http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20177
--- Comment #11 from Chris chris.kcat@gmail.com 2009-09-30 21:49:15 --- (In reply to comment #10)
That said I think I'm on to something. Shouldn't the ./configure tell me that my libopenal-dev-1.4 headers are too old?
In general, that version should work (aside from its horrible reverb). All the basic OpenAL functionality is there. It's difficult to say what the actual problem is without being able to hear the sound, though.. it's possible the reverb just gets into a nasty feedback loop and floods the sound output causing the whooshing noise, then eventually flatlining at +inf or -inf (+32767 or -32768, really), causing silence. Or it could be a problem with the way the backend itself is behaving, causing ALSA to generate noise and eventually die.
Either way, updating would be the best bet at fixing the issue, and if it doesn't, it will give me a better idea of where to look for the problem (I'm OpenAL Soft's programmer, BTW).
Also, I submitted a patch to Wine which should take care of the device name issue, so that it will accept the default set of names the native drivers provide and you won't have to modify the affected games' configuration files. That should hopefully get applied the next patch round.