kind of OT : sound problems under X11

["Tim" <debian@sp1r1t.de>]

this may not be the right list for my problem,
but maybe someone is willing to help :

though i can listen to mp3s and sound works in general under
X11 (KDE, up-to-date version of debian sarge), it does NOT work when i run
apllications like quake3 or RTCW from X11.

i know there is a setting in KDE that allows you to make your sound
device accessable by other applications if KDE doesn't use it,
and i told kde to free the device after 20 seconds, but when
running quake3, i have no sound and from time to time, quake3
shows the message "dropping sound" in the upper left corner.

any ideas? pointers to documents welcome.

Tim