Change your Soundcard to "Soundblaster Compatible" in MC's setup, and use the latest AEP build of DOSBox 0.70. You may also want to replace DOS4GW.EXE with DOS32A.EXE. If you do that, and you're playing Magic Carpet Plus, you should start the main executables, not the menu executable (<installdir>\CARPET\CARPET.EXE and <installdir>\CARPET\HIDDEN.EXE), to avoid graphics corruption when switching from the game to the main menu (between levels, or by pressing ESC during the game).

I played through the original game and the expansion some months ago, and had very little crashing, compared to using original 0.70.

All I can say is, using the exact same settings it's not crashing at all in DOSBox 0.65. So, all that stuff seems to be unnecessary; something about 0.70 has become less stable. 😖

Maybe something's changed in DOSBox's code, i can't say that (there were many changes, probably). All i can say is that i've completed the main game and the addon with 0.70 and the settings i've described, and have had very little problems doing so.

It's your choice to either try the game with the settings i've described, or continue complaining about what you think is decreased stability. Your statement is in no way a proof that 0.70 is less stable than 0.65, after all - it's just your personal conclusion. If you think that 0.65 is "better" than 0.70, just continue using that version.

You have posted in an area of this forum where users normally ask for help about getting a specific game running. Maybe you should've posted in the devs section, with a detailed error report, your dosbox.conf, system specs, etc.. That would make much more sense than just saying the things i wrote are "unnecessary".

well 0.70 is different from 0.65 on many ways.
It's less forgiving on critical races inside a program. I think there is a huge thread on magic carpet in the development forum. The problem isn't totally a problem of DOSBox 0.70. It's partly in the game itself as well. But the behaviour of 0.70 triggers this race/crash condition much faster then 0.65 did.

Not selecting the soundblaster 16 fixes/changes this behaviour of the game and hence also the crashes. We still aren't entirely sure how to change dosbox to act correctly to this (probably partly bugged) game.