Can reproduce using a Debian 13 XFCE VM (not Whonix), using pipewire and pipewire-pulse inside VirtualBox with the audio device set to Intel HD Audio. Ubuntu 24.04 is using Pipewire by default so I wonder if this can be reproduced there. (The AC97 fix worked here as well, and in fact VirtualBox has AC97 as the default audio device for Debian VMs so I didn’t initially notice the problem.)