I posted this question on WINE forums but to no result, so with your permission I'll just copy and paste parts of my post from there:
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When the audio acceleration is set to anything other than "emulation" for me, the sound quality is poor (it sounds like a low bit-rate mp3, or sort of like mid-90's quality game sound).
IMHO the sound card type is not relevant because I'm having the same issue on every PC and card I've tried so far, so I'll skip that.
At the moment I'm playing "Enclave" using wine 1.1.43 compiled from source on PCLinuxOS and Mandriva, and the behavior is the same no matter the OS or PC.
....is a grainy sound not always detectable. For example loud music isn't greatly affected, you can hardly notice the effect.
However, low volume music/sounds such ambient soundtrack (especially mid-frequencies) are badly distorted.
I've tried several sound combinations in winecfg using alsa, oss or jack drivers, with emulation or full hardware acceleration and also different sample rates and bits per sample. In fact, I tried all the possible combinations. The sound is still bad, not skipping, not stuttering, not choppy or whatever...just bad quality.
(BTW, the sound is OK in Windows for the same game)
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What puzzles me is that this is not always the case with other applications running through wine.
For example the Foobar2000 media player. Using different combinations in winecfg I get:
1 ALSA driver with full hardware acceleration: Low quality/bitrate
2 ALSA driver with emulation: Good quality
3 OSS driver with full hardware acceleration: Good quality
4 OSS driver with emulation: Good quality
So, apparently whatever you use except ALSA with full hardware acceleration is OK.
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Unfortunately this is not working for games. All the games I played have the same problem, (recently played: Painkiller series, Legacy of Kain and Enclave).
Of course, I can disable the music and solve half of the problem, still sometimes the sound is so low quality that gives me headaches...really.
That's such a pity because the games are otherwise running really great.
Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this or have any ideas please step in Smile
Anything, a hint or some point to start.
Thanks.
I suppose this could be considered also a small tip for everyone trying to get good quality sound on WINE in music applications. More exactly, don't use ALSA with full hardware acceleration if you want quality sound.
My pain is that this is not usable on games.
Thanks.
