http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10495
--- Comment #136 from Ben Klein shacklein@gmail.com 2009-09-26 21:58:51 --- (In reply to comment #135)
(In reply to comment #134)
Another reason, as has been discussed, is that pulse adds unreasonable latency to be used as a general purpose software mixer (as in one that is suitable for professional applications).
Dude, that's an argument against PulseAudio in general; not a valid reason for Wine not to support a native Pulse output (not that there aren't valid reasons). The fact is that most desktop distributions are shipping PulseAudio by default, and audio not working is a major paper cut for less technical users.
Agreed, but my point is that Wine is a general-purpose solution that has to cater for professional-level applications. It is my understanding that Wine is simply incapable of doing that with pulse due to the latency issues and the design of pulse.