I don't wish to sound flippant, but I would stay away from any Sound Blaster 16 or better that is not fully-jumper configurable only. This means sticking with the first three of the line, (CT-1740, CT-1750, CT-1770) which incidentally are the only cards with a true OPL3 chip.

What about SB16 and AWE 32 in newer PnP-systems?

I had sound problems with an AWE 32 PnP in my retro rig with a Via chipset. Every time I activated the "Soundblaster 16" option in any game I got (in addition to the game's digital sound) a loud crackling noise in my headphones. I discovered that it must have something to do with the 16-bit dma the AWE / SB16 uses, because I got same results trying the creative testing utility ("16-bit testing!"). I plugged in an old SB16 (CT2xxx, I guess) - same problems. This was the reason to kick the soundblasters out of my machine - without SB16 /AWE32 support they were simply useless - the EWS64's SB Pro emulation sounds a lot better...

Is this a typical problem of Via chipsets (Apollo Pro)? Or the fact that the Soundblaster cards are PnP?