Poor sound in DOSBOX games

Hi Boomers,
I like playing "old" DOS\Dosbox games on my Win 10 pc, but many of them have poor quality audio, especially the speech. Does anybody know of a "fix" or anything else which can remedy this?
One of those games is: "Discworld 2", just as an example.
I once heard something about tweaking something in DOS CONFIG, but I don't remember what it was. I would appreciate any help.
Sandy

The DOSBox configuration file is called dosbox-0.74.conf and is located in
C:\Users\your-username\AppData\Local\DOSBox

I'm not sure what you're calling "poor quality audio" but you can make sure the "rate" under [mixer] and the "oplrate" under [sblaster] in the dosbox-0.74.conf file aren't set to 22050. If they are set to 22050, you could try 44100 or 48000 instead. Be sure to back up the dosbox-0.74.conf file before changing it. You can use notepad to open the file, but depending on where you installed DOSBox, you may have to run notepad as Administrator to make changes and save them.

If you're talking about something like skipping sound or scratchy sound, that's a different problem.

There's a video showing how to edit the dosbox-0.74.conf file for a different game here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCNmuDaBNDY

If you're having choppy sound, check the last post in this GOG thread
https://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/how_to_fix_choppy_sound
where "doraz" recommends using DOSBox in Safe Mode.

Sandy had commented that he was hearing "garbled" sound in Discworld 2, and I sent him over here for help. I have played Discworld 2 in DOSBox before and the sound is very clear, so I wondered what the problem might be.

Editing the dosbox configuration file probably won't help with garbled sound. The suggestion to run the game in Safe Mode might. Like "doraz" in the GOG forum suggested, garbled sound might be caused by interference from background programs or applications (especially antivirus).

Thanks Jenny, but I'm afraid to "tinker" with the things in the config file, so I decided to use the "subtitles" option in this game. Almost completed now.
Sandy

Sandy,

You probably will find the DFEND Reloaded, which is a front end for DOSBox is much easier to use. You won't need to know how DOSBox works as DFEND offers choices in a very simple format.

D-Fend Reloaded is (was) a great program, but the problem is that it is too old - the last version was released in 2015, and it supports only the basic old DOSBox 0.74.
Since DOSBox 0.74, more advanced forks of this program has appeared - like DOSBox SVN Daum. It is much better with the sound, as well as many other things! And D-Fend Reloaded sadly does not support it.

Daum is *very* old and no longer maintained or supported for years. On top of that it is buggy and broken. It should never be recommended. Try the recently released DOSBox 0.74-2 from the official site.

Thanks, Collector!

I didn't know there was a newer version of DOSBox recently released - thanks for the heads up, Collector! Downloading it now.

Some might also be interested in the ECE (Enhanced Community Edition) build of DOSBox. YesterPlay80 hosts his builds of both ECE plain vanilla SVN or latest developmental build. The ECE build includes some basic additional enhancements, such as builtin Munt and other audio enhancements, 3Dfx emulation, and the pixel-perfect patch that provides aspect correction with even pixel size. It is not junked up with needless bells and whistles patches that do nothing for acuracy of emulation. This means that it is far less likely to be buggy like Daum.

https://blog.yesterplay80.net/dosbox-ece-en/

DOSBox ECE thread on VOGONS for support.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=52414

Built-in Munt would be awesome.