Get a Audigy 2 ZS (don't get the dell OEM version, check it has joystick port pins on the board etc). Pretty much all of them are universal 3.3/5v PCI cards. It will work in DOS exactly the same as the SBLive series. The Dos driver it uses is Sbeinit version 5. Sblive cards use version 4 and lower (will not work with ver 5).
I use the 8MB default.ecw soundfont with it in DOS and it is decent enough for General Midi, even has MT32 emulation option that sounds okay if the game doesn't upload custom instruments. If the game does upload new sounds it can be pretty bad sounding.
Be warned though, depending on the game, the sound emulation of OPL2/3 in all the live/audigy cards under dos ranges from passable to terrible.

That's very helpful, thank you! It's great to hear that it can do General MIDI and even MT32 emulation in pure DOS.

Also, as you said, the Audigy 2 ZS is quite inexpensive on eBay. It looks like the SB0350 is the card you're recommending: it has the joystick header, the front panel audio header, and universal 3.3V / 5V.

AvalonH wrote:

Get a Audigy 2 ZS <...> It will work in DOS exactly the same as the SBLive series.

If LightStruk wants to get it working in DOS and nothing more what the sense to buy Audigy 2ZS? You said yourself "exactly the same as the SBLive". SBLive "SB" series are all universal 3.3/5 too ("CT" aren't). So, what the sense?

And why exactly "ZS"??? If we use "regular" Audigy 2 SB0240 is it worse than "ZS"? What is worse?

PARUS wrote:

AvalonH wrote:

Get a Audigy 2 ZS <...> It will work in DOS exactly the same as the SBLive series.

If LightStruk wants to get it working in DOS and nothing more what the sense to buy Audigy 2ZS? You said yourself "exactly the same as the SBLive". SBLive "SB" series are all universal 3.3/5 too ("CT" aren't). So, what the sense?

And why exactly "ZS"??? If we use "regular" Audigy 2 SB0240 is it worse than "ZS"? What is worse?

Audigy 2 ZS has a better SNR (much better than the Live cards) than Audigy 1/2. That is probably the only reason. Other than that it is exactly the same in DOS for games as the SBLive using Sbeinit. So why not go for the card with a higher SNR, costs the same or even cheaper and offers the same DOS game support.

I have also used the SB0380 - Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro (not the plain Audigy 4). Works the same in Dos games as the live series with sbeinit.

If you are going to use headphones, I would go for Audigy 2 of any sort. Audigy 1 has hiss in headphone mode, and Live's front output is just not very good in general. However with speakers this is less of an issue.

However there is something special about having a Live! with Liveware 3.0 up and running for your 1998-2000 games. I also don't enjoy the whole install process of getting an Audigy up and running with Win9x.

AvalonH wrote:

Audigy 2 ZS has a better SNR than Audigy 1/2. That is probably the only reason.

It's a cute myth 😀 Audigy1 has SNR=100db, Audigy2 has 106db, 2ZS has 108db. You'll never can differentiate it by ears even if very want and try so hard 😀

AvalonH wrote:

Audigy 2 ZS has a better SNR (much better than the Live cards)

Yes, it's true! To be more precise (without myths) we must say all Audigy 1/2/ZS have much more clear front output than any Live card. And in Windows you can do nothing with it. But in pure DOS you can redirect any/all channels to rear output which is very clean.

swaaye wrote:

If you are going to use headphones, I would go for Audigy 2 of any sort. Audigy 1 has hiss in headphone mode

What the "headphone"? I don't remember it. Is this option in Creative's mixer?

swaaye wrote:

Live's front output is just not very good in general.

It's because Creative are idiots. They made Live's front output on dirty AC97 DAC and rear output on separate high quality Philips DAC. This problem can be solved via editing EMU10K1 DSP registers and it is already done in KX driver, it has option "swap front and rear". The KX driver is wonderful but unfortunately it doesn't support EAX. And in Creative's drivers nobody dealt with this problem about dirty front output. But as I said above we can turn on and use rear output easy in DOS on any Live card.