Yamaha Audician 32, or any card with a YMF-71x chipset (OPL3-SA), it matches all your requirements, and i think you'll still have soft XG on Windows 9x. (XG Lite)

+1 for the Audician 32 Plus.

From the top of my head:

• The all-time favourite in this forum, the YMF-71x based sound cards - do remember to put it in "line out" mode though
• ESS AudioDrive cards - ESFM is great and mine had decent noise levels on speaker out (but weird bass-less sound on line out)
• I have an Aztech card that is quite decent as well. Need to remember which

What's with Creative SB16-AWE with OPL3 ?
I heard there was less compatibility with Pro standard - no stereo DAC. But what with other things like sound quality or problems on Pentium 3 systems? Some DOS games supported SB16 and this sometimes could give better sound. While I doubt there were much games wich had stereo DAC in SBPro mode but had no SB16 support. So this option is also interesting.

Any concrete data about brands/models like Aztech or other compatible cards?

I've never tried the Audician 32 Plus, but based on Phil's video and other reviews, it definitely seems to be a good option at a very reasonable price. The best part is that it is still available to buy online.
The only downside of the sound card (as mentioned in Phil's video) is the fact that it might not be able to fit all wave table MIDI daughter boards and that its stereo output is reversed (the latter is not a big problem - just swop the cables around).

Personally, I've always been a fan of Aztech Labs' range of sound cards.
My very first sound card was the Sound Galaxy Basic 16. However, this was one of their first generation sound cards, which didn't offer an MPU-401 UART MIDI interface (but, did have one similar to Sound Blaster & Sound Blaster Pro/Pro II) and was a bit noisy. It did, however, support 5 sound standards, offered 16-bit sound output in Windows and had the OPL3 FM synthesis chip. Later models dropped the Disney Sound Source & Covox Speech Thing support.
Other manufacturers like Packard Bell, Trust & later on HP sold Sound Galaxy licensed sound cards either as standalone cards or bundled them with their PC's (just in case you search online and come across a Packard Bell model with an Aztech Labs chipset).

I would recommend looking out for the later generation of Sound Galaxy sound cards that utilised either the AZT-2316/A/R or AZT-2320 chipsets. The former is not Plug 'n Play, but the latter is. However, I've had no problems setting up numerous models under Windows 9x that utilised the AZT-2316/A/R chipsets.
Just take note that there were Sound Galaxy models (most notably their Waverider models) that had an on board Wavetable MIDI synthesis chip. These cards do not have a Wave Blaster header to connect external MIDI daughter boards.

I do wish to point out that the AZT-1605 chipset based cards (the 2nd generation of Sound Galaxy models) are not Sound Blaster Pro II compatible, so stay away from those if you do want a card that offers Sound Blaster Pro II compatibility.
I prefer the AZT2316/A/R chipset based sound cards, since they just work better in "real mode" DOS than the AZT2320 chipset based sound cards (less hassle in setting up a Plug 'n Play configuration manager).

An ESS Audiodrive with the ES1688 chipset is the way to go - they can usually fit a full sized DB and have easy to use software, unlike those dry sounding OPLSAx things, whose default levels are all over the shop.

ESS Audiodrives are great options too, my best one is a Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Lite. Although FM synth is good and SB compatibility is too what impressed me the most about that card was the SAM Dream wavetable chipset. With a nice sound font it sounds just great.

ESS Audiodrives usually are full height cards which means you can use a wavetable board without problems. However its not all smoothsailing vs the YMF chipsets. The Sigma-Delta codec in the YMF chipset on my experience has better quality than what is found for instance on the ES1868F ESS chipset. I don't know if this is true for all the ESS chipsets, but the YMF chipset can do Sound Blaster Pro 2 mode 44KHz in stereo. A real Sound Blaster Pro 2 cannot do this, neither can an ESS Audiodrive, at least the ES1868. However this is not important for most people, but i rather have the crisp clean flat range of the YMF chipset than the messier and compressed range of the Audiodrives i tried.

If i could i would recommend a MediaTrix AudioTrix 3D-XG, which is a high quality full height ISA card implementation of the YMF-715 chipset that has better SnR ratio compared to the Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold. Unfortunately 3D-XG Audiotrix cards are very rare and 99% of YMF implementations are budget oriented.

You can always also use a 26 pin ribbon cable with an Audician or other YMF card, a lot of us here on Vogons have done that. If that's too much of a hassle and you really want wavetable welll...go for a full sized board.

However and although the hardware is good, i'd rather spend 80€ in a real external Roland SC-55 than a Dream Blaster. Or maybe if you want something more compact you might want to go with a small Yamaha MU10 or MU15. These will sound like a Yamaha daughterboard and are superior against a Roland SC-7. Specially if you want to enjoy good MIDI music.

Anything made by Yamaha, preferably based around the YMF719 chipset. I like to call these things "enhanced unfiltered SoundBlaster Pro 2.0s" because unlike the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0, they have no audio filtering on anything (the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 has heavy non-removable filtering on its OPL3, but has a switchable filter on its digital audio that, strangely, seems permanently active in Stereo), they have genuine OPL3 like the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0, most have WaveBlaster headers to fit a WaveBlaster-compatible daughterboard and they have 16-bit audio capabilities in Windows. Some of the bigger daughterboards may cause problems due to most of these having WaveBlaster headers placed too close to the inside of the card, so a small extension may be required for those cards (the NEC XR385 and, by extension, Yamaha's original DB60XG, would need such an extension).

