When a VM starts, Earpods stops functioning

Hi, you're using Parallels Desktop 16 right? And get the same issue? Could you collect the tech report and share the report's ID with us?
Did you test it with Apple and Parallels hypervisors? Could you also provide us with reports when Apple HV and Parallels HV was enabled.
Looking forward to your reply.

 

Yes, I am on PD 16. The problem does not occur with the Apple Hypervisor.

If I get a chance I will see if I can reproduce the issue, but honestly I just need Parallels to work all day long so for now I'm sticking with Apple Hypervisor.

@Maria@Parallels perhaps your team could acquire some wireless bluetooth headphones and attempt to reproduce the issue?

 

Hello, did you update your Parallels Desktop to the latest build (16.0.1.) and check the issue?
If the issue still persists could you collect the tech report for us please?

 

Guys, please let us know if the issue reoccurs.
We will be glad to help to get it fixed, but we need a bit more tech info from the latest update.

 

yes, the issue is still exisiting, even with newest parallels 16.0.1

If I change the hypervisior to apple, it works perfecty but then my Windows 10 is freezing randomly... This only happens with Headphones (or airpods pro in my case) that are connected via Bluetooth, the speaker sound is totally fine.

 

If I change hypervisior to apple the VM doesn't start. The audio problem only happens with Headphones. If I change to speaker sound everything is fine.

 

I experience the same issue and I can confirm after many tests that the problem is the Parallels Hypervisor. Switching to Apples Hypervisor clearly solves the problem and even more. It is possible to get sound inside the VM and outside in the host at the same time, switching between devices as you wish.

So why not be happy at that point?

Because Apple Hypervisor is much slower than Parallels Hypervisor and takes much more resources.
I have 8 CPU's and 50GB RAM in my virtual machine and run 8 jobs at the same time the whole day. Under Parallels Hypervisor the system runs very smoothly, I have nothing to complain. Under Apples Hypervisor the machine behaves like slow-moving. Every switching between windows takes additional time.
So this is clearly a point for Parallels! Congratulation at that point.

What can we do?

Actually there is nothing to do from our (clients) side. We reported all this already long time ago and Parallels Team should be aware from this bug. We sent tech reports, opened cases, called the technicians and no solution.
Sincerely @Maria@Parallels, why you need more tech info from the latest update? Is there nobody at Parallels that tests a new version before it is being distributed?
This bug is so easy and so reliable to reproduce that any developer of Parallels can check if it is still there and send himself the tech report.

Well, let's wait. I hope they will solve it faster than my other ticked from 14.02.2019 (602 days) that is still in engineering...

 

if you can live without sound inside windows, you can disable the soundcard in the windows device manager, this helped me to get sound on the airpods on macos.

Seems like I will stick with that for now...

 

So many problems with Apple products appeared this year. Maybe, they don't have enough time to solve this issue quickly... What issue was your ticket about?

 

I'm having the same issues. I have bluetooth headphones, but the problem extends beyond just the headphones. When sound eventually stops it affects all output devices on the mac and Windows VM side--no sound from any speaker: Internal Mac Mini, External Headphones, Bluetooth Headphones, etc.

So far, setting the Hypervisor to Apple has resolved the sound problem.

I have a MacMini 3.2 GHZ 6-Core Intel Core i7 and 16 GB RAM. Windows VM is set to use half the cores and half the memory.
Here are the symptoms and observations PRIOR to changing the Hypervisor setting (i.e. Hypervisor set to Parallels):

• Eventually there is NO sound at all.
• If I start the VM with something already playing on the mac (i.e. online meeting, video, music, etc.), it often maintains the sound for a while. The amount of time varies that it takes before all sound stops.
  • Sometimes I can stop and start sound (pause the music or video) and restart without a problem.
  • Other times a single interruption can cause sound to stop altogether.
  • Sometimes before stopping completely, the sound will first become choppy or garbled.
• Even when sound stops coming out of the speaker, there are no other errors or other indicators that anything is wrong.
  • On the Windows side, different sound meters indicate that sound is playing (like in Sound Mixer, the meter bar moves up and down indicating sound, both for output and the mic input).
• After I pause or shutdown the VM, the sound from the mac usually returns within a few seconds. For sound to return, sometimes it requires pausing playing audio or video stream, but the sound returns when I start it again.
  • It does not matter how the Parallels VM is stopped--Paused by Parallels, Windows Sleep, Windows Shutdown, etc.--as long as it is not loaded.

