I've narrowed down the repeated crashes i'm getting of DosBox with One Unit Whole Blood to when I pick up the first item. Interestingly, all other sound effects seem to be playing okay. But whether it's the shield in the first secret or the TNT box in the initial crypt, it always immediately crashes the game. Windows XP, SP3.

I don't think this is a common problem. Have you tried a new build of DOSBox? Shadowcat posted a build to fix the non looping CD-Audio track issue. It might work better for you. Baring that, you are on XP so many of the preDOSBox solutions might work well for you. http://buildxp.deathmask.net/

Okay...what I thought was confirmed was not confirmed. There is something else causing this to happen. It just so happens always to occur on item pickup. I was able (for no particular reason I can tell) to play all the way through a level, to the next level, before another crash. It said it was an "exception" and generated an error report that was reeeally huge (listing over 20 Modules, etc.)

I updated with the new build before doing this, and I had one crash on first-item-pickup, then the experience described above.