I don't have a good answer for you. Do you use the same emulated sound card for both music and voices? Maybe try to separate the 2 ?

master governs all sound devices (Aside from midi)
you should try modifying the individual levels of the devices and as MiniMax pointed out that this strategy relies on the fact that the effects and the music are being 2 different devices.

Since voices are digital, set it to sound blaster and then set the music to something like adlib. That way they are seperated, but still sound like you have them now. Then you can change em seperately.

Thanks for the input guys. Where do I go to set the voice and background music settings? Is this in the config file of dosbox? Again, the voices are there, I can hear them, but the background music is significantly louder. tried to use VDM sound and it appears to work ok with it, but some parts of the game speed is way off and the game is full screen only. Is there a way to run the game witihn dosbox and its settings but use the sound from vdm?

Well is there an install.exe or setup.exe? I'm not familiar with World of Xeen so I couldn't say. It has to be setup from the game's installer, which should be in the same directory as the game itself.

There is an installer.exe and I ran it, but I'm at work, so I don't remember the exact message, but something like are you using SoundBlaster (y/n). After I select yes, it exits and no more messages or prompts.

Thanks for the help.

If that is the only question you are presented with wrt. sound, then you are screwed.

In many games you are asked to select a device for sounds effects (including voices) and one for music.

I usually choose the SoundBlaster 16 for the effects/voice, and a MIDI / MPU-401 thingy for the music.

But if you only get one question, then the programmer has decided to use the same device for both.