Dear Davin,
in the past days I have been testing your 'old' patch with wine-0.9 on my Fedora Core 3 system (kernel-2.6.12-.1381_FC3, alsa-lib-1.0.6-8.FC3, Soundblaster Live PCI = emu10k1), using Diablo2-LoD (patch 1.11b - 3DSound = no)
Now I have also tried your new patch.
Outcome in short : sound output got worse for me with the new patch.
Outcome in detail (for ALSA):
A)Old patch - DirectSound settings:
1)EmulDriver=N, HardwareAcceleration=Emulation Blizzard Intro = flawless Game Intro = flawless Game Sound = altogether fluently, some sounds start to miss when in thick melee
2)EmulDriver=N, HardwareAcceleration=Basic/Standard/Full Blizzard Intro = completely jarred Game Intro = with jerks Game Sound = jarred and jerky with large sound holes(dead sound)
B)New patch - DirectSound settings:
1)EmulDriver=N, HardwareAcceleration=Emulation Blizzard Intro = flawless Game Intro = flawless Game Sound = persistent audible crackling
2)EmulDriver=N, HardwareAcceleration=Basic/Standard/Full Blizzard Intro = some audible jerks Game Intro = flawless Game Sound = persistent audible crackling
The new patch seems to produce less console output of "err:dsound:DSOUND_PhaseCancel length not a multiple of block size" than the old patch and "len" seems to be of shorter size.
I have counterchecked with the unpatched wine-0.9 and it is almost the same performance as with the 'new' patch, only that the Blizzard Intro runs flawlessly all the time, no matter what setting I choose for HardwareAcceleration.
Hope this helps.