP
UUID:            dd30f2a2-079c-47da-930d-7d2a7a387531
Config file:     /home/adamk/.VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Windows XP.xml
Memory size:     384MB
VRAM size:       32MB
Number of CPUs:  1
Boot menu mode:  message and menu
Boot Device (1): Floppy
Boot Device (2): DVD
Boot Device (3): HardDisk
Boot Device (4): Not Assigned
ACPI:            on
IOAPIC:          off
PAE:             off
Time offset:     0 ms
Hardw. virt.ext: on
Nested Paging:   off
VT-x VPID:       off
State:           powered off (since 2009-09-17T14:42:52.000000000)
Monitor count:   1
3D Acceleration: off
Floppy:          empty
SATA:            disabled
IDE Controller:  PIIX4
Primary master:  /home/adamk/.VirtualBox/VDI/WindowsXP.vdi (UUID: 86f99209-c03e-4dd5-b192-83b9c9180639)
DVD:             empty
NIC 1:           MAC: 080027EB4A04, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: Am79C973, Reported speed: 0 Mbps
NIC 2:           disabled
NIC 3:           disabled
NIC 4:           disabled
NIC 5:           disabled
NIC 6:           disabled
NIC 7:           disabled
NIC 8:           disabled
UART 1:          disabled
UART 2:          disabled
Audio:           enabled (Driver: OSS, Controller: AC97)
Clipboard Mode:  Bidirectional
Shared folders:  <none>

Guest:

Statistics update:                   disabled
```

Two more things...  I'm using a lot less RAM than you for my guest and your Audio settings show the Driver as Null...

Adam


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## aragon (Sep 17, 2009)

Mmm, yes, I did notice that your audio driver shows OSS.  I'm not able to set mine to that.  My only options are "none" and "null" it seems.


```
$ VBoxManage modifyvm |grep audio        
                            [--audio none|null]
                            [--audiocontroller ac97|sb16]
```


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## aragon (Sep 19, 2009)

I solved this problem.  For some reason my VBoxManage utility doesn't give an OSS option when configuring the audio driver, but if I edit the XML configuration file directly, and set the driver to "OSS", sound works fine!


```
<AudioAdapter controller="AC97" driver="OSS" enabled="true"/>
```


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