Comment 45 for bug 371897

To give another perspective - I was trying to get Civilization 4 and Heroes of Might & Magic 3 working. I tested using Wine directly, and through PlayOnLinux. In both cases:

Testing with vanilla Wine 1.1.31 - sound occasionally crackled/popped (once or twice a second)
Testing with WineHQ's Wine 1.1.32 - same crackle/pop, same frequency

I pulled the source for WineHQ's Wine 1.1.32, and re-compiled with winepulse 0.32 included.

Testing with 1.1.32+winepulse0.32, ALSA driver - crackle was significantly worse (essentially constant)
Testing with 1.1.32+winepulse0.32, PulseAudio driver - no crackle at all, sound crisp & clear

Since I'm running off WineHQ (and thus on 1.1.32), I haven't yet tested Neil Wilson's version - but I can confirm that I have a sound dropping problem (stutter/pop - sounds like dropped data / underrun) on vanilla and WineHQ Wine, and that it goes away completely if I switch to a winepulse-patched Wine.