Just to witness: I had exactly the same sound problem, under XP in the guest virtual machine. Host is Win8.
This morning, the problem is gone, in both VMs (under XP and Win7) after having uninstalled and re-installed vmWare, due to many other Windows 8 problems (Wacom tablet not working, no network at all -> separate thread).
Edit : 16:50. I knew I should not reboot. Sound in Virtual Machines is now totaly scrambled again. Hope a solution is coming soon.