So, I know this question has been asked before (spent hours searching for a good answer to it), but I can't seem to find anything conclusive or recent enough.
I hope it's ok for me to ask the question (yay, first post), and I hope someone has good input!

So, I recently bought a Compaq Deskpro EN (Intel i815E chipset, NO ISA slots - I know it doesn't play ball well with DOS, but hopefully some workarounds are possible -, P3 933MHz, GeForce Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB, 2x256MB PC133, 32GB CompactFlash drive for Win XP, 4GB CompactFlash for DOS/Win 3.11) - I was lucky to find it for a good price, and thought I'd use it as a jack-of-all-trades nostalgia PC. Fast enough to play some old Win9x titles that wont run on newer and/or NT-based OSes, old enough to run DOS based stuff (or so I thought).

Windows XP is chugging along nicely, but I'm quite stuck finding an audio solution that'll work well with DOS, and after spending some time looking around the Internet for solutions or suggestions, I thought I'd come here to ask the question: is there a PCI audio solution that'll work well enough with DOS-based games and applications? The integrated one is an ADI 1885 on the Intel AC97/HDA bus, have not been able to find any info on SB Emulation or DOS support for that one at all.

I also have a couple of Sound Blaster PCI cards gathering dust (a PCI128 (CT4700) and an Ensoniq AudioPCI (CT4810)), but I've read everything from "they're crap" to "they work well" - and a number of ways to set them up under a DOS environment. I do believe I have a CMI8378-based card lying around somewhere as well - but I know for a fact that card is utter crap (at least under Windows, sound quality is abysmal).

I've been looking at getting a new one, but seeing how I haven't been able to see a consensus, I'm asking for help. What should I get, if the cards I have wont do? What driver/setup should I use for maximum compatibility? (Both for a card I'd buy, and/or for the cards I have. Been looking through the VOGONS driver library - great thing to have!) Would be nice to get some input before sinking hours into testing. 😀
Looking at eBay now, the cards I'm able to find that wont cost a fortune are based on:

• Avance Logic ALS4000 (read some good about these)
• C-Media CMI8378 (well...)
• ESS ES1938S
• Crystal CS4624-CQ
• ESS ES1983S
• Crystal CS4281

There is an Aureal Vortex 2 (heard both that they're terrible and that they're great) or two, but they're in the upper range I feel like shelling out for a sound card of that age. Several Creative cards are available as well, so I'm open to any suggestions! 😀 And sorry for the noobish question, when I last tinkered with a DOS gaming setup, I used ISA cards all the way (SB 1.0, SB 16 and later an AWE32) - that PC is no longer, however. 🙁
I might even try to look for another Socket 370 board, provided it's compatible with the Compaq case and PSU - I'm not so sure, but I haven't looked into it all too much yet.

Thanks a lot for any help!