The ever-popular line of SoundBlaster 32 and 64 cards are advertised as supported by Be, and most of them work just fine. However, some users find that a newly-purchased variant of this card does not in fact work with BeOS. The biggest problem is that there are so many variants of this card’s chipset (there are at least 9 versions of the AWE32, and 23 versions of the SB16), and the package doesn’t always make it easy to determine exactly which one you’re getting in the box. Most of them work, but there are some cards out there for which Be hasn’t yet been supplied with appropriate documentation. The only thing you can really do in such a situation is to inform Be’s technical support department and wait for an update. Alternatively, you might want to trade the card with the store or with someone else for a version that does work.
In addition, if you should happen to purchase a PCI version rather than ISA, note that you’ll be getting a different chipset entirely, and will need to download the Ensoniq es1370 or Ensoniq es1371 driver. (link not working, waiting for update).