The way you described the problem, it looks like, or should I say to go with a word pun, sounds like an old problem.
What is the guest OS setting of the VM? Is it Windows 10 x64?
Edit the vmx file (shut down the VM first before editing), and look for a dictionary key sound.virtualdev. If it is there, is the value set as hdaudio? If it is not there add the line
sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"
to the vmx file.
With hdaudio setting, the audio device in Device Manager should show as High Definition Audio Device (assuming Windows 11 still has the same naming, I haven't tried Windows 11 yet).