Hello. I have audio problems on Saints Row 2 GOG wrapper script, probably similar to what soshannessy is experiencing.
Sometimes when I boot the game, the music and sound effect is garbled.
Even if the sound initially works correctly, the sound can also be garbled after a few minutes of gameplay.

But, if I install SR2 manually on Wine Staging 3.15 (installed from official winehq.org repository) and install "xact" via "winetricks xact" (required for any audio for SR2 in Wine Staging) the audio in SR2 works perfectly every time.
So, I think the problem originates from the Wine version being too old. I suggest bumping Wine version to newer ones.

My specs:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti 1GB
GPU Driver Version: NVIDIA Proprietary Driver 396.54
Linux Distribution: Kubuntu 18.04.1
Audio Device: Realtek ALC892

Thanks - I think I've figured out what's going on now :) xact wasn't being installed properly. I've updated the wrapper so it should work now... please try the new version and let me know if that fixes it; if not then I'll see about updating it to a newer Wine version as well.
If you installed the system's Wine package then it should have installed all necessary dependencies as well. Let me know if the updated version of the wrapper fixes the sound issues for you too :)

Just an FYI, Staging since 3.13 has some audio issues, crackling/etc, (though improved in 3.15) in some games. IIRC, they are xact related though I'm not sure this was an effected title. Some setups are more problematic than others. Believe there is a pending patch to finish fixing it. E.G. you may want to wait until 3.16 to bump the version.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I do end up moving it to a newer Wine version. In this case I'm fairly certain that the audio issues are due to xact not being properly installed though, as when I set the previous version of the wrapper to use a newer version of Wine sound no longer worked until xact had been installed correctly.

Thanks for this, this is fantastic! This really was a 'just works' solution and it works SO much better than the shitty linux release.

Both my xbox 360 and ps3 controllers didn't work well and I had to resort to a ps2 controller - having more than two axises (the rudders in addition to the sticks) made it so that LT/L2 controlled the camera with no way to remap to the right stick.

I also have the audio distortion occur after a certain amount of play. Since I also had serious cutscene sync issues I enabled the 30 fps cap in the hopes that both would be fixed. Cutscenes are great so far, but I need more play time to see if the audio is better, too.

All in all, you've really made this whole situation *much* more palatable since the last time I played this - So much more stable and usable than before.

[EDIT] Looks like the audio garbling is still present after a bit of play :(

Can you try rebuilding the wrapper, running the build script like so:

./saintsrow2_wine.sh -winesource=lutris -winever=3.10-staging

...and let me know if that fixes it please?

I actually haven't had any more sound glitches for some hours of play after turning off 60fps.

Not the most helpful, I know :)

I'm not surprised... I've encountered the sound issue now (it sounds a bit like a radio with poor reception & interference), but there doesn't seem to be a particular cause for it; it seems to occur randomly/is not consistently reproducible and rarely happens on my system. I only got it to happen by restarting the game repeatedly a bunch of times - when it does happen it always occurs soon after loading the game, and if it doesn't happen within the first few minutes then it won't happen at all (or at least not for several hours).

Due to how difficult it is to trigger I can't tell if using Wine Staging fixes it or not. If anyone gets this issue consistently, try running the build script as per the instructions in my previous post & let me know if that fixes it for you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this, I had no luck running the game via Lutris but your installer (and patcher!) worked great.

Thanks again and best wishes.

Thank you very much for making this!

Unfortunately the Lutris one didn't work (well it worked but there was no sound at all...). Yours work just fine.

@adamhm, three years later and this is still the superior way to play this game. I attempted the native Steam version, Steam version with Proton 6.x and 5.13, and GOG under lutris with various configs. They all invariably had horrible constant crashes. Thanks so much for your work in making this utter mess playable.

This one continued to "just work" - and my PS4 controller works very well (looks like using the GotR dualshock prompts mods also set the correct buttons for me - the defaults were all sorts of whack).

Will this still benefit from the Powertools mod with the speed set to 0.9 in the .ini or is the same issue already addressed in this installation?

Looking into this online, I am guessing no, because that is said to only be necessary only in Windows 7. However at least one person on these forums was recommending it without that clarification.