See, this has been the total opposite of my experience.

I have an Audician 32 + and a CL AWE64 Gold and in my 486DX2-66 build, the AWE is (so far) 100% compatible with all the games I've tried it on, but the Audician has issues. Example- KQ5 is fine, when set to IRQ7, but KQ6 only works when set to IRQ5, otherwise the voice skips badly. I've noticed weird voice issues in other games as well.

I can leave the AWE card set to IRQ5 and it's been working great across the board, plus the reverb and chorus settings can be kinda cool. Plus no hanging note bug on this one.

I'll leave my audician card for a newer system, like I think it was meant for.

Just my experience.

If you're refering to my "compatibility" remark, then - no, your experience is not a total opposite of mine - in fact it's very similar (check my link earlier in the thread).

It depends on whether you talk about "theoretical compatibility" (i.e., what games support) or "practical compatibility" (what actually works without issues).

Theoretically, more games support SBPro than SB16, and more games support General MIDI than AWE. So, the Audician32+Daughterboard can provide better / more authentic sound in a wider range of games. That is, when it works right. Like you, in practice, I've encountered issues with some games. With the AWE64 there have been fewer issues, and easier to resolve (even if the sound is not as authentic as a real OPL).