Fails to share the audio output when using the ALSA driver

[vv221]

I tried to play Renowned Explorers: International Society with the sdl2-compat wrapper, using the 2.30.50~git20241102~44a2d4d+ds-1 version provided by Debian unstable.

This game happens to have some audio problems when running it with ALSA (no Pulseaudio, no Pipewire), that I describe here: https://forge.dotslashplay.it/vv221/games/-/issues/2
This is not the reason for my report here, as it has this audio crackling even with regular SDL2.

What is specific to the sdl2-compat wrapper is that the usual workaround is no longer effective: to prevent audio crackling, playing audio from another source when starting the game gets rid of the crackling with regular SDL2 (the other audio source can then be shut off), but when trying the same thing with the sdl2-compat wrapper I simply get no audio at all from the game.

The audio works if no other source is playing audio at the same time, but then I get the crackling described above.

Renowned Explorers: International Society is the game that made me notice this change in behaviour, but I can run extra tests with other games (maybe non-commercial ones) to check if it can be easily reproduces.

[icculus]

Oh gosh, I don't know how we would debug this...it sounds like an ALSA driver issue...?!

[vv221]

To make sure there is no confusion here: this report is not about the audio crackling, but specifically about sdl2-compat failing to output audio in a situation where the regular SDL2 can do it.