I heard some are just really bad sounding, I cannot attest to that as I have yet to hear one in DOS.
Eariler I was testing out AdlibTrackerII with the Turtle Beach: Santa Cruz, it runs an emulated OPL3 like the Vortex2 cards do, but everything played sounded horrible! Missing notes and lots at wrong volume.

However in games it sounded just fine...go figure that one.

markot wrote:

I installed my old Sound Blaster Live! CT4670 card yesterday on a Windows 98 computer. When testing the sound in games like Commander Keen 6 and Space Quest 4, the audio output doesn't sound even that good as in DOSBox. Overall the Windows 98 computer is better for older games.

Is there some updated SB Live! driver that would fix the audio problem?

That is because you are using the wrong soundcard for OPL in Dos. SB-Live can play OPL, yet it is badly implemented and by the time the Live was new, OPL was considered outdated and old. Remember that OPL was a technology from around 1987/88 to around 1995, were's Wavetable (on ISA cards) was common technology used for games, from around 1994/95 to 98/99. Keen and other games that uses OPL, are just too old for the Live. Get a real OPL card, and it will be ok.

If you want some good Dos titles for the Live, then install the 8mb soundfile for the Live and set up the Dos game for something like GM.
That is the best choice you can get with the Live. I have been running Doom today, using my Live-Value and the 8mb file.
If I want to play some OPL titles, I will use one of my other machines with a SB16 that has a real OPL chip.

On the driver question. You need to use the "Live Ware 3" drivers, wich are the best.

The Sound Blaster Live! CT4670 seems to be the first generation of these cards. Do the later generations of Sound Blaster Live cards have better sound quality is MS-DOS or does it only depend on the SB 16 emulation drivers used? My CT4670 had a SB 16 emulation driver with version number 2.6.

Later SB Live! versions (I have a CT4870) have the same DOS sound quality as the originals. You could try the LiveWare 3 drivers, just don't expect any miracles in DOS - most of the improvements were aimed at Windows sound quality and performance.

SB-Live cards are for Windows-9X and not for MS-Dos up to 6.22
Just remember that. And don't use them for Adlib.
That sound shitty and horrible.

For games that require Adlib or OPL if you like.
Do yourself a favor and get a simple SB16 with OPL-Chip.
Usually just a card like CT2770. Yeah. They have line noise.
They are just a better choice than a SB-Live for Adlib.
And for a starter. They seem cheap enough, as nobody want
them because of the noise and the hanging note bug.

On the other hand. If you want a cheap starter card and only
want Adlib for sound. Well... Then it's a no brainer.