I was going to test a 4170 but its dead.... diagnose or CTCU won't pick it up 😒
Anyway, I've given up on Creative cards for MIDI.
I have had great success with an ESS 1868 card.
FM synth sounds just like a real Yamaha OPL, as far as I can tell. No hanging note bugs at all. Sound quality is generally pretty good, certainly better than early SB16's. However on my system at least, there seems to be more 'background noise' with the ESS card than a CT2800. When actually playing music though, there are no pops and crackles or anything. There might be something else causing this, I'm not sure. When plugged into a pair of speakers the noise is not noticable over the sound of the AT power supply fan. Definitely noticable with headphones though.
I had some trouble getting my XR385 to fit. The 1868 is physically smaller than SB16's so the daughterboard actually extends down past the ISA slot.
I managed to find one slot on my motherboard that did not had any components that the DB could interfere with. It *barely* fits like this. I got pretty lucky as other boards I have, don't have any 'free' slots like this, they've all got components beside each ISA slot.
One really neat feature of this card, is that ESSVOL has a seperate volume control for the wavetable header, AND the external MIDI port (The wavetable header is referred to as Synth B). This is great for me as I have an SC-55 as well. So I can use this card for both devices - just turn the volume down on Synth B when I want to use the SC55 😀
So for people looking for a card that works for MIDI, and has good OPL and digital sound, I can definitely reccomend an ESS 1868 card. However, if yo uwish to use a wavetable daughterboard, either find a card that is physically as tall as the L bracket, or find an ISA slot on your motherboard that is free of any components that might interfere with the daughterboard, and it should *just* fit.
EDIT: regarding the noise issue. There are two jumpers on the card for SPK OUT or LINE OUT. I had it on SPK OUT, so I've changed it to LINE OUT and the noise has pretty much disappeared. So yeah, that was pretty much my only complaint with the card, now a non-issue. Even with headphones on you can turn the volume up using ESSVOL for it to be perfectly audible in LINE OUT mode.