The disable directmusic box really just prevents games from using direct music: Hitman, Unreal 2, Alien vs. Predator 2, No One Lives Forever (I think...? please correct me otherwise) use it. There are several other games that use it too, I'm not sure why that box exists though, unless ALchemy brutally butchers the API to the point of crashing or non working state.
Does anyone know what the ALLicesning thing does? Since it always pops up when you use ALchemy on anything it wont surprise me if for some reason that's what's causing swaaye's problem. The creator of the x-fi support pack once included a ALchemy without the licensing component but that was the day that caused the massive PR disaster for Creative when they confronted the third party driver author about it...
I'd try messing with the buffer settings to see if it'll eventually work, perhaps the game can't buffer it's audio properly so AL just is unable to receive any input properly from the game itself. (I've had to do that numerous times trying to get Hardware OpenAL to work in winamp)
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων