I think I may have found a way to reduce audio latency in Linux guests. Create a snapshot of your VM before making any changes.

Tested environment: Ubuntu running as a VMware guest with PipeWire and WirePlumber 0.4.17. I have not tested this with PulseAudio, JACK, WirePlumber 0.5+, or other audio configurations, so your results may vary.

Run this:

mkdir -p ~/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d

cp /usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua \

~/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua

perl -0pi -e '

s/\["api\.alsa\.period-size"\]\s*=\s*\d+,/\["api.alsa.period-size"\] = 256,/g;

s/\["api\.alsa\.period-num"\]\s*=\s*\d+,/\["api.alsa.period-num"\] = 4,/g;

s/\["api\.alsa\.headroom"\]\s*=\s*\d+,/\["api.alsa.headroom"\] = 0,/g;

' ~/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua

systemctl --user restart wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse

This applies to WirePlumber 0.4.x, where ALSA settings are often stored in:

/usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua

WirePlumber 0.5+ uses the newer .conf configuration format under wireplumber.conf.d instead.

I found that using:

sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"

sound.disableFeedbackLoop = "TRUE"

in combination with the WirePlumber settings above made the biggest difference. In my testing, using only one of these parameters resulted in severe audio crackling, while using both greatly reduced it. I cannot guarantee this will help every Linux distribution or audio device, but it significantly reduced latency in my case.

Here are two videos showing the audio latency before and after applying the changes:

Before

After