This check was added 9 years ago in commit
4dc25d39 to work around a dmix bug
which I assume has been fixed long ago.

Removing this fixes another corner case: if draining is requested
before the start threshold is reached, the PCM is still in
SND_PCM_STATE_PREPARED but not yet SND_PCM_STATE_RUNNING, which means
the submitted data will never be played.  This corner case is
realistic when playing songs shorter than the ALSA buffer (if the
buffer is very large).