What's wrong? You ask what's wrong?
It is wrong not to search the forum first!
Sound effects and speech don't work with VDMS and U8. There is no way around that.
Latest Dosbox version runs U8 though with correct sfx.

The new DMPI emulation in the latest DosBox (U8 is a DMPI game) needs a 1gig processor for a decent frame rate for a 386-486 game.

So I'm sticking with VDM Sound, and just having the sound off. For now. Till my upgrade, or when VDM Sound is updated to work with U8 digital audio. Whichever comes first.

*sigh*
The problem is NOT WITH VDMSOUND. It is with the game itself.

yeah the game itself has some sort of internal threading hooked up to timer.

Very evil

What is it with Ultima games and timing problems? I can't play Ultima 6 with midi music because of this... Notes keep ringing. Ah well, the Adlib music is actually pretty good.

Simple: OSI always wanted to "push the envelope" with their games. They always wanted to require your machine to be top of the line (Hence why U7 has that god-aweful VooDoo memory manager). IIRC, Dr. Cat was a bit disapointed in U7 because it wouldn't run worth a damn on his 386... Which sucked for him, because he was WORKING at OSI still ;->

In a way, the C64 and Apple ][ versions were better in that if it worked in 1984, it worked in 1994. Correctly. (Barring hardware problems ;->)

Well I have a fast computer and I tried dosbox, but the game won't even start...

Your best bet (currently) is to run without digital sound, until DosBox gets updated some more.

It runs for me (P4-2,66 GHz) in dosbox but requires you to start with a high number of cpu-cycles and this may vary from pc to pc. And then you have to skip the intro with esc and lower the cycles again to get a nice synchronisation...