All i remember when I was in the position to purchase a pc, everyone was telling me "only get a sound blaster". I know that the original Sound Blaster helped to create a defacto standard when it came to sound cards and sound formats like .VOC sound files. When the first games to feature "speech" as in people talking, it seems as though sound blaster was the only thing going. Although, my Packard Bell had a "galaxy" sound card. And I remember purchasing an ISA type sound card just to play Ultima 7. I remember listening to Howard Stern and he was promoting a sound card that used wavetable instead of FM synthesis like that ISA card could produce. Thats about all I know.

DOSBox doesn't emulate a Roland card. Instead (at least on Windows, by default), it passes the MIDI data on to the operating system, which then uses hardware MIDI device or a software synthesizer (difficult to disable the latter on Windows Vista) to play back this MIDI data. Unfortunately, the older Roland cards predate the General MIDI (GM) standard that recent MIDI modules and the software synthesizer use. This means that the instrument selections will differ and quite a few special effects won't be supported. If you do happen to have an actual Roland card/module attached, you'll get the authentic experience. If not, it'll be messed up and FM synthesis may indeed sound better.