Yeah a SB16 is an easy choice that will "just work" as long as you aren't planning to use a DB. But the facts are that they usually have poor signal quality and that their DB headers are almost always flawed. I personally have not found a SB16 or AWE32 that works correctly with my Roland SCD-15.
BTW, SB16 is apparently also effectively only capable of outputting 12-bit audio due to DAC limitations. It's hard to find details on this.
Signal quality isn't a big deal with very many old games because a lot of them use low quality audio anyway to keep CPU usage and storage requirements down, and because they couldn't assume you had a 16-bit 44.1kHz sound card.
But if you play games that support 16-bit 44.1 kHz music, you will start to notice the difference between the really poor cards and better ones. I tend to notice it quickly in games that use tracker music because some of them can mix at 44.1 KHz or better. You can also hear the difference when using a MIDI DB. The DB output goes through the sound card's circuitry.