Oh man... I've been lurking, and playing with a lot of various cards from ESS, Aztech, Creative, Yamaha, etc.

I even bought a PicoGus 2.0 with firmware 4.1.1 to try out the SB Pro & SB16 emulation.

I'd say I've spent a few months on this already and still a little cleanup to go, but the cards are all picked out and set in stone.

My plan is to give 100% configuration/setup/driver information, as soon as I am done... whenever that is 🤣.

The target is a Pentium III/BX machine running Windows 98 SE, with DOS games running inside Windows DOS boxes—not by rebooting into DOS mode.

This has been done before, I explored so many options, and all my research and testing led me back to this setup.

So here is what I am using :

AWE64/CT4500 for PCM digital audio only. Low noise.
OPL3-SA3/YMF719E-S for OPL3 FM music, wavetable header, and MPU-401. Real OPL3 and low noise.
DreamBlaster X2GS TE wavetable daughterboard. GM/GS with a licensed Roland soundbank, plus some space to load other soundbanks/presets.

I haven’t encountered clicks, ringing, clipping, hanging notes, or MIDI stuttering in my testing so far.

Think of it as a "Super SoundBlaster 16", I do not really care about the AWE part, but I can play with it if I like.

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for all things Windows 98 SE. My all-time favorite Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 Pro gaming card.

I'm giving up the following:

SB Pro stereo through the AWE64, which doesn’t affect the games I’m targeting.

I am really liking it so far, things are working very well, and I will give more details later.

Howdy all, hope everyone is doing well.