https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38668
--- Comment #43 from Adam Bolte abolte@systemsaviour.com --- Last night I played a few more hours of The Old Blood on 1.7.54 using the built-in xaudio2_7, and I can confirm exactly what Lam said. The game no longer crashes (which is obviously a huge improvement), but some sounds don't play.
I didn't notice the problem at first, but then I got to a point where there was supposed to be talking with an NPC, and the lips were moving and subtitles were showing and the background music and other sounds were playing, but I couldn't hear any words. After a few seconds of this, I pressed escape to bring up the in-game menu to check my sound settings. I didn't change anything and closed the menu again to continue the game, and then the talking started working.
Next up, I tried a different sound-card - playing audio over my DisplayPort instead since I know my usual USB sound-card sometimes has problems with Wine. But that didn't make any difference.
I'm not sure the issue is related to the number of sounds playing though, as it seems like sounds just aren't playing at random. One time I launched the game, and the Bethesda splash animation appeared with sound, and that was followed by a MachineGames animation, which had no sound. Then the main menu appeared and sound was back. And yet other times when I launch the game, I get sound for all start-up animation screens. It just all seems random.