Comment 377 for bug 371897

> I don't think we're interested in what games - or even how many - are affected
> by this bug. The problem is known; the current "solution" (winepulse) is not
> considered favourably. Other workarounds (padsp, "Emulation" mode for Hardware
> Acceleration in ALSA module) work variably. The most RELIABLE option at the
> moment for users is to remove or disable pulseaudio and switch to winealsa.
Unfortunately, while it may be the most *reliable* option, hobbling one's OS installation (by mucking with pulseaudio) in order to increase compatibility with a single application (Wine) is nowhere near an *ideal* solution.

I am confident that the shortcomings of winepulse could and would be quickly overcome if it were actually brought into the official Wine codebase. This has supposedly been blocked from happening for years now because of some magical OpenAL-based audio back-end for Wine that has not yet materialized.

I find it completely baffling that end users are being denied additional user-friendly options (winepulse) in the official codebase due to the existence of even less ideal solutions (hobbling pulseaudio installation/operation) combined with a nonexistent and unproven idea for another solution (OpenAL back-end). This goes doubly when considering that Wine currently has first-class support for 5 (FIVE!) other Linux audio APIs.

Even as-is, winepulse is a HUGE improvement for me over Wine's ALSA back-end on Ubuntu for games like Baldur's Gate, where the beginnings of a lot of the sound effects were getting horribly cut off.