PNP is fine, on a later mobo, but Jumpered is Good too, usually better a choice, if you got the choice.
ESS 1688/1868f they can be had for almost nothing, and are very good SB-PRO clones, and in windows with their older VXD July pre-1997 drivers sound absolutely wonderful for General Midi Playback in windows.
Like a Sega Genesis got merged with, a Sound Blaster 16.
But they Need to be paired with a PCI card like the live!, as they have problems with DX acceleration, in some games result in music and sounds being played at a slow tempo or.. for lack of a better word - wrong.
Yamaha 71x ISA cards are also excellent soundblaster clones, and since they are yamaha have the cleanest OPL-3 playback.
They have little trouble with games in 9x either.
Sound Blaster 16's can usually be found for little cost too, and of course they are gonna be highly compatible.
Some Sound Blaster Vibra's like the CT2800 model have the true Yamaha YMF-262 chip on it for opl-3 playback. They can be an ok choice, too.
Awe64's won't produce True opl-3 playback, and they sound different, but you get wavetable support.
Awe 32's vary drastically depending on the model, early ones are often super noisy but contain the YMF-262m Opl-3 chip, later ones are quieter and reduce the chip counts, the last model, if basically a Awe64 , with 30pin simms on it, so you can expand it to 32mb.
Those can be had for almost nothing, and are a very good choice if you want almost OPL-3 and good wavetable sound (soundfont's yay!) for cheap.
Heres an example of an older Awe32 Ct2760
I don't use this card much because it puts out noise on its MIDI and FM line, a weird warble like sound and its very annoying.
Even does this over its SPDIF OUT its very clear for just normal wave\PCM playback tho 😒 .
But it has the OPL-3 chip on it.
Heres an example of the Last 32's CT3670 You'll see its much more compact, but no yamaha chip.
These are very common on Ebay and amazon
And here is an example of an PNP ESS 1688f, and a normal Jumper-ed Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 Both of which are clear sounding cards.
You can also combine a ESS\SB16\32\Yamaha card with a sound module that plugs into the wavetable header, for GM playback too, but those modules can be difficult to find, and are almost never cheap.
I'm sure there are people here, who can add more examples.
