Choppy, garbled audio in virtualbox

[Shakif]

The audio is choppy, garbled, and seems to play at double speed. Is this expected in a VB VM? Is there any fix?

[Matevz Leskovsek]

samplerate in driver (ALSA?) is too low, incrfease it 2-fold.. but i
really dont understand you are running VM on android-x86? As an APK?
Anyway if you have terminal access I would ask chatgpt "how to change
samplerate in alsa"

On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 3:14 PM Shakif <shak...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The audio is choppy, garbled, and seems to play at double speed. Is this expected in a VB VM? Is there any fix?
>

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[Matevz Leskovsek]

if it only "seems" it is double speed and is not exact double speed,
then yopu need to increase buffer in alsa, increase it 2-fold for
example

[Shakif]

I run android-x86 in a VB VM, not the other way around.

[RoyalGraphX]

for clarity, he’s talking about VirtualBox.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/9099440f-9d09-45b9-9a7a-6dc263c806b0n%40googlegroups.com.

[Matevz Leskovsek]

i would guess https://www.google.com/search?q=virtualbox+audio+settings+buffer+size

or increasing buffer size on the host OS

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[Matevz Leskovsek]

a simple test would be to use another sound card on host OS, like a
USB sound card like
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183984143540?hash=item2ad64f3cb4:g:geMAAOSwm0pc3bDy

[Shakif]

Is there any diagnostics in android-x86 that can isolate the root cause?

Since I am not experiencing any issues with other guest OSs this is android-x86 specific and it will have to be the only subject of troubleshooting.

[Matevz Leskovsek]

not much to change in android, "sound about" was a useful APK back in
the days so you could reroute sockets, i doubt it changes any
birtate/buffer/samplerate though

btw, do all apps play garbled audio in this android?

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[Shakif]

I only tested popular messengers and all of them play choppy/hoarse audio. The CPU utilization on the host is 100% of 1 core. The video seems to be OK but audio is unintelligible in both video and audio messages.
When I play the same video on the host the CPU utilization is 17% of 1 core.

[Matevz Leskovsek]

or something else is bringing cpu to 100... please keep us posted if you find it

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 8:00 PM Matevz Leskovsek
<matevz.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> audio breaks faster when the samples drop (dropouts), in video we dont
> really notice if it is 33fps or 10% of them are dropping, in audio 10%
> samples drop sounds really bad... but you said The CPU utilization on
> the host is 100% of 1 core - I assume host is powerful enough and this
> shows sync issues between host and guest (samplerate 44.1 vs 48Khz is
> the most typical issue)

> > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/ef8f8227-1e6c-4ecf-975c-d182c2226375n%40googlegroups.com.

[Matevz Leskovsek]

CPU issue alone would describe this so start there.. keep us informed

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 8:00 PM Matevz Leskovsek
<matevz.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> audio breaks faster when the samples drop (dropouts), in video we dont
> really notice if it is 33fps or 10% of them are dropping, in audio 10%
> samples drop sounds really bad... but you said The CPU utilization on
> the host is 100% of 1 core - I assume host is powerful enough and this
> shows sync issues between host and guest (samplerate 44.1 vs 48Khz is
> the most typical issue)
>

> > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/ef8f8227-1e6c-4ecf-975c-d182c2226375n%40googlegroups.com.

[Shakif]

Ok. Received several more video and voice mails and playing each one pins the CPU and the sound is still garbled.

[Matevz Leskovsek]

I guess cpu pinning is not something normal in VMs, and also I wonder
how many people run android-x86 in a container? Shouldnt bluestacks be
used for that? I am just honestly wondering as I am really no OS
guru...

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/3a280002-7d04-4111-8287-32a57be3cbd6n%40googlegroups.com.

[Shakif]

What is your role here?

[Matevz Leskovsek]

Just jopined group because I am happily running a-x86 on an old HP
laptop and monitoring other issues, and i simply jumped in as i am
very enthusiastic about audio drivers and sync/stream issues

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/52107860-7ea7-4c1f-bc71-647c04b3d6edn%40googlegroups.com.

[Shakif]

So you are not a developer?

[Matevz Leskovsek]

dfntly not an OS developer, and defntly not an a-x86 porting team
member.. just a fan of this group and these builds... But I have done
a lot of designing, coding, debugging, profiling, deploying,... but in
this case, I am just a fan who got excited because I heard something
about audio (which I know lots about, but I dont know much about CPU
pinning and such, although I can assume... I think x86 port is not VM
friendly.. but I just think that, I am new to this group and I'm not a
system specialist and I only installed it once on one laptop, so... )

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-x86/b2682f87-0f48-468f-a981-4e54c19f908fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Shakif]

Thanks.

I am looking for troubleshooting info from android-x86 developers. You might save you some time.