Crackling Scratchy Sound in Windows Qube in Qubes 4.1

Hello.
I’m using ReviOS inside my windows vm, which is a debloated Windows 10. Everything works good, except for sound quality, which is distorted with crackling sounds. In Linux vms, sound is without issues.
I’m using it in a template configuration. When installing Qubes Windows Tools I left everything at defaults except for moving user profiles to a separate partition.

I’ve tried changing audio models and this is what I got so far:
ac97 - doesn’t work (I guess no driver? as it was unrecognized in windows device manager)
es1370 - doesn’t work.
ich9 - works, but has loud constant crackling.
ich6 - works best, but still occasional frequent crackling.

I tested ich6 further and this is what I got:
crackling frequency seems to be dependent on the load, ie it increases when I move application window around, or open some other application like task manager.

Initially windows vm had 4Gb of memory and 2 cores, then I increased it to 8Gb and 4 core and further to 12 Gb and 6 cores
there seems to be no major difference between 4/2 and 8/4 configuration, but curiously enough sound quality seems to get worse with 12/6 configuration.
My system has 34 Gb of memory and a 6 core CPU, and I had no other vms running except for networking service qubes.

Also I’ve tried these commands, without any noticeable difference:
qvm-features timer-period 1000
qvm-features out.latency 10000
qvm-features out.buffer-length 4000

Sound output is also emulated output (if that’s what it’s called), as I don’t use any usb adapters and the like.

Any help would be welcome.

1 Like

I am having the exact same issue. Just installed 4.1 I have run through all the troubleshooting steps you did before I found this post. Have you found any solution yet?

It is well known issue, unresolved so far.

You may try some of these things, and to read about it.

Same thing with Windows 7 VM on Qubes 4.2.0. Hardware is Librem 14