Here's what I tried (not exhaustive):

• Disabled sound in Windows VM completely by removing the VM's virtualized sound hardware. Windows essentially had no sound card. I hoped that this would stop Parallels from even binding to the mac's sound driver/processor. This did not prevent the sound on the mac from stopping.
• I selected different Sound Output for the mac and the Windows using both the mac's sound settings (on the mac menu bar) and the Parallels Sound Output settings. No combination of options worked, including choosing Disabled for the VM.
• Many months ago I found advice to terminate (i.e. kill) the coreaudio process on the mac. This solution actually worked often back then, but it seems very rare that it works anymore. Even when it did work, it was not a permanent fix, but it usually worked long enough for an online meeting.
• First, updated to the latest Parallels version 15.*. That did NOT fix the problem.
• Next, updated to the most recent Parallels version 16. This also did NOT fix the problem.
• I made my own loud sounds, but no matter how much I cursed at the dumb thing, all speakers remain silent as long as the Windows VM is running.

 

I am also having this issue, and although changing the hypervisor to apple resolves the problem, it significantly lowers the performance of the VM compared to when the hypervisor is set to parallels.

Has anyone managed to resolve this issue?

 

I've also fished around the knowledge base and forums, and have found that parallel tools should have installed parallels audio controller - which I cannot find in device manager on windows VM, but parallels tools seems to have installed fine. Is the 'parallels audio controller' still something that is installed by parallel tools?

 

Hi folks, there are good news:
Yesterday I installed the new MacOs Big Sur and the problems with the AirPods are gone, even with Parallels HyperVisor.
So, who can install the new BigSur please give it a try. Beside the fact that it is pretty fast and beautiful it solved the problem with my Bluetooth AirPods.
Until now it works great with Parallels Desktop.

 

Many thanks for telling us it's now solved for you - I've actually updated to Big Sur, but I'm still having this issue (my issue wasn't with the airpods, but with the macbook speaker itself) - I do hope this is something that parallels looks into further.

 

Well, I was too good to be true. The problem came back, so it is not solved. Sorry for the wrong information that I passed here, I should have tested more.
Maybe because of the fresh install it was solved initially. After some hours of testing and mainly after the doubts of @SungM1 I saw that Parallels Hypervisor still can not handle the switching of devices between the Mac and the Guest.
@Maria@Parallels, are there any news from the Parallels Team? What should we do so that Parallels will work on this problem that many users have?

 

have this problem as well. when using parallels hypervisor and playing a game I get no sound on virtual machine, but besides that I also get extremely delayed and lagging behavior on brightness and sound level changes on the host

 

This happens to me with the mac's speakers all the time. This is running a linux VM. Apple HV is not an option because of performance. What I have found that seems to work is having a thunderbolt dock with USB audio. So long as I'm at my desk and using the dock, I have zero audio issues. As soon as I unplug from the dock I have audio issues.

 

I continue to have this issue with the Parallels Hypervisor under MacOS 10.15.17 and parallels Version 16.1.2 (49151), when using any Bluetooth headphones (either Apple AirPods Pro or Bose QC700). I have tried changing the parallels audio type to AC'97 as some suggested but this does not help.

It does seem to be related to Zoom, or at least exacerbated by it. I tried gathering technical data twice today while the problem was occurring, but in both instances when the technical data gathering process ended, no dialog was presented for me to send it to Parallels support or to copy the ID.

@Maria@Parallels is there any update on this? It seems to be a common issue, and easily reproducible.

 

@Maria@Parallels I have filed technical data from when this was occurring: #360389501. Please let me know if I can be of assistance.
The repro is simple: launch a Windows VM using the Parallels hypervisor, then start a zoom test call while using AirPods Pro or Bose wireless headphones.

 

I would like to give it the rest of the day to say for sure, but I believe I may have found a workaround: removed the "USB and Bluetooth" section from the VM's Configuration > Hardware section (select the section and click '-' to remove it). This disables USB and bluetooth completely but I've been running with it for half a day now and haven't had any more issues.

Note that prior to removing it, all USB and bluetooth options were disabled within that section for my VM and the problem still occurred. I assume removing this section just prevents the driver itself from loading.