shock__ wrote:While not being a MIDI person I definitely prefered C as the balance between instruments seemed the best to me.
I am by no means a musician or sound designer, but my personal preference also leads me to C. I find that it has a fuller, more natural sound, with better volume balance. That was a bit of a surprise too. Most of those were Roland MIDI files, and that was no mere coincidence. I also compared all three to an actual Roland. To my surprise, C was generally a better match for the highly-regarded Roland volume balance than either A or B (EDIT: based on keropi's recordings, I take that back, to some degree, but none of them are a perfect match for the Roland, either).
This is particularly surprising when you consider the fact that the Eye & I set was apparently certified by Fat Labs for volume balance, which is supposed to mean that the volume balance is similar to the Roland "standard". Unless AMD tinkered with the data before it was released for production, I don't know what to think. Furthermore, there are significant differences between A and B and the Audiotrix Pro, another card whose sound set was granted the Fat Seal.
Between A and B, there are differences that contribute to a strong preference for A. I find it has a fuller, clearer sound, absent many of the compromises necessary to fit an entire bank into a 1 MiB ROM. If you find just the right MIDI file, the somewhat truncated percussion, shortened loops and 8-bit sampling begin to show their limitations. Nonetheless, this is a community project, musical preferences are subjective, and everyone is free to use the instrument bank they like best.
Recent experimentation seems to indicate that there is some possibility of producing a ROM set with two (and possibly more) independent instrument banks. That will likely be my choice; then I won't even have to swap modules to test the different banks.