No sound in 12.04 on VirtualBox

Question

No sound when installed in VirtualBox. When I boot from the live CD in Windows, sound works fine on my speakers. When in boot the live CD in VirtualBox it does not see my speakers. In sound properties only digital output built in S/PDIF and headphones!

I've done the pavcontrol - alsamixer - all settings are OK. I've tried both 32/64 versions of Ubuntu. Running current version VirtualBox. System: Windows 7 64 - i5.

What am I overlooking?

Solution 1

For a windows guest, Ubuntu host system, set the VM to use ALSA on the host and the VM soundcard to Intel HD.

Solution 2

Is your audio setting for your Ubuntu guest virtual machine set to ICH AC97?

ICH AC97 is the only VirtualBox VM audio setting which allows me to get sound when running Ubuntu as a guest and either Windows or OS X (10.6.8) as the host.

In particular, if a VM's audio setting is Intel HD Audio then sound does not work in an Ubuntu 12.04 desktop guest.

On the other hand, sound will only work for a Windows 7 (64-bit) guest when the audio setting is Intel HD Audio. This can be rather annoying when you are working with a VM which dual boots either Ubuntu or Windows 7 as the guest OS.

I have never investigated this further to find out why it works this way or if there is a way to work around it. If you happen to find one, please let us know about it.

Note: You will have to "power off" your VM to change its audio setting.

Comments

[irrational John]

Have you been able to resolve your problem?

[Coddder]

did that works OK. still NO sound.

[ashes999]

You may need to completely shut down the guest and start it up again after doing this. That fixed it for me (while a simple reboot of the guest did not).

[sмurf]

+1. Alsa on the host fixed it for me - Ubuntu 14.10 host + Windows 7 guest

[davidA]

Just curious - why are you dual-booting a VM? What advantage does that provide over having two separate VMs?

[cagri]

Alsa on host works, Host Ubuntu 18.04, Guest Windows 10 Lite

[Eric]

Also works for Win 10 host, Ubuntu 20.04 guest.