I think most of them do, so it may be easier to make a list of games that don't.

Also, you are targeting something too broad here - because what is "SB Emulation?" Not every hardware audio devices provides the same level of SB Emulation.

No it's about the SB-Emulation that Win98se provides while using the win98 installed sounddrivers on modern AC97 codecs.
Some dos-soundengines will work with that, lot's don't. e.g. one most dos-musicplayers don't work on win98se, but ocp works very well.

Not working are most pinball-games like Pdreams1+2, PinballFantasies, Turrican2-TFF, ...also not working are games/demos that are configured to use a covox because the way the covox uses the lpt-port is not accepted by win98se.

The main problem is, different AC97 or whatever PCI cards provide their drivers with absolutely different level of emulation, so in reality, you can only list your computer specs and drivers and games that you successfully play.

There are some differences right, but I am talking about Soundchips that do not offer dos-sound-emulation layers within their drivers. I am talking about Win98se WDM-Drivers that do not offer SB-Emulation in Dos and therefor rely on the sb-emulation on Win98se.

That is exactly what I do check currently.

Having working sound for dosgames with win98se mostly relies on the soundengine the game uses
and what memory management the game requires.

I can confirm:
- comanche3

isn't vdmsound and soundfx more compatible emulator?

I don't think so on Win98se.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-09-02, 09:04:

The main problem is, different AC97 or whatever PCI cards provide their drivers with absolutely different level of emulation, so in reality, you can only list your computer specs and drivers and games that you successfully play.

No, this is wrong.

The AC97 is a standard codec link specification and software programming model. It is legacy-free. It enables standard design of host controllers (digital processing), audio codecs (analog processing) and software driver model. The SB-emulation is provided by upper level driver from WDM kernel audio streaming core from the OS for DOS programs running in VDM on Win98/ME. VDM DOS sessions under Win98/ME automatically get "BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330" without any real hardware for SoundBlaster I/O at 0x220,IRQ5, DMA1 and MIDI I/O at 0x330. You also get the peace of mind of any potential resource conflicts and no real-mode drivers to load from CONFIG.SYS, they are virtualized by the OS for VDM DOS sessions. Base on the type info from BLASTER env, "T4" is a SoundBlaster Pro for DOS software.

thx! that is why my ac97 codec with wdm-driver in win98se provides a "found sbpro" and not a "found sb16" with detection-routines of dos-soundengines like "miles" etc. e.g. Duke3d, Swarrior and Blood run just fine on Win98se using the sfx from the ac97 and the music via win98se-built in softsynth...which is ok but not really great. Perhaps I will change the softsynth to something better... but first I check the working games/sound-enignes.

Sometimes less is better then more...I am not sure but sometimes the dossound stops working after quitting a game. reducing the amount of channels and the khz-reproduction (44->22) seems to make it a lot more stable. The Sbpro had 22khz as well, so it's a perfect fit, and who cares about 32channels if I can't make a difference to only 8channels....

WDM drivers suck and you should avoid them on all costs if you are retro gamer. Only use VXDs and if you card don't have it get the 5kg sledgehammer and smash the card buy a decent genuine SB like the 0100 for gaming.

Not long ago I made a Sb Live 24bit work under Win98SE.

Like this card has no 98 driver, the cd is some copyright protected you cant even extract the iso, can't run the installer but it is still possible under 98SE to feed in the XP WDM driver to get the card working but what comes out of it in most of the games like Q1/Q2/Q3, HL, CS ... you will not like.

The sounds are distorted with skips in them. Even the windows login/logout sound sometimes. Only thing it can do "decently" under 98 is play regular music with winamp.

This card btw works fine under XP, linux and newer systems but I would not waste time on cards without VXD drivers.

My opinion was different in the Win98 days.
Back then, it was so difficult to have multiple audio streams working simultaneously.

At least with PAS16/SB16/SB32 sound cards.
Also, using that full-duplex feature in Device Manager always was like playing with fire.
(Linux was much worse, btw.
The sound system of *nix was very primitive
and clicking full-duplex was freezing my PC. )

With Windows XP/WDM, things became so much easier. At least for me.
You could listen to music, but also hear system sounds and the noise of incoming messages via ICQ messenger (ha-ho!).

Anyway, this was not relevant for gaming, though.