digistorm wrote on 2021-03-11, 17:22:

Yes, the difference in sound is often lack of interpolation (that is really taxing on 486 class machines) but sometimes also less accurate software mixing routines with lots of rounding errors or even 8 bit output. Also, the GUS needs far less bus and memory access when playing music and sound effects so it is far less time critical.
But the opposite is also possible. DOOM for example does just mix all sounds together in software and streams the result just in time to the GUS sample RAM. Really convoluted and it sounds worse than a real SoundBlaster in my opinion.

Doom 1.2 and earlier do hardware mixing. The feature was dropped due to DMA trouble AFAIK. It does random pitch variation as well I believe, it's been a while since I tried it.

A few more titles:
Akiko and Minami
Garnott 2
Mysterious Song
Poof
Thudner Zone
Zorlim's Arcade Volleyball

In Lemmings Chronicles, I think the GUS music sounds better than the Sound blaster music.