I think that James-F can probably provide a good answer, since he has performed (and still is) some comparative tests.

You can also look at an Aztech sound card with an AZT-2316 chipset.
Very good Sound Blaster Pro 2 compatibility, has an MPU-401 MIDI (UART) interface, is not Plug 'n Play and also supports WSS.
Only downside is that it doesn't have the low pass filter that you find in the Sound Blaster Pro 2.

The only reason I use a clone SB Pro over the real thing is because I want a single card solution with a wavetable header, but that requirement aside, a real SB Pro can't be beat IMHO. No nasty pops on startup / shutdown, beautiful sounding voice and OPL3, and they just work.

It seems like the biggest feature that'd be lost would be WSS compatibility. What games will actually sound better in WSS mode than in SBPro mode?

My biggest reason is that I have limited, shared space where I can setup my time machine. That means external speakers are not really an option for me and I have to use headphones. The YMF-719 lets me listen without a lot of noise and with James-F's filter discovery I will mod it to improve the lowpass filter. I am still holding onto my CT1600 but if prices get high enough I may let it go.

The CT16**/2600 series are great non issues SBs IMO. 😀

Yamaha YMF71x and Aztech with AZT-2316 chipset, these are the two most accurate clones with MPU-401, Wavetable, real OPL3, and WSS that you can still find on ebay.
Both will not sound like the SBPro2 out of the box for the lack of lowpass filter which is important for that beefy filtered SBPro sound that not even the SB16 can recreate because it uses different kind of filter.
The YMF71x has to be modified to fix the lowpass filter and reversed stereo on the Wavetable header, and properly set the mixer utility to sound closest to the CT1600.
The Aztech has no lowpass filter at all and can't be modded, but all else is excellent.
ESS ES1688 is also a great choice with properly filtered PCM sound and fantastic OPL3 clone, also has an MPU-401 with Wavetable header albeit a little noisy when enabled.

I can only attest about these three cards, and recommend the YMF71x as the best all around SBPro2 after some modifications.
The SBPro2 CT1600 is getting harder to find, try to search for CT1600 on ebay...none.

As mentioned, I already have a ct1600. I was just wondering if there were any reasons not to switch to that from a ymf719. Is WSS support worth trying to keep?

You have to look at the hardware specifications and what your specific needs are (under both DOS & Windows).

The Windows Sound System (WSS) supported 16-bit, 48 KHz stereo playback and recording (similar to your Sound Blaster 16 and above).
The Sound Blaster Pro was limited to 22.05 KHz (stereo) or 44.1 KHz (mono) and was only 8-bit.

However, practically all DOS games only had 8-bit samples recorded at a very low sampling rate and therefore a 16-bit card under DOS becomes almost irrelevant (this is purely because, before CD-ROM titles became popular, storage space was a problem and you had to try and reduce the size of your digital samples as much as possible).
Apart from that, very few games provided WSS support, which is actually a shame, since if this had become a popular standard, then Sound Blaster compatibility wouldn't have been a problem (many clones had the Analog Devices or Crystal Semiconductor Codec that provided built-in WSS support).

So, purely from a DOS perspective, I would say that losing WSS compatibility shouldn't be a problem.
If, however, you plan to use your sound card under Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 as well (depending on what "time machine" you have), then it could perhaps be an important factor.

Thanks, I figured WSS was pretty much the same situation as SB16 DOS support... plenty of games supported it but none really took advantage of it?

Sorry for not posting specs, I've just posted them in so many different threads recently I feel like a broken record, heh.

K6-2 500
FIC PA-2013 2.1
Windows 98SE (no service packs)
16MB TNT2 Pro AGP
Labway ymf719e
Midiman MM401
MT32
MT200 and SC7 (soon to be replaced by SC55)

The system will be used to cover as big of an era of DOS and early Windows games as possible. Windows 98 is mostly just there to make it easier to manage the games. Basically, any games that'd benefit from a more powerful or modern system will be saved for a different build. So, high quality Windows sound support isn't needed. 22khz stereo should be plenty.