Esound 0.2.18 cuts off the last part of any sound that is played, or on a long file, corrupts the sound so that it is unlistenable.
I get this too. In particular, using mpg123 to play a 192kbps, 44100 Hz mp3 results in very broken-up sound. It sounds to me like it's playing the first half-second (or less) of each second (or so) of sound, without even any pause between them. mpg123 is called with "-b 2048". This occurs with esd automatically spawned as well as invoked by hand. Reverting esound to 0.2.17 fixes it. Machine details: 2.2.15pre17 with the usb-backport patch es1371 sound modules, kernel drivers (ie., not ESS; but also not OSS) Redhat mpg123-0.59r-4.i386.rpm glibc-2.1.3-14 Contact me if you want me to try any patches or anything.
I think this change was to esd_send_file in the interests of correctness in interpreting the .wav file format.