"-soundhw: ac97" kills usb passthrough

[imrazor]

I've tried various experiments to improve the audio quality in my Windows 10 VM, but this seems to have killed it. USB pass through of keyboard and mouse stopped working when I enabled this option. Well, sort of. I can still use the passed through keyboard to navigate the EFI boot menu, but once Windows boots the keyboard and mouse are completely unresponsive, both in the host and guest OS.

Anyone seen this before or have a fix for it?

 

[Stewge]

If you're on an Intel host, I've found the most reliable way is just to pass the entire card in via PCIE passthrough.

This is how my HTPC operates and I don't have any audio glitches or DPC problems. Also have a GTX1060 passed through and various USB devices.

 

[imrazor]

I fixed this by disabling VGA pass through and booting the VM through the VNC console. The problem then magically sorted itself out when I re-enabled VGA pass through.

I was able to install AC97 drivers in Windows, but I got much crackling and distortion. Like @Stewge I found the best option was to pass through my motherboard's onboard sound to the VM. (The host uses a PCI sound card.) Despite doing that, I still face some crackling and distortion during heavy disk or network I/O. It could be because I'm using older/underpowered hardware.