Try Sound Blaster 16 (Address 220, DMA 1 IRQ 7, 8 voices) for sound effects and General MIDI (Address 330) for music.

When you say 8 voices do you mean 8 sound channels? That is the one piece of instruction I couldn't find anywhere.

Yep, that's it.

OK I did what you said exactly and sound for XCOM still does not work.

Here are what the sound relevant sections of my DOSBox config file look like, I assume this is default because I just installed DOSBox and I haven't changed anything:

_____________________
[mixer]
# nosound -- Enable silent mode, sound is still emulated though.
# rate -- Mixer sample rate, setting any devices higher than this will
# probably lower their sound quality.
# blocksize -- Mixer block size, larger blocks might help sound stuttering
# but sound will also be more lagged.
# prebuffer -- How many milliseconds of data to keep on top of the blocksize.

nosound=false
rate=22050
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=10

[midi]
# mpu401 -- Type of MPU-401 to emulate: none, uart or intelligent.
# device -- Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.
# This can be default,alsa,oss,win32,coreaudio,none.
# config -- Special configuration options for the device. In Windows put
# the id of the device you want to use. See README for details.

mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

[sblaster]
# sbtype -- Type of sblaster to emulate:none,sb1,sb2,sbpro1,sbpro2,sb16.
# sbbase,irq,dma,hdma -- The IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA address of the soundblaster.
# mixer -- Allow the soundblaster mixer to modify the DOSBox mixer.
# oplmode -- Type of OPL emulation: auto,cms,opl2,dualopl2,opl3.
# On auto the mode is determined by sblaster type.
# All OPL modes are 'Adlib', except for CMS.
# oplrate -- Sample rate of OPL music emulation.

sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050
_____________________
(was going to use code format but it looked terrible)

Here are the files in the XCOM SOUND folder:
Security Catalogs:
ADLIB
AINTRO
DRIVERS
GM
INTRO
RINTRO
ROLAND
SAMPLE
SAMPLE2
SAMPLE3
SOUND1
SOUND2

Other files:
LAPC1.PAT
MUSIC.EXE
SNDEND.EXE
SNDSTART.EXE
SOUNDRV.EXE
VECTOR.EXE
SOUND.CFG

I cannot for the life of me figure out why my sound will not play. Is it some sort of problem with the fact that I have a special sound card and I'm not just using onboard sound? I have no idea what is causing this problem/what is relevant.

Try another version of the same game, I'm pretty sure the problem does not come from DOSBox.

I *obtained* another copy of the game (if I am going to re-buy it I'm going to make sure I actually get sound, otherwise I'll just play my current copy), this version required me to install the game, no big deal. I entered all of the specifications you gave me, but when I typed "UFO" to run the game, the screen went black and DOSBox stopped responding.

Re-enter the sound config utility of ufo, and assure that the settings got saved.
Then try disabling sound and check the game again.

OK tried again results:

Running sound setup multiple times showed no indication that it was saving my choices at all. I'd run it, put the choices in, then run it again and the box on the right was blank and the "cursor" (default selected entity) was just the default, not the previously selected one. Tried to run XCOM, presented with black screen and DOSBox freezing.

Running the sound setup and choosing "no sound" and "no music", then launching the game resulted in a black screen and DOSBox freezing, could be due to the fact that it is not saving my choices in the setup.

Disabled sound in the DOSBox config file resulted in no change either. This version of XCOM must either be borked or require some sort of patch, neither is desirable because I already have a legal working copy of XCOM (minus sound).

My sound card is "SoundMAX HD Audio", is there anything different I need to change in DOSBox's config file to make it work with a non-onboard sound card?

was just the default

What's their default? Maybe you can change the dosbox.conf so it resembles
what ufo defaults to, and if that actually works you should check that all files
are write enabled.

The default for choice of sound board and music board were nonsensical, they just started at the top choice and couldn't actually be the right choices (soundblaster and some sort of adlib/?? combination), I did try soundblaster pro and changing DOSBox's configuration to match but still no sound (I've returned to the working copy that simply had no sound, the other won't even launch). Port/IRQ/DMA defaults were what you guys recommended, 4 channel sound was default but I don't think I can change that in the DOSBox config anywhere.

While playing, i cranked up my sound very high and I could hear a slight beep (sort of error-sounding) every time I did something that should have caused a sound to be played.

What's more frustrating is that MIDI should be playing music, and it is not. There are only 2 choices to be made, the general MIDI music board and its port, and I can see no reason why it isn't working. At least the sound is a little more complicated.

Also: yes I did make sure all files and subfolders are not set to read-only, that didn't help.

Oh my god, I just got it to work.

Thank you everyone for all of your time and consideration, I really appreciate it. If anyone else ever has this problem, here is the solution:

In the XCOM folder there is a file called go.bat and a file called go.com. Simply typing "go" into DOSBox automatically runs "go.com" (I'm not sure why), which doesn't have sound. Typing "go.bat" runs the game, except now it has sound! Enjoy.

Hm i don't remember that go.bat file, maybe it loads some driver.
Think the priority of .com files is the highest, but got to check that.

My version of "UFO: Enemy Unknown" is the CD-ROM European release. It has a UFOCD.BAT, and there's also a GO.COM inthe same folder. Here are the contents of UFOCD.BAT, my guess is that they are similar, if not identic, to GO.BAT:

@echo off cls %1ufoexe\black %1sound\sndstart %1intro %1 %1ufoexe\black %1ufoexe\geoscape "0" %1 if errorlevel 2 […]
Show full quote

@echo off
cls
%1ufoexe\black
%1sound\sndstart
%1intro %1
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufoexe\geoscape "0" %1
if errorlevel 2 goto begin
goto end
:begin
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufo2exe\tactical "1" %1
:geo
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufoexe\geoscape "1" %1
if errorlevel 2 goto begin
:end
%1sound\sndend

Whoever decided to rename it as GO.BAT should be spanked with a cactus.

The version I'm using is XCOM: UFO Defense, the US/CAN version.

So is go.com completely worthless? Can I remove it to make the command "go" automatically run go.bat instead of go.com?

One more question, sorry: I've heard some things about a difficulty bug or something. Is that on the CE or the DOS version? I don't ever remember there being a difference between difficulties, I'm not very good at games in general so I probably never played on anything other than Beginner, but I might want to try moving up.

No, don't remove GO.COM, it's there for a reason. But you may want to rename GO.BAt as UFO.BAT, PLAY.BAT or something similar to avoid more trouble in the future.

Don't know anything about the difficulty bug.

Frequency of ufos is affected by the difficulty setting, and funding, at least
those are the things i remember and having some serious effect.