This is a somewhat obscure problem but essentially, in order to prevent music skipping while changing rooms, I added "Multithreaded=1" to acsetup.cfg. This works for the skipping problem.
The issue is, now when I have sounds played close together in quick succession, the sound doesn't retrigger on each play() command, but seems to wait until the entire sound file has played before triggering another instance of the sound. This is noticable for example if there are several gunshots close together, or a crank that starts slow and speeds up.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!