SBFMDRV is used by some Creative's software bundled with early Sound Blasters, I forgot what exactly, perhaps Intelligent Organ and/or PLAYCMF ?
As for some games not detecting Adlib... maybe the machine you're running them on is too fast?

Machine=A2286/8Mhz... so not very fast 😀

OK, just had a look...
Arkanoid 2 doesn't detect sound card, for Adlib you need to run it with "ark2 a" command, then the config is stored in DOH.CFG, so next time you need no command line parameters.

Test BubbleBobble please.

Bubble Bobble doesn't detect sound card either, instead reads config from BUBBOB.CFG
Delete that file, and then it should ask what devices to use.

Ok, if the former post was misleading.

I already figured out that deleting the cfg let the game ask the settings again, but it says ADLIB is not detected.
If I choose ADLIB I have no sound at all.
If I run SBFMDRV before starting the game and deleting the cfg it detects ADLIB and it can be choosen without reporting an error, but it's the same, I hear nothing. All other games ran fine on that ESS-1688 in Adlib on that machine.

I suggest that the ADLIB implementation of the old taito games does not work on ESS1688 FM.

Well, there may be some incompatibility.
I recall playing Arkanoid 2 with some ESS card - worked fine, but I reckon it was ES1869.
Anyway, make sure that ESS card is properly initialized: ESSCFG, ESSVOL, or something like that.

Did you try sound.com, too ?

Neither Arkanoid 2 nor Bubble Bobble use SOUND.COM
However, it's a good idea to try SOUND.COM, and some games which uses it (eg. Locomotion), to see if they properly detect and operate Adlib.