JomJomRinbo

It won't help the problem to do as you suggested. The speakers were already set to stereo output, setting it again did not solve the problem.

Have you any information about what you meant here? - "That's one, there's another one, but if effects only some sound cards and it slows the game down, so it's unlikely the issue."

What kind of sound system setup do you have (aka how many loudspeaker do you have) ? If it's 5.1 or 7.1, the multi output mode is really problematic as the old game can't really process the info because it was coded in a really old style... so setting it back to the 4.0 should fix most cases..
That's one, there's another one, but if effects only some sound cards and it slows the game down, so it's unlikely the issue.

Edit, in case it's not obvious to everybody, it seemed to be for Spiron, from his reply.... you can set the output mode to be 4.0 at least in Windows from inside the system volume control panel, which fixes the above know problem.

This is a very old post, but I have this issue which you mentioned but did not discuss in detail! I have the problem where footstep sounds, weather sounds, environmental audio etc. slow down the game when enabled,  but I don't actually have any audio playing from the game. How is that issue solved?