Victory is mine!
After years of creating an operating system that’s secure, agile, stable, customizable, advanced and progressive in the ways of programming, nothing can send a Linux lover into rage like saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, but flash works better on Windows…”
Technological miracles be damned – it’s the small, essentially petty conveniences that really shape computer experience. Who cares about modular OS structure if the damn thing can’t play an MP3.
This was for a while my situation with Ubuntu. After a while, playback started to stutter, making listening to music an unbearable experience. Apparently, it seems that PulseAudio has not yet grown up all the way (although it seems like a tremendous advance in controlling audio on your computer), and somewhere in the mix of multiple sound control agents (ESOUND, ALSA, OSS, PA) too much latency accumulates. I’ve tried following different guides, but with only a limited success.
In the end, however, I was able to put together something that works. And it feels good. Does it ever. It’s not a complete solution – RhythmBox still sounds a bit scratchy – but I prefer foobar2000 anyway, and it works great in Wine.
So, on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 x64, I had to do the following:
Reinstall PA packages.
Go to PA’s website and make sure I have the necessary packages installed.
Follow instructions in ALSA, Gnome, and GStreamer sections.
Set Wine to use OSS instead of ALSA.
Run foobar2000 through Wine.
Enjoy flawless music.
Another neat thing. Profiles for Linux and Windows version of Firefox and Thunderbird are identical in file structure. So if you are dual-booting, you can run their profile configuration utilities and point both instances to the same copy of their profile (as long as it is on an NTFS partition).
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I will hack something! 
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