Fixed sound issues under wine, but would like to know how

Question

I managed to get sound working under wine. I have no idea how, but I did. Ill explain and see if anyone can make sense of it.
So I initially set up kmix to where my primary device was my soundblaster card. I would continuously get errors like "creative blah did not work, switching to 'HD audio generic'.
I would not get system notification sounds but things like youtube and movies would. I had no luck with wine. I then started experimenting with the preferred devices and set the generic one to primary. The sound would work, but my problem was reversed. I would get notification sounds but no youtube or media audio. I then tried moving "default" up to preferred, only to get the same result. Neither gave me any sound in games under wine --not to mention the horrible system hangups when using "HD audio generic" and "default"
So I decided I prefer media audio over notification audio and went back to my original configuration. The result was that I still got system notifications but no media audio. At this point, I became very confused and started experimenting with changing the sound profiles. Any sort of chage at all would create a "dummy device" as playback out of my creative card. About 15 reboots later and luck? maybe, I got it to at least give me notification audio. I was stumped. I also noticed that the hangups were returning.
After exhausting all the options, I was like "oh well better move the HD audio Generic back up" and see what happens. Reboot. Somehow, I got media audio AND wine sound worked as well as the system hangups stopping.
I have no idea. Anyone have a clue?
Im glad its working, but im not going actually going to learn anything unless i figure out what happened.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Update: Ive found at least a modicum of consistency here. If I try to change anything in the preferences at all once I get wine audio working, it will stop working.
Thus far, here are my options..I can have
System Notification audio working and nothing else
System notification audio and media audio working, but no wine
Media Audio and Wine Audio working, but no system notification audio
But not all three
If I change one preference, wine audio on its own will stop working, or wine audio AND media audio will quit working.
If I change it back to the settings which allow wine audio and media audio to work, it usually will not. It will however work, consistently after enough reboots...2-10.
Any ideas?