I have an SB Audigy 24, not that that should matter, because the sound works fine under Linux... But anyway, from what I can tell (this has only been tested with Yume Miru Kusuri, D.Nd : Poisened, and Phantasy Star Online), whenever a windowed game with sound loses focus, the sound is muted. Also, with visual novels, it seems to become completely frozen. With PSO, I can still move my character around with my joystick, but there is no sound. Also, when itunes or the firefox flash plug-in lose focus, they continue to play. Anyone have any idea wtf is up with this?

Update drivers, might be an incompatibility between your SC/MB. Might go as far as getting a different card of flashing mobo bios.