External USB Sound passed through to VM [SOLVED]


DanielCoffey

Recommended Posts

I would appreciate some advice on which specific sound card is recommended for use with unRAID and a gaming VM using headphones.

 

I have a small under monitor sound bar which works perfectly in the VM and is fine for casual stereo sound when my wife and I are listening to a YouTube video together but the majority of my listening and gaming is done with a pair of Grado SR60 headphones.

 

The reason I am asking is that first I noticed that my onboard sound would not break out into its own IOMMU group. From a forum search I understand this is an issue on some Skylake and Kabylake boards (ASUS Maximus IX Formula in my case). The warning when starting the VM is clear that it is the group the onboard sound is in.

 

Next I thought to try my external Roland Quad Capture over USB since it has a headphones monitor socket. I quickly discovered that the audio was faint and very, very distorted. I checked the Roland support site and saw the disclaimer of "This driver cannot be used in a virtual Windows environment, such as Hyper-V or Virtual PC." Damn, there goes that idea.

 

I am now at the position of needing a PCIe sound card. I do have a spare PCIe 3.0 x1 slot on the motherboard so please could you suggest something. The main brands I have in front of me at Scan in the UK are ASUS and Creative.

 

=====================================

 

EDIT : Thread title changed and method for solving detailed below

 

I have managed to pass through my Roland Quad Capture successfully to the VM and get rid of the poor, choppy sound from it.

 

Thanks to gridrunner in his YouTube video on how to pass a USB controller to the VM, it works perfectly. In the video he makes a comment about how external sound cards generally prefer to be on a stubbed USB controller that has been passed to the VM rather than just being handed to the VM directly. This was the key to getting the Roland working. Once I stubbed my PCIe USB controller in the syslinux file, rebooted, set the USB mode in the VM to XHCI (3.0) and gave the whole controller to the VM, all issues with the Roland ceased and it behaved as expected.

 

Thanks, gridrunner - you saved me from buying a sound card!

Edited by DanielCoffey
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.