Faithful to... what?
GM is GM, but many manufacturers/makers have their own recordings of the same instrument set.

(imo) the best Midi sound you can get out of a game is using MT-32, in those games that support it of course.

Have you looked at this soundfont here? http://johnengelmann.net/technology/ecw/

Well.. faithful to the sounds I remember.
( if you want, check the recordings in this old post of mine)

I guess you just searched EAPCI8M.ecw in Google XD
Yeah, I found that place long ago, but the soundfont was never finished.

At the moment that might be your closest alternative... until somebody programs an Ensoniq emulator.
But... are there games out there that support those Ensoniq cards specifically? Or did you just play them in standard GM mode without using any of those specific "synthesis" features?

The card I owned was a Sound Blaster Live.
I simply selected "Sound Blaster" or "general midi" in games.
However, I previously configured the MIDI mapper to use the SB waveset istead of the SB soundfonts.

Maybe you'll find new helpful info in this old resurrected thread, in which you were too.

I still have a few working X-Fi cards, so I have not yet needed to buy this:

http://software.store.creative.com/p/software/sound-blaster-x-fi-mb3

Wait, so this software allows you to use Alchemy, without Creative sound cards (e.g. on normal mobo integrated sound cards)?

I haven't seen a recent mobo with just one PC1 slot, and googling ASUS Z170A seems to show it has 3... or am I missing something?

Anyway, could you tell me then what would be the cheapest solution to get a card that supports EAX (Alchemy)? I'd rather it was internal. Sound quality need not be good, anything on par with realtek is fine, just as long as EAX is there.

Seems so, here is Phil's review for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSBMrHfsXjE

Thanks.

Judging by comments, opinions are mixed. To be honest, I'm wondering if it's worth paying 30$ for this software, when you can pay 40$ to get a creative soundcard that can run alchemy normally and is probably just as good as the mobo sound card.

Have you tried using an USB-hub on just one of the ports? Probably an externally powered USB-hub would be better.

Not a bad idea, I have been thinking about getting an USB3-hub and if I can transfer files and use a mouse through it simultaneously, it just might be enough to convince me that the USB sound card could also work with it.

You should definitely try it. At least you reduce the wearing of the laptop's ports by using a hub.
Use this little prog USBDeview to see how much power your USB devices draw.

Yes.

The simplest solution is the best. https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/28-creative-alchemy-universal/

Disregard the "This solution is deprecated" bit. I find it's still, by far, the easiest, simplest & most reliable one. So far, I've had 100% success rate with this tool, even with weird, obscure on-board soundcards.

For Realtek, the most common on-board soundcards, you have 3D Soundback you can download from their website. It works well, but it's stuck on version 0.1, and Universal ALchemy also works pretty well on those. It's a matter of preference.

MIDI, VirtualMIDISynth is the easiest, simplest solution and it's free.

Of course, these are fixes for laptops. The best solution for a gaming desktop is a Soundblaster Z. Yes, Creative business practices are not the best, and onboard audio is very good nowadays & you can make do with them, but the Z series is fairly cheap, and I "converted" a couple of people with just a short "before & after" comparison. There is a huge, very noticeable improvement in sound quality.