Since the Baldur's Gate default voices are pretty limited I decided to try my hand at a custom voice set. I was making a Dwarf character and thought that the NPC Dwarf lines in the game were already perfect for it. These are the ones that go:

"By Moradin's hammer!"
"I need a swig of some strong, Dwarven ale."
"Me temper's bad enough without ye botherin' me!"
"Yer chatterin's startin' ta wear on me nerves."
"*injured sound*"
"*death sound*"

Anyhow, I pulled those .wav files from the chitin with DLTCEP. They came out as DWARF01, DWARF02, DWARF03, et cetera. I renamed them to suit the formatting required (DWARF1a, DWARF1b, DWARF1c, etc) and added them to the Sounds file. On entering the game, the DWARF1 voice option is available, but none of the .wav files actually work in game and there's just silence.

I've about hit the limit of my technical expertise here and don't know why they're not working or how to rectify the issue. Any assistance would be appreciated.

As far as I remember you need to choose the option "WAVC to WAV" in DLTCEP in order to have the sound files working properly.

Yeah, the WAVC to WAV function under "Sound" was how I extracted the .wav files entitled DWARF1, DWARF2, et cetera. But for some reason the game doesn't play them, even after they've been appropriately renamed to be recognized.

It's not enough just to add the .wavs, you have to add the new sound set and its string references to 'CHARSND.2DA'.

How does one do that? The only explanation I'd seen so far was this note in the Sound folder:

Custom Sound files

The following is a list of the wav files for the custom sound sets.
Replace each 'XXXXXXX' in the filenames with the name of the sound set (MAX 7 CHARACTERS).
All the wav files should be 22 khz, 16 bit mono sounds.

XXXXXXXa.wav : Battle Cry
XXXXXXXb.wav : Becoming Leader
XXXXXXXc.wav : Tired
XXXXXXXd.wav : Bored
XXXXXXXe.wav : Badly Wounded
XXXXXXXf.wav : Selected 1
XXXXXXXg.wav : Selected 2
XXXXXXXh.wav : Selected 3
XXXXXXXi.wav : Action Acknowledgement 1
XXXXXXXj.wav : Action Acknowledgement 2
XXXXXXXk.wav : Action Acknowledgement 3
XXXXXXXl.wav : Being Hit
XXXXXXXm.wav : Dying
XXXXXXXn.wav : In Forest
XXXXXXXo.wav : In City
XXXXXXXp.wav : In Dungeon
XXXXXXXq.wav : Daytime
XXXXXXXr.wav : Nighttime
XXXXXXXs.wav : Rare Selected 1
XXXXXXXt.wav : Rare Selected 2
XXXXXXXu.wav : Rare Selected 3
XXXXXXXv.wav : Rare Selected 4
XXXXXXXw.wav : Reaction to Party Member Death

Copy the .wav files to the Sounds directory located in the directory that Baldur's Gate
was installed in.

I probably should've noted in the first post, that this is NOT the Enhanced Edition. I'm playing on the classic version.

It's a simple matter of searching for the string refs with DLTCEP or Near Infinity. Here they are for your convenience:

4934 -- By Moradin's Hammer!
4936 -- I need a swig 'o some strong dwarven ale.
4939 -- Me temper's bad enough without ye botherin' me.
4940 -- Yer chatterin's startin' to wear on me nerves.
12584 -- Injured
12585 -- Dying

You now have to add a column in CHARSND.2DA (in DLTCEP), name it 'Dwarf' and add the appropriate refs as per the SNDSLOT.IDS file:

9 BATTLE_CRY1
6 LEADER
7 TIRED
8 BORED
20 HURT
26 SELECT_COMMON1
27 SELECT_COMMON2
28 SELECT_COMMON3
32 SELECT_ACTION1
33 SELECT_ACTION2
34 SELECT_ACTION3
18 DAMAGE
19 DYING
10 BATTLE_CRY2
11 BATTLE_CRY3
63 SELECT_RARE1
64 SELECT_RARE2
65 CRITICAL_HIT
66 CRITICAL_MISS
67 TARGET_IMMUNE
68 INVENTORY_FULL
69 PICKED_POCKET
70 EXISTANCE1
71 EXISTANCE2
72 EXISTANCE3

I feel confident that I followed your directions correctly, but the option isn't appearing in-game.

Try naming it in all capitals.

I changed it to DWARF and then tried DWARF1 and neither one is appearing in-game.

Just to make sure the step-by-step is correct...

Open DLTC
Load BG1 Chitin
Edit -> Tables (2DA)
File -> Load Table -> CHARSND
Add Column -> DWARF -> Appropriate Refs per screenshot
File -> Save Table
Exit

That correct?

That looks right. However, it seems that custom sound sets should have their entries all set to 30. I can't think why offhand, but try setting all of the refs to 30.

Edit: I'm guessing the custom '30' is telling the game to look in the 'Sounds' folder for the appropriately named (DWARF0, DWARF1 etc.) .wav files and to use those directly.

You never mentioned that you was running through Galaxy, nor that your installation was in the Windows protected 'Program Files (x86)' folder structure. The game cannot add files there, nor does it know how to look for the ghosted (by Windows) files. You need to move your installation out of that protected folder to somewhere like C:\Galaxy\Games\ .

If you're not absolutely intent on adding your own custom sounds, you could try this custom sound set mod which has a male dwarf custom voice, among others.

That's odd. So, the game registers changes in (x86) enough that it detects the Dwarf1 sound set in the Sound folder (pic related) but doesn't register it enough to actually play the files? Also, it seems to have no problem detecting new portraits and the like either.

Anyhow, I'm past the effort I'm willing to sink into this and give up. Thanks for the help.

Another mis-communication. That image shows original Baldur's Gate and those sounds you listed I assumed (perhaps wrongly) were from Baldur's Gate 2. That's confused the issue, as the BG2 method doesn't work in BG1.

The sounds I listed were pulled from the chitin file for BG1.