Loud cracking sound on Parallels 8 and 9

T

tra895

Bit poster
Hello,
I've searched the forum and it looks like many users are facing this problem, but nobody offers a solution. Reinstalling Parallel tools doesn't help, and I'm afraid that my speakers would tear.
Did anyone find a better way to solve this problem? It happened both on Parallels 8 and 9. I know I can disable the sound on windows, but that's not ideal...

Thanks
 
I get this too, but only sometimes. On my system, I can generally get it to go away by rebooting either the VM or both the VM and Mac. Sucky bug for sure.
 
Have had this problem since updating Mac OS X to 10.8.5. Not sure if that's coincidental. Using P8 here, and thought P9 might fix it. But it sounds like (from this thread) that P9 doesn't fix the problem. Had re-installed P Tools twice already to no avail. Happens on both my Win 7 and Win 8 VM's. The way I temporarily fix it is by pressing the volume up/down back and forth till the regular sound comes back. Annoying as hell problem though. I guess I'll hold off on P9 for now.
 
I just installed 10.8.5 Supplement 1.0 that just came out, which supposedly covers some audio bug fixes. So far so good. Let's see how this goes.
 
Do you mean the latest update for OSX from the app store? I already update, and still hearing those sounds...
 
You are right, Tra895. The crackling sound came back shortly. Short honeymoon for me. Thought about upgrading to P9, but based on the subject line of this thread, that's not going to fix it. Thinking about trying out new VMWare Fusion 6 before deciding on staying with Parallels. Looks like Fusion 6 can convert an existing Parallels VM.
 
It's weird so many people are complaining about this bug in multiple threads, but there's no update to fix it :( I'll consider switching to VMWare...
 
oh, that's disappointing, its come back for me too. if I toggle the windows audio mute a couple of times it stops so maybe its a clock / sync issue that gets fixed if you change audio settings...
It would be nice to rectify this.
 
Duncan Whitcombe said:
oh, that's disappointing, its come back for me too. if I toggle the windows audio mute a couple of times it stops so maybe its a clock / sync issue that gets fixed if you change audio settings...
It would be nice to rectify this.
Click to expand...

You may be right because this problem occurs most often after a long time (1 hour) of idle / sleep.
When playing with mute / volume - / volume + everything is ok until next idle period.
 
Boy there are a lot of different threads on this!

My setup: Mac Mini 2010, optical out to a set of reference speakers.

The problem started for me with my upgrade from V7 to V9 last month (in preparation for Maverick) any time I leave a VM for a couple of hours without any sound playing I'm greeted by a bust of garbled / static audio when the VM uses sound. The length of the distorted tone is not consistent if the noise that was suppose to play was short (an IM notification, etc) its a sub-1-second burst, if its longer (the default Windows 7 "I've reached the login screen" chime for example) the burst is longer (and the complete non-garbled sound sound plays right after it)

Its really annoying since it seems to ignore to volume level on the VM, and my amplified speakers are not quite at all on full volume :)

So far I've done:
Upgrade from 10.8 to 10.9 (no change)
Removed / Reinstalled the tools
Upgraded V9 to V9.x.x (updates) three times
Played around with the Mac OS MIDI application in the Utilities folder (different sample sizes, frequencies, bit rates, etc)

Very annoying indeed, I'm looking at the Fusion box in the closet and thinking I might have to check on upgrade prices for it :( which really stinks Parallels has been a great package up till this last upgrade!
 
I would just add that the latest update DIDN'T fix it... Do you think any of the developers actually read this thread?
 
I've had this issue since upgrading to OSX 10.8.5. I've had a support ticket open with Parallels for over a month and have gone through three levels of support without a solution. Finally, the issue was passed on to the engineering department. Their engineers said that the latest update of Parallels 9 would fix the problem but it didn't. I had to generate yet another problem report and still have not heard back from them.

So, the answer is that they know about it but don't seem to be able to do anything about it. If you have the time, open a support ticket. You shouldn't be charged for it since this is pretty obviously a bug. I would be interested to hear if upgrading to Mavericks solves the problem. I'm hesitant to try it myself since it's only been out for a short while and I've heard rumblings about speed problems.

By the way, you can make the problem go away for a while by switching to the Mac side and playing a sound (I prefer YouTube music videos). This will fix the problem until the next time the computer sleeps. I've taken to leaving a video open in Safari and playing a few notes when I hear the first pop.
 
I started a similar thread a few days ago, I can attest that upgrading to 10.9 does not solve the issue (and in fact breaks some other stuff as well, like alt-tab with reversed alt and command keys)
 
This, from Parallels Support today (talk about helpful!):

Hello,

Thank you for the reply.

And sorry for the late reply to your message.

The Information has been forwarded to the Development Team to continue investigating the issue.

Development Team does not provide individual updates but if additional information is required or a workaround becomes available shortly, Parallels will contact you directly. At this time, no additional actions are required from you.

Thank you for your time and cooperation


Thank you,
--
Edward Atuahene
Technical Support Engineer
Parallels
 
Developers shouldn't be reading these threads!

tra895 said:
I would just add that the latest update DIDN'T fix it... Do you think any of the developers actually read this thread?
Click to expand...

This is a forum for users to share solutions with each other (and to look up problems they're having, to see if others are having the same trouble).

If the bug is annoying enough to you, don't rely on it being discovered here: Start a bug report so that a developer *will* actually see it on a trouble-ticket... they definitely shouldn't be plowing through thread after thread, trying to make connections about what is and isn't wrong because then *nothing* would get fixed.
 
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