Which games are we talking here? More modern games (post 95) generally will need a beefy PC and will stutter if given too few cycles or in some cases if given too many. We'd need more info on what games you are trying, and how many cycles you've tried (besides auto).

Thank you! Actually, that response helped to confirm what I suspected right after I posted this message. You see, the AUTO setting apparently uses nearly all of one of my core's CPU power. When sound is added, it stutter a little. I found that if I use around 40,000 CPU cycles (manually) then even though it runs a little bit slower, sound rarely stutters at that point. In fact, I can run Duke Nukem 3D and it plays just fine with just a very seldom hiccup in sound. I get around 30fps so that's great. I've also been playing Hi Octane and it runs spectacular. Thanks for your reply as it really did help me by confirming my suspicions and I'm sorry for indirectly wasting everyone's time here. It was late and I just panicked and decided to post instead of using my head some more.

ih8regs tweaked the autocycles determination a bit, can't tell if it
solves your problem or not though. Maybe try a cvs build or, if the
problem doesn't hurt too much, try it in the next version.

thats right, you could try ykhwong's latest CVS build and set cycles=max. this one gives me the best performance in hi-octane without sound stuttering. you can also replace the dos4gw.exe with the dos32a extender (speeds up some games a little) and see if it works for you.

Please leave it at cycles=auto unles otherwise noted. This should work
for old AND new games, cycles=max doesn't.

Also don't forget to modify the buffers in dosbox.conf for the various emulated sound cards.