I had the same issue. I've tried fixing a lot of things, hardware acceleration, fiddled with some settings I shouldn't even be fiddling with, reinstalling without the patches, checking out each individual patch - nothing worked. But after reading this:
vasyl: Here's a weird part. I tried it again after three months and it works perfectly now! The same system, the same drivers. There were a few Windows updates since the last time I tried the game and I did install some software but I cannot see anything obvious. Most of the Win updates were security related -- in theory it is possible that one of them affected this particular issue but not very likely.
I became suspicious. So I decided to do the 1 thing I haven't tried.
I restarted my computer. And it fixed it.
I tried reinstalling it just to re-check - got the same looping sound bug. After restarting my comptuer, it was fixed again.
Don't know if this'll work for everyone, but it worked for me for 3 installations on 2 different comptuers (two on Windows XP and one Windows 7).
So, my suggestion is - restart your computer if you're getting this error. It might be just the thing to help you ^^