Hail to rfnagel! 😀
AWM Summit - 10
'Almost' Kurzweil K2000 engine shipped with legendary orchestral ROM block. Do I need to say anything more? Comparing it to Roland SC - it's just another league. These are the sounds used on prominent TV, studio, film music tracks. Some of its sounds are comparable or better than today's huge gigabytes-sized orchestral sound banks. If you are more demanding musically oriented person and own this, you're lucky. If you want to bring the life to lifeless dull SC-55 performances of orchestral game music and own this, you're lucky too.
Wave Blaster 1 - 10
This is GM 'selection' of best Proteus 1/Proteus 2/Proteus 3 modules sounds + few more new. Again - almost every musician knows the Proteus synths. Magic, inspiring sounds, used on many film/TV sountracks in its time. This is one of the most clear, pure-sounding GM orchestral synth ever. Emotional, natural vibrato, very realistic samples, various characters and moods of instruments. Proteus/WB sounds are so popular, that they have been recreated and are being sold in various modern sampler's formats like NI Kontakt, Reason or EXS-24. Ironically, there's very small (yet very loud) group responsible for some musically totally incompetent pejorative reviews of the WB, and for spreading incorrect informations about WB on Internet. Sad.
Roland SC-55 - 7
It's good, because many game musics were composed with this module, but by far not every. The "all GM game music was created on and for Sound Canvas" claim is nothing more than a myth. This board is very good for pop/jazz/synth genre game soundtracks. However it fails a lot on orchestral-oriented tracks. Many orchestral instruments - especially woodwinds - sound so terrible that they lack any emotions, even if the music composition itself would be great. Most of the acoustic instruments have that unpleasant synthy metallic horrible touch, that almost 'demolishes' musically trained ear. Want to hear any lyrical orchestral mood or naturally sounding acoustic instruments? Forget.
Roland SC-88 - 8
Similar as above, but the worst sounds were 'fixed'. It has allready not so terrible oboe, flute, nylon guitar etc. Many sounds were updated or added. It sounds musically better than SC-55, but may not be as balanced in games, because most of them were created on a SC-55. But unlike SC-55, SC-88 is finally able of decent (even orchestral) sound, if properly arranged. For example Warcraft 2 is a listening pleasure on SC-88 (but not on SC-55).
Roland SC-88 PRO - 8
Again, some changed and updated sounds, hundreds of new patches. But most of them are in additional GS banks, so it's insignificant.
Roland SC-8850 - 4
This is a good synth, with especially nice ethnic and vocal patches. If you would manually reprogram game MIDIs with it's GS sounds, the result possibly may be somewhere about 8. However the basic GM patches are a mess in games. For example listening to SC-8850's performance of Warcraft 2 music tracks is an unpleasant experience. It even sounds out of tune in so many parts, SC-88 is pure beauty in comparison to it. Azreal's tear music sounds dull, flat, un-musical. But I'm talking of blending of basic General MIDI 128 instruments, there are nice sounds in additional GS positions. But only for gaming - rather keep away from it. This module isn't intended for game music playback either.
Wave Blaster 2, Sound Blaster AWE ... - 2
Some time after CL took over the E-mu Systems, a new generation of 'sound card' sounds was created. Cheap, shoddy, unbalanced, vaguely programmed - they had nothing to do with good old Proteus samples included in Wave Blaster 1 and Turtle Beach Multisound cards. It was, cheap, commercial, fast alternative to the FM synthesis. Definitely not suited to musicians or musically more demanding gamers. Some out of mind 'reviews' claimed that it sounds better than original Proteus/WB1, which is crazy (check rfangel post above), but some 'reviewers' just hear this way: reverb (the more excessive the better) - good. No reverb - bad. Sad, but true.
SB AWE.., SB Live!...etc. with 2, 4, 8 MB Soundfonts - 3
Improvement over AWE32 and WB2 - especially the 4MB and 8MB SFs. But still the 'cheap' category.
SB... with E-mu APS 8 MB Soundfont - 4, 28 MB X-Fi Soundfonts - 4
APS 8 MB SF is noticeable (but not drastic) improvement over previous SB 8 MB soundfont. Still the same cheap category, but mostly the balance of the instruments is better, as well as some sounds are a bit better programmed. 28 MB X-Fi SF - a dissapointment in the light of the size of the soundfont. Some instruments consume a lot of space (Piano, Harp), but many aren't improved at all. The balance of the sounds is still unsatisfactory. The big space is used mostly for making some patches true stereo, rather than improving the sound of the individual patches, that would be in fact needed much more. Pity. But still, with these SFs, some almost-decent performances on some game music are possible..
Yamaha MU xxx - 3
Can't expect anything great with basic GM game playback. But these are sound modules with potential and many interesting sounds. If the music is optimized for the Yamaha synth, it can sound very nice, although it's still not too suitable for orchestral tracks.
Gravis Ultrasound - 2
There are many versions of the card and sounds - some sound like a joke, in some you can find few surprisingly nice sounds. I still remember how fascinated I was when I heard very very nice flute from (can't remember which version of) GUS soundcard sometimes around 1993. This card was the first 'sampler' card, so it deserves respect.
M$ GS Wavetable - 2
MIDI Blaster - 1
Terrible. Some traditional game MIDI is unintendedly transformed into highly unconventional modern atonal sound art.
My 2 cents.
