tried a larger prebuffer ?

Indeed, it's set to 100 (default being 20 I think). Should I set it even higher? Does that not lag the sound?

100 is the highest.
you can try experimenting with the blocksize. Either multiply or divide by 2.

Set it to 4096 and 8192, still stuttering, although a tiny bit less I think. I feel I should explain this a bit more. The game itself doesn't stutter anywhere else, fights are fine, speeds are great etc, sound is peachy. It just happens in the overmap randomly whenever the hero moves, it's like the game has miniscule freezes destroying the flow and after playing a bit more they start to get more noticeable. Should I maybe set the sample rate to 44100 instead of 48000 or 49716?

edit: setting it to 256 makes the sound go haywire. 512 looks like the minimum requirement for it to work.

Are you using max cycles? If so, maybe try limiting that a bit, using for example cycles=max 75% or a fixed cycles count, such as 20000, or a combination of the two; cycles=max limit 50000.

I've tried Max, Auto and Custom (D-Fend Reloaded lists the max custom at 20000, although I've only tried setting it at 50000, and that seems to just slow down the game). For now Max looks like the best option really.

sidenote: can dosbox also play flacs or mp3s instead of the ogg music that the GOG HoMM 2 comes with? I'd like to rip the game music and create a selective soundtrack between SW and POL town themes, and was hoping I could run them in lossless quality.

Why list mp3 if you want lossless? 😉

Figured if I couldn't get flac, I might as well do a v0 rip of the CD. Maybe I'm just delusional but somehow they sound better than .oggs to me

Ogg in general or in this case? In this case GOG most likely took a compromise between download size and quality.

Both. At first their initial batch of songs was horribly ripped, filled with clicks and pops. They've since updated it to a higher quality rip but I still remain skeptical. Afaik, there's more checks and balances to go through when trying to rip to v0 mp3s using the latest EAC, so I've confidence it produces higher quality tracks. Naturally I'd still prefer if DOSBox could play flacs, is it possible? I realize the original DOS couldn't, although my knowledge may be even more limited than I thought.

Besides both Succession Wars and Price of loyalty had great tracks and I prefer one or the other for my castles, so I generally try to rip them myself. Pity they didn't make a toggle to switch between the two sets of tracks back in the day.

sidenote: should I maybe set the ramsize lower than 63 to stop the stuttering issues?

So it's still only GOG's rip you complain about. Rip the tracks yourself to HQ oggs and compare that.

Memsize, unless a game really needs it you should stay with the default.

Really the music is a non-issue since I'll be ripping them sooner or later, as flac if possible. My problem has always been about the jerky stuttery movements when I move my heroes.

Well, try the default memsize. You brought the music issue up, not me 😉

Err, I only asked if DOSBos could play flac files, what issue are you referring to?

Your non-issue

Unrelated but unworthy of a new topic, is there a way to turn VSYNC on? I'm playing Bio Menace, an EGA graphics title, and the side-scrolling is really jerky, looks a lot like screen tearing. Additionally the game tells me I can run "BIOMENACE1 /COMP" to fix the jerkyness but I have no idea where to add the /COMP part in D-Fend

make a batch file with that command and start that instead of whatever else (though it must be written wrong, it (BIOMENACE1) has too many letters). _Or look for special builds of dosbox with vsync options.