I found this Yamaha Audician 32 in the trash recently, didn't know it was any good.... I hope it still works.

jesolo wrote:

I would recommend looking out for the later generation of Sound Galaxy sound cards that utilised either the AZT-2316/A/R or AZT-2320 chipsets.

Have you tried them with Pentium 3? I heard they have problems on fast CPU.

I do know that my first generation Sound Galaxy Basic 16 does have problems on anything faster than a 486DX4 100 MHz (specifically those with L1 write back cache). For this very reason, I do recall testing the later generation sound cards on faster PC's without any problems, but can't quite remember what the specs were.

I have a working Celeron 900 MHz (Coppermine based) in which I could test one of those cards, but the 3rd and 4th generation sound cards should work fine in a Pentium 3 based PC (preferably a 66 MHz FSB Coppermine based Celeron CPU). If you go up to 100 MHz FSB, then you might experience some sound problems.

Just bear in mind that many of these sound cards were released in the early to mid 90's. So, one could sometimes expect issues on hardware released towards the end of the 90's or early 2000's (that still had an ISA bus). This is because that by the late 90's, the focus shifted to PCI based sound cards and games were no longer released for the DOS platform.

Tertz wrote:

Have you tried them with Pentium 3? I heard they have problems on fast CPU.

I think this is more game-dependent than anything as I got loud, incoherent garbage out of the AZT2320's OPL3 with the floppy disk edition of Star Wars X-Wing only (it's actually the result of a bad driver in the game causing all sorts of problems on faster hardware). This is a post I made in 2010 when my knowledge on the inner workings of hardware was much more limited and I went off the assumption that other games would have the same garbage coming out of their OPL3 output (I went through so much hardware just for X-Wing at the time as I was addicted to the game - not so much now, but it did cause quite a bias in my choices of hardware components).

Ace wrote:

This is a post I made in 2010 when my knowledge on the inner workings of hardware was much more limited and I went off the assumption that other games would have the same garbage coming out of their OPL3 output

What sound cards you'd prefer for Pentium 3 DOS system with today knowledge?

Three in particular:

-SoundBlaster 16 (only those with OPL3)
-SoundBlaster AWE32 (likewise)
-Any YMF719-based sound card

I put a lot of emphasis on genuine OPL3 in my builds and reject all cards that use hardware OPL3 clones or software emulation (or worse still, Ensoniq's and Gravis' "simulated FM" using MIDI instruments to simulate OPL3, which fails miserably). Normally, though, I go for dual sound card setups (except my current AMD K6-III+ build, which is running quad sound cards). If you want one sound card to do everything, go Yamaha. If you don't mind dual sound card setups, combine an AWE64 with a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0. This is my combination of choice, especially since the OPL3 output on the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 is filtered unlike the SoundBlaster 16 and other cards with genuine OPL3.

Another card I like, but somewhat for the wrong reasons, is a card I have based around the OPTi 82C929A chipset. This card has genuine OPL3, but a flawed amplifier resulting in distorted bass, which I actually like since it makes the bass more gritty, even if it messes up the output.

Tertz wrote:

requirements: 1. SB Pro 2.0 compatibility in real DOS 2. OPL3 chip (or sounding identically analog, not just close like CQM) 3. […]
Show full quote

requirements:
1. SB Pro 2.0 compatibility in real DOS
2. OPL3 chip (or sounding identically analog, not just close like CQM)
3. 16 bit sound in Windows 9x
4. low noise, good sound
5. works good up to Pentium 3
6. no significant issues, good quality of the hardware

Next to the mentioned Yamaha OPL3-SAX, these Crystal CS4232-based cards would fit your requirements:
Acer Magic S23
Turtle Beach Tropez (1st edition) / TBS-2000
Both are hard to find.

This thread sparked my interest 😀

Looking to replace my AWE64 which just keeps bugging out and disables sound at random until I reinstall the drivers. Not sure if it's Windows 95 being the usual buggy mess or the card itself (most likely the former, works just fine in W98).

Ordered the Yamaha Audician 32, will arrive next week, gonna post how it goes later. Shouldn't be too hard to beat AWE64 sound quality wise, that thing sounds awful 🤣 , plus a real OPL3 chip is a nice bonus.

You should be very happy with that card!

For Windows 98, don't use the drivers on the CD, install the latest Yamaha drivers: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/audician-32-plus.html

What is nice is that it also configures MS-DOS mode for you.

Ace wrote:

If you don't mind dual sound card setups, combine an AWE64 with a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0

I'm thinking about AWE64 + YMF724 PCI. OPL3 seems good and probably works in pure DOS without SB-Link, while DAC of YMF7xx has compatibility issues in games anyway. Less mess with resources, cheaper card and no need to buy not so common Coppermine MB on Intel chips with 2 ISA.
Also have no idea how is it better to mix signals of 2 sound cards to one, without soldering, worsening sound quality and risks to damage cards.

Using Sound Blaster Digital FX from one card, and FM from another, only goes so far. As some games use the Sound Blaster base address (220h) for FM, whenever Sound Blaster is selected.