The Struggle of Sound Quality

Better ways to be a n00b at music

So as I work on the soundtrack for Sonic RPG, I've struggled to eek out better sound quality from simple midi. I keep finding and buying various soundfonts and rarely find any that are worth actually using, much less full packages that allow me to get a blanket upgrade on overall sound quality.

I've been told about Proteus 2 and how it's the synth used by Michael Tavera for the original soundtrack, but try as I might, I can't seem to rederive what instruments Tavera used for his recordings, much less get them to sound as rich as he did in the oft shared 48k recordings. I keep coming back to two issues:

1. General MIDI sounds overall better than other sound font packages

2. General MIDI doesn't sound "good enough"

So as I keep waffling on what to do about this rock and a hard place I find myself in, I discovered one incredibly simple solution to my problem: adding reverb

Listen to the difference:

Title Card (w/o reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/title-card-start-of-chapter-1
Title Card (w/ reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/title-card-with-reverb
Start Screen (w/o reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/title-no-reverb

Start Screen (w/ reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/title-with-reverb

Victory (w/o reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/victory-theme?in=reggie-meisler/sets/sonic-rpg-soundtrack

Victory (w/ reverb)
https://soundcloud.com/reggie-meisler/victory-with-reverb

Anyways... I think you get the idea. Reverb for everything!!