I really am enjoying this game and I can get it to run, but I always get that error message when I start it up, clicking OK starts the game as normal and everything starts to play OK until certain sound effects play. If I get into a gun fight, kill multiple enemies in quick succession or anything that involves sound being played multiple times, the game starts to stutter as if it's having difficulty loading and playing the sounds.
At one point I was unloading an entire 24 shots in a room and it almost became unplayable.
I have an Asus Xonar DG if that helps. Thanks.

I have an Asus Xonar DG soundcard and have this problem as well! I'm also not getting any music in the game, though I am getting sound effects. Damn, it's a pretty uncommon card, who knows if they'll ever get around to fixing it. This is the first game I've had any problem with though.

It says "Failed to initialize Direct Music Audio." And I get this debug info:

ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object objDevolver:

Error defining an external function.

The "good news" is that such sound issues are experienced by many people, not just Asus Xonar DG soundcard users.

It seems it has to do with the game and the direct X sound library itself, not something specific to the soundcard.

So far, we need to wait for more patches... try playing other games in the meantime, even if you really want to play HLM right now *totally-not-my-case*

Yeah I found many other people with sound issues, though not that reported this exact error message "Failed to initialize Direct Music Audio". Hopefully they'll switch to some sturdier sound system or something and maybe it'll be fixed.

I can't even get the game to start still:

https://secure.gog.com/en/forum/hotline_miami/game_wont_start_failed_to_create_direct_music_performance_failed_to_initialise_drawing_surface

Im going to copy my post from steam:

FIX for Asus Xonar error Failed to initialize direct music audio
Solution is simple: Open the Xonar Audio Center and deactivate the GX function.

It's the button on lower right, where it says DSP Mode. If the whole button is green it's activated, so turn that sucker off.

It some kind of compatibility function for older games and EAX and should not be activated unless needed. Mine hade reactivated for unkown reason.

I've played a few levels and everything seems fine. Sound seems to be able to play more than 1 sound at a time and doesn't seem to lag down the game when spammed.