It seems kind of subtle, but I'm noticing that the sound effects in TimeShock seem to happen just a little bit late. Anyone else having the same problem or know what's causing it/how to fix it?
e.g. when I use a flipper it's basically already returned back to it's resting position before I hear the sound effect for it being used.

Try turning audio hardware acceleration to basic. To do this go to start menu --> run... --> type dxdiag --> go to the sound tab and then set Hardware sound acceleration level to no acceleration see if that helps.
Also does the game feel responsive and the delay is only the sound? Or do you press a key to do something and it takes half a second or so to respond and the sound messes up as a result of that?

Hmm, dxdiag doesn't give me an option to adjust the hardware acceleration level. I click the run 64-bit dxdiag button and that version didn't give me that option either. Is there anywhere else to find that option?
(I'm using Vista x64 + SB X-Fi)
The game itself is responsive, only the sound effects are a little off.

Vista uses a completely different system for handling sound which is why that isn't avaliable. If you haven't done so already contact gog support about your problem, for now I don't have any ideas but will get back to you if I think up anything.

In DOSBOX, You can use Shift and F11 or F12 I believe to increase the CPU Cycles, I did this and the problem goes away.

ctrl instead of shift.

Whoops! Thanks for the correction

Didn't do anything for me unfortunately. I've contacted gog support but they can't replicate my issue.
Annoyingly I can copy the package to my Mac laptop and run it on Boxer (repackaged DosBox) perfectly, but on the Vista PC it just won't play nice.

Yeah I get the same problem with the sound being a little late. I'm on vista 64 and have a creative x-fi xtreme audio soundcard (yeah the name's really stupid). It really doesn't bother me though, I'm just glad I can listen to the excellent music tracks (which i couldn't when i got the game working in xp a few years ago)I also notice a liiiiitle little amount of ball stutter. It's basically not ruining the experience per se, I can still aim my shots, but it's noticable even if I raise my cpu cycles in the dosbox to max. Anyone got any tips for fixing something like that?

You could try the changing the compatibilty to windows 98 mode it might fix the problem.

try playing with the prebuffer and blocksize parameter in the configuration file of dosbox
(dosboxXXXXX.conf , where XXXX is the game you want to play)

yeah i tried making some changes to both prebuffer and blocksize, but no change in audio lag. Doesn't bother me though. What does irritate me is the the slight visual stuttering, it kindof messes up the ball's flow on the table, and nothing I've tried seems to work. Doesn't matter what I do in the graphics options in the game...

I ended up having to track down the original boxed version and buy it again. The Windows version works perfectly on Vista without any of the issues the GOG release has. It's a shame their package won't work properly but there's no workaround that seems to fix all.
Maybe it's an issue with the Vista X-Fi sound drivers or something, though it is really bizarre that only this particular game is affected.