Weird Heretic.exe sound problem (no, not WinXP)

I'm running Win98SE, and I tend to like to run Heretic with the original exe. For some reason, sometimes, in the middle of a game or demo recording, the sound goes off without warning and I have to reboot to get the sound to come back on. Does anyone know why this is?

the same thing happens on one of my computers... and from what I have seen is quite common.
it is the sound drivers and supported sound channels or something or other..
my sound card can play 2 different 16-bit sounds at the same time -- like DOOM and mp3s, but if it tries to make a third sound, sometimes it all goes off.
it is just a result of poor drivers or memory management or something...
hope that helps.

This problem is also present in DOOM versions 1.2 and earlier. And since Heretic code branches off DOOM v1.2 code, I'm not surprised here.

There are several solutions:
- use an SB16 at the default sound settings, i.e. A220 I5 D1
- remove any memory managers (like EMM386.EXE) from the CONFIG.SYS
- increase PCI wait states in the BIOS
- disable CPU internal cache

It would help to specify the sound hardware and its settings when asking for help.