Is there anything better than ffdshow?

I'm trying to play Super Mario World X, and the ffdshow codec won't do the job properly. Everytime a sound plays (MP3 sound file) it lags/stalls for about a second messing me up. Whenever a sound loads, the codec fills my taskbar with a million instances which further lag the pomegranate outta me. It's only with this one game however, which pisses me off since it's the only good fan game I can't play without running into this lag problem.