diff --git a/src/osd/modules/sound/xaudio2_sound.cpp b/src/osd/modules/sound/xaudio2_sound.cpp
index 3fb02b13d54..f835f690644 100644
--- a/src/osd/modules/sound/xaudio2_sound.cpp
+++ b/src/osd/modules/sound/xaudio2_sound.cpp
@@ -229,6 +229,7 @@ public:
 		m_overflows(0),
 		m_underflows(0),
 		m_in_underflow(FALSE),
+		XAudio2Create(nullptr),
 		m_initialized(FALSE)
 	{
 	}
@@ -596,12 +597,21 @@ void sound_xaudio2::submit_needed()
 	XAUDIO2_VOICE_STATE state;
 	m_sourceVoice->GetState(&state, XAUDIO2_VOICE_NOSAMPLESPLAYED);
 
-	// If we have a too many buffers on the queue, flush to resync
-	if (state.BuffersQueued > 2)
-		m_sourceVoice->FlushSourceBuffers();
-
 	std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(m_buffer_lock);
 
+	// If we have buffers queued into XAudio and our current in-memory buffer
+	// isn't yet full, there's no need to submit it
+	if (state.BuffersQueued >= 1 && m_queue.empty())
+		return;
+
+	// We do however want to achieve some kind of minimal latency, so if the queued buffers
+	// are greater than 2, flush them to re-sync the audio
+	if (state.BuffersQueued > 2)
+	{
+		m_sourceVoice->FlushSourceBuffers();
+		m_overflows++;
+	}
+
 	// Roll the buffer
 	roll_buffer();
 
@@ -685,7 +695,7 @@ void sound_xaudio2::roll_buffer()
 	m_writepos = 0;
 
 	// We only want to keep a maximum number of buffers at any given time
-	// so remove any from queue greater than MAX_QUEUED_BUFFERS
+	// so remove any from queue greater than our target count
 	if (m_queue.size() > m_buffer_count)
 	{
 		xaudio2_buffer *next_buffer = &m_queue.front();