there's quite a bit of games out there that use the mt-32 intelligent mode. You need a real MPU-401 interface card for these games to work. They will not work with the mt-32 hooked up to a midi/gameport on a soundblaster or compatible card. They're pretty hard to find these days. Another option is to get a LAPC-1 which is basically an mt-32 in ISA form. But these are rare and go for a premium these days.

Also, the AWE64 sound quality when it comes to opl3 emulation is pretty bad compared to the real deal. It's better to stick with a soundblaster 16, even though it's output is a lot noisier.

For the best midi sound quality for dos games released from the early 90's on, you will need a roland sound canvas. You can get a sound canvas daughterboard, external module, or ISA card (SCC-1). Almost every games was composed with one of these and produce fantastic sound.

Gravis ultrasound game support is extremely limited. You could add one as a secondary or tertiary card if you'd like, but relying on it as a primary or only card is not a wise choice. Since it's 0% hardware compatible with the soundblaster range. The soundblaster emulation TSR gobs up quite a bit of essentail ram (first 640kb range) and is horribly incompatible.

Moving over to windows 95/98 games, you have a few api's you want to look at. Directsound, directsound 3d, EAX, and A3D. The older soundblasters (awe range and lower) only provide directsound support, and with a limited number of voices. Im not even sure it actually supports hardware mixing. Which means the soundquality is reduced, and provides a performance pennalty. The Live range is good for games that support EAX and directsound 3d. Stay away from these if you use a VIA chipset though. My personal favourite, the Diamond Monstersound MX300 is a great PCI card that uses the aureal vortex 2 revision B chip that has support for EAX, A3d 1.0, and A3d 2.0. Unlike EAX which is just some cheesy reverb/delay, A3d 2.0 offers true positional audio over 4 speakers and sound great with the games that support it. Also provides 64 hardware directsound voices, and 16 directsound 3d voices.

After aureal went bankrupt the only half decent soundchip alternative on the market for a while was the trident 3d wave. There's a few cards out there that use it, including the monstersound MX400. They only support a3d 1.0, and EAX if memory serves me right. I never owned one so cant really tell much about the features and its compatability.

Using ISA cards in windows 9x is fine if you're interested in playback of an mp3 file, or just hearing the windows chime, but for games, are horribly lacking in features. Any dos user should use an ISA based soundblaster and avoid PCI based cards like the plague. And no, and onboard AC97 codec chip is definitly not a good option in either situation.