If I remember correctly, the guy that wrote the VQF (an mp3-like codec) plugin for xmms (home page here:http://www.csn.ul.ie/~mel/projects/linux/vqfplugin/ ) used wine to run the windows version of the audio codec under linux. Reading form his page he has now switched to a native version of the codec but perhaps he could share his experiences with us on this list. I'll try to concact him (if he isn't already on the LAD list) and send him the URL of this thread.
cheers, Benno