http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20799
--- Comment #71 from Chris chris.kcat@gmail.com 2010-05-10 02:03:08 ---
The Emulation setting above forces DirectSound into emulation mode. In this mode, DirectSound applications run as though no DirectSound driver is present. All mixing is done by DirectSound in user mode, and the resulting audio data is played back through the waveOut API
I don't see how that contradicts what I said. Under Emulation, the primary buffer is played out using winmm (aka the WaveIn/WaveOut API). Under Basic, the primary buffer is an ALSA PCM device. As far as winealsa is concerned, the PCM device it gets from ALSA represents hardware; it doesn't know/care if it goes to dmix or pulseaudio instead.
In linux openal is just software mixing of the 16 voices , so full hardware accleartion is impossible
In Linux, there is no hardware acceleration for OpenAL, though it can do up to 256 "voices". Under Vista/7, there are accelerated OpenAL drivers for some hardware, and there is a DSound->OpenAL wrapper so DSound can take advantage of hardware again (for some apps).