do you have the correct lines iines autoexec.bat
im guessing the card needs a driver loaded plus certain set blaster lines

Yes I load the sound card like this:
setupds /s
dsdma
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

edit: Selecting OPL2 instead of OPL3 seems to have made a decent improvement. The speed of the music seems a little off still but the gameplay is more fluid at least.

What happens if you just run Descent without any slowdown utilities? Yes, I know that the ship bobbing will be too fast, but just for the sake of testing.

Besides running too fast everything else seems fine. FM synth probably plays the most consistently and at the correct speed without throttling.

edit: I think I may have been mistaken about opl2/3 making a difference in speed. It seems like the best setup right now is to only use msred at 6x multiplier and 12% cpu speed. Music plays somewhat erratically and gameplay is sped up/inconsistent but it's still somewhat playable. If I don't use FM synth then using throttle 4 -c as well helps to even things out.

edit2: Seems like the msred multiplier option isn't really doing anything, only the cpu speed limiter.

For later vesions of the game you can use the "-640x480" option and the game will run at normal speed without slowdown utilities. But I think the game is well known for it's OPL3 music slowdowns.

I did some recordings of the Descent E1M1 music on the Audigy 2 ZS under DOS: OPL3 emulation and built in sampled synth.

Interesting, I didn't know it had a 640x480 mode. That actually does help quite a bit with the speed when unthrottled, although it still runs quite a bit faster than normal, but much improved. It's pretty playable at a faster speed, although my cheap logitech keyboard isn't really up to the task since I can only press a few keys simultaneously and descent requires many of them.

I tried msred at 50% throttle (the least harsh command I'm aware of) and that slowed it down too much, so then tried the "throttle" command at 1 and 2. Either of these allowed the game to run at a more normal speed, and even the fm synth played pretty well, but I noticed that while turning it just wasn't as fluid in motion, with a lot of little stuttering.

I suppose I'll just stick to the unthrottled, faster, but still kind of playable speed, unless there is a better throttling tool that can maintain the fluidity of the game.

edit: Running it in windows slows it down a bit more so now it's actually running pretty good.