"sound" not working well in Win7 vm: static not sound

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willyjp

Junior Member
Although there are at least one or two existing threads describing this problem, I don't find a solution posted. Also it is VERY hard to search on this because most of the hits, if you search on "sound" or "sounds" are on the use of the VERB "sound(s)", as in "....it doesn't sound like that's your problem." !!!

I am running Win7, fully updated, in a PD10 vm on a Mac Book Pro (early '11) running OS10.10.1 (Yosemite). But I had this problem when I was running my Win7 vm in PD9 and when I was running Mavericks for both PD9 and 10. I do not recall this occurring before PD9, but I could be wrong (I've been using a PD vm since PD6). So, it is not new, but never has been enough of a problem that I pursued the incident report/tech support route. But I'm curious to know if there's a solution out there.

I virtually only use Win7 to run Quicken, so I can only give example from that: when I boot up, the Microsoft boot musical sound OR any Quicken sounds (like the cash register "ka-ching" when you enter a transaction OFTEN (but not always) come through as "Pops" or a series of static like crackles and pops. Sometimes, especially on more prolonged sounds, it starts as crackles and ends with (the end part of) the sound expected.

Because this is a problem both with the Win7 boot sound and Quicken sounds, I suspect it is generic to sounds generated in my vm. Since I don't use my vm for any serious audio purpose, it is more of an annoyance than a problem, but I suspect is is a problem with the vm connecting to the host machine's audio system. Audio of all kinds on my Mac has NO problems whatsoever, as long as the source is not my PD vm. So it's limited to sounds generated by the vm.
 
I worked on an iMac today that has the same problem with loud screeches and pops from a virtual machine running Windows 7. The computer has OS X 10.9, Windows 7 with a couple updates and no service packs installed, and Parallels 9. So far, the only way I found to make it stop is to mute the VM audio output in Parallels' options. The incorrect sounds aren't constant. I might hear a split second of pop or screech sounds about 10 times per day if I sit at the computer most of the day. It's obnoxious.

I found a post in a different forum that mentioned a USB related device in the Win 7 VM that is missing a driver or the driver doesn't working. I found the same issue on the iMac I was working on but couldn't find a way to solve the issue. The forum post suggested using Driver Manager to search for a driver update from Microsoft but that didn't help me. You might be asking what the USB driver has to do with the audio. Some things I read suggested the audio might be going through the virtual USB system. Problems like low or unsteady USB bandwidth might cause bad audio. However, I'm not sure the USB driver issue is related to the audio issue in my case. The case I read about involved a USB headset.

I found some posts that mentioned bad audio in virtual machines, Parallels and VMware, was caused by a bug in OS X. Apple acknowledged the bug and planned to fix it but the version of OS X mentioned in the posts was much older so seems like that bug should be fixed by now.
 
I believe you're describing exactly the same problem. I just upgraded to Yosemite (10.10.1) in the past week, and I think PERHAPS the problem is a little bit worse than it was with 10.9. By that I mean that, so far at least, I am not hearing "normal" sounds at all. I had the impression before that it was more of a problem when the CPU was running behind and trying to catch up. When I start up Parallels, my vm and Quicken, there seems to be a LOT of background processing going on for quite awhile.

I say that because when I first start working, the keyboard buffer runs behind on entries and Quicken is sluggish in responding to clicks. It had seemed to me that THAT was when I was more likely to hear the Pops & Crackles instead of the normal Quicken register sounds. After working for awhile, Quicken seems to speed up and respond at its normal speed. At that point, I could previously expect to hear some almost normal Quicken sounds, like the "Ka-Ching" when a register entry is made. On reflection on it, maybe even then there was a tiny bit of a crackle as the sound opened however.

But since I upgraded to 10.10, I have to say I'm not hearing any entirely normal sounds. They all start with the "static" like pops and crackles, though sometimes you catch a bit of the normal tones at the end of the sound clip. I just noted on my last Quicken session that, on shutting down Win7, there were some pops and crackles that I think represented some of the normal shut-down sounds of Win7. Quicken had already been closed at that point. So it pretty much seems to be ALL sounds that I generate from my vm at this point.

Since I don't use PD for anything but Quicken in Win7, I can't say about things like headphones. But they work fine, as do all other audio functions I've observed, when I'm just running my Mac Book Pro in OS 10 and watching a video, etc.. So I'm pretty convince that this is a problem with vm generated sounds only.

As I said above, it's pretty hard to search the forum on this subject because of the tidal wave of hits you get when you search on "sound" or "sounds".....every post where anybody said "...it sounds like..."", etc., etc.. But clearly other people describe this exact same problem in other posts. It would be nice to get rid of this problem!! I don't have any experience with dealing with Parallels formal support process, but is this the kind of thing that one ought to make a formal incident report on? I think it's a problem generic to the PD vm, not just my install, and its not enough of an issue that I'd pay for support to troubleshoot it. But it would be nice if Parallels would work on solving it for those of us who suffer it!!
 
I had a most curious experience with this problem today. Deciding to get a support code myself after reading you describing the same issue, I first went back to the Parallels Knowledge Base. I pulled up the "Troubleshhot Sound Issues" page, which I've gone through before, along with the linked Microsoft sound troubleshooter for Win7.

Just to be sure I hadn't missed a point, I went through every step, examining the driver, their dates, the sound settings and the presence of all the correct checks, etc.. I unchecked and rechecked a number of items just to be sure everything seemed correct, and ended up CHANGING NOTHING.

All this time the PDvm was running and Quicken was open, because I intended to make a(n abnormal) sound with it and run the PD support logger immediately afterward. But when I turned my attention to Quicken, ALL the sounds O generated were absolutely normal! No pops, no crackles, no static!

I couldn't generate any abnormal sounds in Quicken, and as I shut down my vm, all the Win7 sounds were clear and normal also. So, I don't know whether this was the software equivalent of banging and jiggling or not. Im not sure what I did had any effect or not. All I can say is that right now I can't reproduce the problem!!
 
I heard mostly regular sounds from the Win 7 VM on the iMac I worked on. Usually when I heard wrong sounds they happened after a period of no sounds from the VM. I tried using the sound effects configuration menu in Windows' Control Panel to play a variety of sounds to see if something would play wrong but I had no trouble with that. I thought of trying to get an audio recording of the incorrect sounds but to get more than a one-off sound I'd have to record audio all day and then edit out the parts of the recording with no sound. An eight hour audio recording is too long for sharing. Seems as if something related to the VM might be put to sleep or put in a low utilization state to save system resources but has trouble with audio in that state. I think there are some optimization related settings in Parallels for a virtual machine. Also Windows has some advanced power settings. I didn't try changing settings like those. The owner of the iMac seemed to have things set a certain way, I'm not sure why, so I didn't want to tinker with things he hadn't asked me to investigate.
 
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