IIRC, sound in W6 was also distorted on real hardware because of the crappy sound engine. Mouse was already supported in the floppy disk version I bought when the game came out decades ago.
Unless you mean something different by "distorted", Soundblaster output simply sounds like PC speaker sound (more or less).

But feel free to correct me, last time I tried to be clever about sound in a Wizardry game (Pt.7), I got it all wrong... 😵

All the sound is just like white noise sounds, is that what I should be expecting? I played this game so long ago I honestly can't remember if there was more to the sound than that.

I've attached an audio sample of Soundblaster sound. I've used DOSBox 0.73 with default settings.
There's a clicking noise at the beginning and end of every sound sample, which was the topic of the thread I mentioned above (Wizardry VII: Anyway to fix the sound?).

If you don't get any proper sound output at all, post your system specs and dosbox.conf settings.

Hi,
On my 286@12mhz computer, using a real and original Soundblaster card, I do not get the clipping sound before every sound sample when playing the beginning of the game. I only get the initial clipping, when sound starts in the game, then it's smooth thereafter.

Yep, that's the problem with W6 & W7. As I said above, Sir-Tech's crappy sound engine is to blame, DOSBox's sound emulation is just too sophisticated 😁. But apart from the clicking noise, I believe that sound is just like it was back then (any differences on your 286 machine?).

Yes, otherwise the actual sounds (clipping notwithstanding) in DosBox is very close, perhaps even more polished with a richer timbre. However, there are other minor timing annoyances in DosBox, which still prompt me to play the game on my 286. For example, the mouse movements are not smooth, especially when there's a background sound to be heard, it becomes choppy and unresponsive (this is also true using other slowdown utilities); but, that does not happen on the real hardware, at least with my machine, so all movements are smooth.

Wiz6 and Wiz7 try to abuse the OPL to use it as a crude DAC if you configure them to use SB or Adlib for sound. Other games such as Metal Mutant do this as well.

DOSBox does not support this! 🙁

You have to use PC Speaker for the sound setting to get decent digitized sounds in DOSBox with the aforementioned games. Note that for some reason the PC speaker sounds do click/pop in DOSBox at the start and end of each sound played.

Also, as a side note: I have two versions of Wiz6, one on original floppies that has no mouse or sound blaster support and one from the Ultimate Wizardry Archive CD-ROM that has mouse support and a fancy title screen with a party of adventurers pictured and scrolling credits. I still prefer playing with mouse support disabled because it feels more efficient 😀

My impression from multiple indications was that they intended the original release to have mouse support but didn't get it working in time.

My version of Wiz 6 is a standalone version that was sold through Radio Shack, it has mouse support and the scrolling credits that you mention. Maybe this release was in between the "greatest hits" and the original release.

**NOTE: I just reconfigured to PC speaker and it works just like yours, however when I configure it for either Adlib or Soundblaster the samples are all distorted. Thanks for the explanation on this HunterZ. Is there nothing that can be done so as to use Adlib or SB and remove those annoying pops?

I don't believe so. I think even the new OPL emulation in DOSBox doesn't support Wiz6/Wiz7's unorthodox use of that hardware as a DAC.

looking for the topic, came across the similar threads in here compgroups.net/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg/Bad-sound-playing-Cosmic-Forge-on-Dosbox
In case someone needs more info to the topic.
Regards.