After playing The Black Gate, where music and sound were the same as I remembered them from my old Soundblaster days, I noticed that for some reason the music is worse in Serpent Isle. Seems like there are voices missing or it's set to a weaker soundcard. Sounds like basic AdLib, not Soundblaster.

I had a look at the config files:

(U7.CFG)
s 388
220 7 1

(SERPENT.CFG)
s 388
220 7 1 o

I tried removing the "o", but that didn't really change anything.

Any idea how I can raise Serpent music to BG level?

Problem solved.

The two games use some of the same songs, but in different versions.
After recording and comparing them, I realized that the BG ones aren't really better, only different.
I just subjectively prefer them because the artificiality of their sound seems lees obvious to me, somehow.