Jump to content

Audio issues w/ Sierra+Unlocker+ESXi 6.0U2


imrazor
 Share

5 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

So I've managed to get Unlocker working on ESXi 6.0U2, installed Sierra and got GPU passthrough working with my GTX 1050 Ti. However...audio is a mess. I tried with an old USB sound card I had lying around, and the results were pathetic. So I disabled SIP (that was an adventure), installed VoodooHDA 2.9.0 and tried routing audio over HDMI. Again, it was an unpleasant experience. So I tried an old PCI M-Audio Revolution with a Snow Leopard era kext. I got audio, but it frequently broke up and distorted.

 

Aside from audio, the VM feels stuttery and uneven, like the system is overloaded with I/O. However, there's actually very little activity in Activity Monitor. Anyone have any suggestions for getting decent audio out of this VM?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I've managed to get Unlocker working on ESXi 6.0U2, installed Sierra and got GPU passthrough working with my GTX 1050 Ti. However...audio is a mess. I tried with an old USB sound card I had lying around, and the results were pathetic. So I disabled SIP (that was an adventure), installed VoodooHDA 2.9.0 and tried routing audio over HDMI. Again, it was an unpleasant experience. So I tried an old PCI M-Audio Revolution with a Snow Leopard era kext. I got audio, but it frequently broke up and distorted.

 

Aside from audio, the VM feels stuttery and uneven, like the system is overloaded with I/O. However, there's actually very little activity in Activity Monitor. Anyone have any suggestions for getting decent audio out of this VM?

Do you have any go to pages that give good info and/or instructions about using ESXi and GPU passthrough and also digital audio? I"ve wanted to try using your methods to have osx virtualization from the windows os that has video acceleration and qe/cl. Are you able to have accelerated video with passthrough? Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you have any go to pages that give good info and/or instructions about using ESXi and GPU passthrough and also digital audio? I"ve wanted to try using your methods to have osx virtualization from the windows os that has video acceleration and qe/cl. Are you able to have accelerated video with passthrough? Thanks

 

Your statement about Windows makes me wonder about what you're working with. ESXi has nothing to do with Windows; it's a full operating system published by VMWare with no GUI - only command line. But, yes, with ESXi and GPU passthrough I have full QE and CI and full hardware acceleration - provided I install Nvidia's web driver. However, I also have crappy audio which ruins the OS X experience, for me at least.

 

I didn't do anything special. I installed Unlocker according to the directions on this site. Then I followed VMWare's instructions for installing OS X, which involved a full install of 10.8 then doing in-place upgrades until I reached 10.12. I then installed Nvidia's web driver, reserved the 1050 Ti for PCI/PCIe passthrough in ESXi, assigned the Nvidia card to the OS X VM and booted it up.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Holy bat guano, Batman! Got it working by passing through the fricking *onboard* audio. I also got HDMI and PCI audio working, but both exhibit some crackling every now and then. The onboard audio is almost perfect. Fingers crossed that it stays that way...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I finally got the I/O and audio situation worked out with this setup. A friend who has much more experience with ESXi suggested that I get a PCIe SSD to prevent I/O bottlenecks. That was out of my budget, but I did get a Samsung SATA SSD (EVO 950 500GB) and that relieved the I/O bottleneck, resulting in perfect onboard audio. I can use USB audio, but every once in a while it will distort and break up, though when it works it sounds much better than the Voodoo audio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...