qemu-kvm 0.14/0.15 audio problems

[mostro]

Hi folks:
I use qemu-kvm to run a Windows XP VM on my Gentoo box at work. In my situation audio is extremely important, because I use a screen reader (speech output) to access the desktop environment (JFW). Regardless, the issue is that audio output is very poor when running my VM on qemu-kvm 0.14 and 0.15.

My working configuration is qemu-kvm 0.13 with the SDL audio driver and the AC97 virtual device. Using qemu-kvm 0.13 the audio output works perfectly, no crackles, no slowness, basically like real hardware. When I upgrade to qemu-kvm 0.14/0.15, the AC97/SDL configuration sounds terrible, very slow, almost as if the audio was being paused and unpaused very quickly.

I tried using the other sound virtual hardware supported by qemu-kvm, but they all have problems of their own that are in some cases even worse than the AC97 issue.

* I would like to try the new Intel HDA sound card, but I have not been able to find Windows XP drivers that will work with this card. Can anyone shed some light on this? Basically, what drivers can I use to make the new Intel HDA card work with Windows XP?

Note:
My system is an AMD FX8150 (8 cores) running at 4.5 GHz with plenty of RAM, I/O speed, etc, so I don't believe the issue is system performance. Besides, I've had the same problem on a Phenum II four core box...

Thank you