I just tried the DOS-version of Earth 2140. But i have trouble with the sound. It stutters permanently (music and sound effects). An error occours very often when the DOSBox is trying to start the game ("Sound Card Initialization Error") but after several retries the game starts. Sadly the sound is still not OK.

I'm running the game on Windows XP and tried the compatibility mode, too. But in that case I can't even start the game (after the "Sound Card Initialization Error" the DOSBox doesn't react on the "Try again" command, except when I select No).

How can I solve that problem? Does anybody know?

Yeah, others (myself included) are also having this problem. The game does start, if you press 'Y' enough times, though.

If you are having audio stutters and distortion like I had, you can try adjusting the DOSBox settings by editing dosboxE2140.conf with a text editor. These values (found under [mixer]) fixed it for me:

blocksize=1024
prebuffer=50

Thanks the tip with the conf-file worked just fine. Except the "Sound Card Initialization Error". That's still there.

If I remember correctly my original DOS CD had the same problem with sound initialization, but to a much lesser extent. GOG (or some one) has specifically written a batch file to offer the retry y/n with this version to get around this problem, so there's probably not much that can be done. My guess is it's a timing problem with modern hardware and how Earth 2140 was coded, and it would probably require a new DOSBox to fix it.

Thanks sndw, that fixed my audio problems :)

Apparently the sound problems only occur on weaker hardware. I had the stuttering on my laptop, it's not present on my fairly new desktop PC, that's probably why GOG overlooked this issue. Thanks for the hints with the correct configuration, though.