wineoss is not a viable solution to the pulseaudio problem, but this is a real nasty issue where the solution is "as long as it works for you, it's fine".
What exactly is the issue with purging pulseaudio? Though this should be taken up with ubuntu's bugs tracker. pulseaudio should be considered optional, since ALSA/dmix works wherever pulseaudio with ALSA backend works, even if it is opt-out.
Ben, sorry... You probably haven't been following this thread closely. I determined a couple of days ago that pulseaudio was not actually my problem even though I thought it was. I just kept the name of the thread. One of wine's developers asked me if linux's (or Ubuntu's) alsa-wrappers could have changed, and if wine's alsa-wrappers could therefore need updating. The fact that something works under winecfg OSS (but not under winecfg ALSA) is a valuable piece of diagnostic information. My value to this group is usually as a canary in the mine. Because I have the latest kernel, and the latest updates, I am able to spot problems before they hit the mainstream. And remember, this is a developers' group, not a users group. Experimentation is grist for the mill. Susan