There are three major faults with AWE midi suport in FF7PC.
1) The soundfont uses some ROM samples in it. This makes it only work right on AWE32 and awe64 cards. I know of no known way to correct this. presumably this is fixed in some versions of the driver if you hae a real live or audigy, but i cannot confirm this as i have no more access to an awe for testing. don't expect the soundfont to work wright on a soundfont supporting softsynth, tho.
2) The balance is not correct for many of the midi files. some are DEAD ON, and some are way off, this means simply adjusting the volume levels in the soundfont itself WON'T FIX IT.
Most of the "forgettable" tunes are correct, or at least good enough. Among the signature tunes, bombing mission is SPOT ON, and sounds JUST like the PSX one to my humble ears. (actualyl ti has a bit more vibrato in some spots that actually improves the rendition in the standalone vrsion of the tune!) On the other hand, STill More FIghting suffers from clearly wrong volume levels, and needs to be fixed in the midi file. (the Prophet sample used in the "square wave" bit plays way too quietly, for example, ad boosting the sample volume screws it up elsewhere.
3) NO creative labs card supports the midi portmenteau controller. this breaks You can Hear the Cries of the Planet, so they replaced the instrument with a different sounding chorused strings that sorta captures the original song. this is the bigest obstacle.
MOre tidbits.
The "gm.lgp" is same as the awe32 midis, but they decreased the bank changes by 1, to put all the stuff that was on bank1 onto bank 0 for GM compliance. FOr best results on a GM synth, you shoudl use the YGM.LGP tunes, and replace the ones in GM.LGP with them.
The XG tunes are "softsynth compliant" and sound as intended with them. They ado NOT play right on the numerous YMF chipsets. only hte sw60, db50, and the sy50/70 will play them back properly!
The XG tunes do not suffer from the volume balance issues that the AWE midis suffer from, and there are some improvements. Makou REactor, for example, sounds MUCH better in XG then the awe version, with the submarine bubble efffect, and filter stuff on the bass. Bombing MIssion, also, is pretty good, replacing the bog standard reverse cymbal with an amazingly funky whooshing with a sword chink at the end. It laso supports portmenteau, which shoudl fix You Can Hear the Cries of the Planet. But they inexplicably made a poor instrument choice for the main synth, so it sounds HORRIBLE compared to the original. And, of course, yo ulose the chior in OWA. Other dissapointments include Still MOre fighting, which althugh it has t he square wave part fixed, suffer in the guitar area, and has the dirty percussive drawba organ that gives the tune it's chracter replaced with a bog stanard leslie style orock organ. J e n o v a sounds darn good, though.
