I've been messing around with Windows 3.11 in PCem and I've noticed that any time something does a sound via WinMM, either Windows itself (i.e. "System Sounds" or in the control panel item that configures those) or various games that just use the basic WinMM functionality, there is a VERY noticeable hitch when it plays that completely destroys performance in a lot of real time games as a result.

Eventually the functionality itself just completely breaks if you manage to rapidly trigger such events; such as holding down ALT in "Spectre VR for Windows" or spamming your RMB in "Warpath Classic". If it ends up "breaking" in that manner the only way to get sound to play again is to completely quit Windows and launch it again.

It also seems that when the sound finishes playing whatever the LAST sample of the audio was, is constantly output through the soundcard endlessly and if this is not a zero level sample it results in a DC bias and a very audible click if something else ends up playing.

On some Twitch streams I watch I've observed this same behavior happen on actual hardware. Was it really always this bad? Is there no way to make it not this bad?