VMWare fusion causes audio glitches/stuttering when playing any 2D/3D application.

[abc16]

I installed VMWare fusion player today. And whenever I try to play a game or render a model in blender the audio gets really glitchy. It's really annoying when I am testing my game's audio or playing a game. And it also happens when simply watching 4K/1080P Video (rarely). I tried allocating more cores, More ram. I also tried allocating less cores, less ram.

I searched everywhere in google for a fix but I couldn't find any. Any solution I tried didn't fix the issue or just made it worse. 

MY MACBOOK:
M1 MacBook Air 7 Core GPU 8 Core CPU
256 GB SSD
8GB RAM

I know these specs may be low but running low intensity games or applications such as blender or stared valley causes these glitches.

[Technogeezer]

What guest operating system is in use here?

How is your virtual machine configured (CPU/memory)?

(hint: VMware's graphics driver for Windows 11 ARM doesn't support OpenGL, only DX11.). 

[abc16]

What guest operating system is in use here?

- Windows 11. 

How is your virtual machine configured (CPU/memory)?

- 2 cores (tried 4, 6 cores) and 4 gb ram.

(hint: VMware's graphics driver for Windows 11 ARM doesn't support OpenGL, only DX11.). 

- I'm not sure. The games and applications I tried were DirectX10/11

[Technogeezer]

Let's get Blender off the table first. Blender's system requirements say it requires OpenGL - I just trie installing blender 4.0, and it won't run saying that it can't find OpenGL 4.3. Which is what's expected.

One thing you might want to try is to open the settings in the Windows VM and set the sound output of the high definition audio device to 44100 Hz. The default setting is 48000 Hz. 

[abc16]

I'm so sorry for the confusion I used blender as an example for the sake of generalization and simplification not as the problem area. I am just confused about why the sound stutters or glitches whenever the graphics are used even if they aren't under a lot of load like modeling or 2D gaming

As for your next suggestion I am currently trying it out to see if it works (UPDATE: It didn't work sadly, I tried again and again changing the sound HZ). Thank you so much for your patience and your time, I'm immensely grateful.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Did you use the easy install to build the guest?  If not, it might be worth doing that.

There are definitely issues if you upgrade guests that were created with the original tech preview - I had to rebuild all of mine to get it sorted.

4K video is going to be tough in a guest (it's tough even in my M1 Max), but 1080p should work on that machine without an issue.  The ARM systems have a lot more capacity than Intel did, so 2 CPU/4GB shouldn't give it a problem (unless you have a bunch of stuff running on the host).

Oh, the guest is on the internal SSD, right?  And you're using the built-in speakers on the Air?

[abc16]

Did you use the easy install to build the guest?  If not, it might be worth doing that.

- I did. (I also installed VMWare tools, Just Incase you thought that was the issue, It's not)

There are definitely issues if you upgrade guests that were created with the original tech preview - I had to rebuild all of mine to get it sorted.

- No I had the latest VMWare fusion public release ERGO No tech preview

4K video is going to be tough in a guest (it's tough even in my M1 Max), but 1080p should work on that machine without an issue.  The ARM systems have a lot more capacity than Intel did, so 2 CPU/4GB shouldn't give it a problem (unless you have a bunch of stuff running on the host).

- No I'm using YouTube and I thought it might run mine but as I said in my original post the audio rarely glitches out, only on graphical games 

Oh, the guest is on the internal SSD, right?  And you're using the built-in speakers on the Air?

- Yes and yes.

(Disclaimer: My issue is not the performance, It's exceptional. Just the audio glitches and make game dialogue or videos inaudible they're so annoying.)

[abc16]

I FOUND OUT WHY THE AUDIO GLITCHES (IMPORTANT)

I tried changing the settings in VMware Fusion and tried changing every setting in the hopes of finding the problem area. I went to the display tab in VMware Fusion settings and turned off the "Accelerate 3D graphics" checkbox

Turns out it was the 3D Graphics Acceleration feature causing the audio stuttering. When I turned off the 3D Graphics acceleration feature the audio stuttering/glitches STOPPED. 

I'm not sure why the 3D Graphics Acceleration causes this bug but I am sad that I have to turn it off to hear audio because any 3D Graphics are unplayable (FROM 60 FPS capped to a sad 10-3FPS) without 3D Graphics Acceleration when they used to be playable and speedy with 3D Graphics acceleration

Disclaimer: I don't think it was because the GPU was at load because I was trying non demanding titles.

[NateNateNAte]

That sounds like a coding glitch between the M1 and fusion passing resource requests to from the win11 VM to the M1 host.  Specifically in the 3D graphics acceleration module. Being that the host and the VM are running different source codes, they might be asking/passing the right requests/resources, but then due to a coding setting it might be passing the traffic through a 'slower' thread.  

Very interesting issue.  I've seen that before where turning off 3D acceleration improves 'basic' functions.  It would be interesting to see how the code is really written in that use case. 

[abc16]

Yes I think that is the issue. Do you have any solutions, or is that just how the code works unless it's fixed? Because I can't really play any games or applications without 3D graphics acceleration. 

[ColoradoMarmot]

So couple of thoughts:  First, How much shared video memory do you have set in the guest?  You can pretty much max it out.  That might help.

Second, Win11 is a pretty hefty beast and really wants 4 cores and 8 GB to run well, especially for games.  Your machine may not have the horsepower to run things properly - especially if they're intel games, in an ARM guest.

[abc16]

I already said performance is not the issue. I already allocated 8GB of shared graphics memory and 4 cores. I think there is some kind of bottleneck between the sound and the graphics. I turned "Accelerate 3D Graphics" off in VMWare Fusion display settings and the audio glitches stopped.

[Technogeezer]

Some additional thoughts:

• Make sure you've changed the output device's output frequency from the default 48K. to 44.1K.
• Turn off echo cancellation for the VM's emulated sound driver.
• Try to use external USB speakers directly connected to the VM instead of using Fusion's virtualized sound driver. 

The other things to consider when running games or 3D applications in Windows 11 ARM:

• I'd be willing to bet that these games and applications are x64 Intel code - it'll be a rarity if you find one that's been compiled natively for Windows 11 ARM. Which means they're at the mercy of Microsoft's x86_64 translation system (which I don't think is as robust as Rosetta 2 is on the Mac). 
• Windows 11 ARM in Fusion does not have the same degree of graphics acceleration as its Intel brethren. There's no OpenGL support or DX12 support from Fusion for Windows 11 ARM. (Parallels supports OpenGL 3.3 but not DX12). 
• And there are some Windows 3D acceleration issues that VMware knows about from the Tech Preview that for some unknown reason they've not addressed. That's a "shame on VMware" moment for not fixing them even though it's been over 6 months since they've been reported. 

[abc16]

Make sure you've changed the output device's output frequency from the default 48K. to 44.1K.

- I did but there was no difference

Turn off echo cancellation for the VM's emulated sound driver.

- It was already turned off, turning it on just for the sake of testing changed nothing

Try to use external USB speakers directly connected to the VM instead of using Fusion's virtualized sound driver. 

- I don't have any external speakers but I tried some headphones and still the same issue.

• I'd be willing to bet that these games and applications are x64 Intel code - it'll be a rarity if you find one that's been compiled natively for Windows 11 ARM. Which means they're at the mercy of Microsoft's x86_64 translation system (which I don't think is as robust as Rosetta 2 is on the Mac). 
• Windows 11 ARM in Fusion does not have the same degree of graphics acceleration as its Intel brethren. There's no OpenGL support or DX12 support from Fusion for Windows 11 ARM. (Parallels supports OpenGL 3.3 but not DX12). 
• And there are some Windows 3D acceleration issues that VMware knows about from the Tech Preview that for some unknown reason they've not addressed. That's a "shame on VMware" moment for not fixing them even though it's been over 6 months since they've been reported. 

You are right in these points but just to clarify I wasn't using any tech previews, I'm using VMWare Fusion 13.5. I don't think it's primarily an audio issue I think it's a bottleneck issue (because turning off accelerated 3D graphics fixes the issue at the cost of performance). Some apps definitely run into bottlenecks when running accelerated 3D graphics through a MacBook running virtualized windows which is also emulating an app (3 translation layers). But it shouldn't be this bad especially if turning accelerated 3D graphics fixes the issue. I just want to know if I can somehow mitigate the issue

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

What you're seeing may be related to the VMware 3D drivers from what you're stating. If the issue is indeed with VMware's 3D driver then there probably isn't much you can do to mitigate it other than provide information to VMware about what you're seeing and how to reproduce it.

Fusion 13.5 contains some of the same 3D acceleration issues that were reported in the Tech Preview.  

[abc16]

I tried another virtual machine software (not VMware) and the audio issue didn't happen and the performance was good. I think maybe it's a glitch on VMware's behalf since the 3D accelerated graphics is not really fully baked. Thank you so much for your help though I marked your answer as the solution because I didn't really find another way to fix it besides waiting for VMware to release a patch.

[Memnarch]

Similar situation: m1 air and m3 air both have significant audio stutters and pops.  This can be readily demonstrated in the sound control panel with the "test" button with no app running at all.

Things I've tried:

1. Changing the sampling rate and bit depth make a huge difference, much worse at higher settings, but still mild problems at 44kHz/ 16 bit (lowest setting.)

2. Turning off 3d acceleration has no effect (and note that no 3d app is required to recreate the problem.). Running a 3d app does make things worse though.  3D works pretty well with DX11 if no sound. 

3. VM was made from scratch using easy settings.

4. Turning off all audio enhancements or turning off the microphone had no effect. 

5. RAM/ CPU cores had no effect.

6. Latest versions with all patches (13.5.1, Win 11 ARM.)

7. Native Mac audio (in MacOS) works fine.  Haven't tried any external audio device.

8. One outside post suggested loading some ancient version of the audio driver from a previous version of fusion; VM wouldn't boot when I tried this. 

As noted, a different vendor (parallels, more expensive) doesn't have this problem at all.  This is pretty clearly a vmware bug, and it's been reported multiple times, so here's to hoping for a fix.

M

[Technogeezer]

This is definitely a VMware issue with their virtual audio device. The drivers (in the case of Windows) are Microsoft's, so VMware is not  doing a very good job of virtualizing the high definition audio device.

The situation really isn't much better on VMware Workstation either from what I hear. It's apparent that VMware is lacking in development talent for virtualized graphics and audio devices - this is an instance where the dependence on ESXi technologies does not help the Fusion and Workstation users.