poor quality through waveOut

[kevintcore]

I am setting my audio output to waveOut. The sound quality is poor. It is often choppy and garbled in places.
I am playing an mp3 file. I have also tried using the vlc command line to convert the mp3 file to a muLaw wav file and its sound quality is equally as poor.
Any suggestions?

muLaw conversion:
vlc C:\temp\audio.mp3 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=none,vb=0,scale=0,acodec=mlaw,ab=16,channels=1,samplerate=32000}:standard{access=file,dst=audio.wav} vlc://quit

Why am I using waveOut? Because I will be doing the same thing in code via libVLC in a windows service. I need to use an output that does not require a windows desktop/login.