Volumio in VirtualBox - Working with some issues - Sharing Experience

Dear all,

I’d like to share my experience with Volumio in Virtual Box as I fond some issues and haven’t seen anything updated related to Virtualization

Situation:

At my house I have Ubuntu 20.04 desktop running mainly as a server (plex, torrentz, backups, minecraft server, nextcloud) and I thought that I’d like to have Voluimo as well as I’m pretty happy with it running it with RP 3b. I got it to run with one particular issue that discouraged me to keep it, if a song is playing and I move it to anywhere in the track the display shows that song is being played but no audio.

Guide to install it:

  1. Computer with Virtual Box installed
  2. Download Volumio PC Image and convert the image with the following command:
    VBoxManage convertdd volumioxxxx.img volumioxxx.vdi (you can name the vdi file as you like as long it ends with .vdi)
  3. When creating the virtual machine the network should be in Client Bridge mode (this way the virtual machine will have an IP address from the main router and it’d be accessible from the other machines in the same network)
  4. The audio config is with Alsa Audio and Intel Controller

Having this the virtual machine runs Volumio

for this test I’m using a Behringer UMC 22 USB audio as DAC and with my audio system (Sony STR700) couldn’t tell any differences however this may be related to the fact the audio system is not a high end system,

Well, this is my experience, if anyone has anything to add or share I’d happy to add it to this post

Thanks for reading this!!

We’re you able to run it headless? I was wondering whether I could further reduce power consumption by removing the graphic part. Im assuming that even though my screen is off the vbox is still consuming. Power top is showing 2.5W just from the virtualbox even if it is not used by any client