https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49699
Bug ID: 49699 Summary: Red Dead Redemption 2 has crackling audio Product: Wine Version: 5.14 Hardware: x86 OS: Linux Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P2 Component: winepulse.drv Assignee: wine-bugs@winehq.org Reporter: bshanks@codeweavers.com Distribution: ---
Red Dead Redemption 2 uses WASAPI for audio, and sometimes has crackly audio. It asks for a very small buffer (10 ms) when calling IAudioClient::Initialize(), and then has a thread which checks the buffer padding every 2 ms. It waits until there's at least 256 frames free in the buffer, and fills 256 frames at a time.
When using winepulse, it has a low latency path and provides a 10 ms buffer. This is 440/480 frames, not leaving much slack when refills are only 256 at a time.
As far as I can tell, Windows never gives out a buffer smaller than 20 ms though. This is more around 1056 frames, leaving much more slack. Disabling the winepulse low latency path results in a buffer around this size, and audio is much better. winealsa also seems to do this by default, and it sounds fine.