https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26965
--- Comment #4 from Andrew Eikum aeikum@codeweavers.com --- The game always mixes to 5.1 surround. Wine's dsound doesn't support down-mixing from 5.1 to stereo, so it just copies the first two channels, front-left and right, into stereo left and right. The game puts voices only onto the center channel, so they gets lost during the down-mix.
dsound should support down-mixing 5.1 to stereo, and, dsound should also be opening the backing device as 5.1 if it can. Either would fix this, and Wine should do both.
The UseStereoSound workaround does seem to work for me.