[Qemu-discuss] Real-Time Audio Applications in QEMU virtual machines ?

[Niklas Reppel]

Dear List,

i've been trying to make some real-time audio applications 
(SuperCollider, JACK, Pure Data) run in a QEMU virtual machine,
running on a Linux host, with an Arch Linux guest system. My machine has 
a pretty recent i7 CPU and plenty of RAM. On the
host side, i used the "alsa" audio driver. On the guest side, i've 
applied most of the little tricks that improve real-time calculation
with Linux.

Still, i've not managed to achieve a state that i deem usable. Generic 
audio playback (i.e. playing a YT video in Chromium) works
just fine, but just as much as playing a sine wave in Pure Data doesn't 
work, as the output is crackling/distorted all the time.

Jack2 won't allow connecting clients (showing similar symptoms as 
described here:  https://github.com/jackaudio/jack2/issues/116).
With Jack1, i actually managed to start it (with a very high latency) 
and get a sine wave play from SuperCollider, but with a permanently
rising number of xruns.

Anyway, before i look on any further, is there any general, systemic 
reason why real-time audio won't ever work in a VM, so i can stop looking ?

Best,
Niklas




--
Niklas Reppel
www.parkellipsen.de