What comes out loud and clear from this thread is the fact that the same SMF played on different manufacturers products is going to sound different......... BRILLIANT!!

What is the REALLY salient point is that, no matter what keyboard you have, an SMF, unless played on the specific keyboard it was produced on, is going to sound COMPLETELY different and will require editing. Now, just how quick and friendly is your keyboard at editing SMFs??

Roland had an edge in the compatibility stakes for quite a while, because firstly, all of their arrangers were based on the Sound Canvas engines (probably what the SMF was originally programmed for) and the change from RA90 to G800 to G1000 was fairly incremental. All you generally had to do was replace the program change for the old sax sound (for instance) with the new one, and the volumes would be consistent, and the reverb amounts and velocity responses of the drumkits remained pretty consistent, no matter which kit you used.

All this started to change with the VA series, and has completely changed with the G70. The voicing is now a combination of older Sound Canvas (and SC88, SC880Pro etc.) sounds, along with newer samples from the Fantom line and V-Drum series, and the reverb and effects architecture has been heavily changed. It is no longer a gimme to play a Roland SMF (or style) into the G70 and hear consistent results. This has been a large cause of the complaints about the G70s 'sound'. It now is necessary to edit your older SMFs and Styles before they sound their best on the G70 - EXTENSIVELY!

However............

Roland appear to be one of the few manufacturers to understand this and provide a method to quickly edit Styles and SMFs without having to resort to using a sequencer (hard or soft). The Makeup Tools section allows you to easily adjust not only the choice of sound for a Part, but it's reverb and effect sends, volume, pan, voice editing (cutoff, attack release etc.), but here's the important part - velocity offsets and compression! THIS is where, when using today's more elaborate, multi-velocity samples, it is ESSENTIAL to set the velocity of the part where it hits the vel-xover points at a musically sensible place.

Drum Kits can be adjusted the same way, allowing you a choice of different drums, editable reverb and effect send and the EXTREMELY important velocity offsets, especially in light of the multi-velocity V-Drum kits.

Finally, you have a Common Page where song tempo, key, global reverb and effect parameters, and, most importantly, an overall Song Volume parameter (you REALLY want to go back and adjust every part because the song is too loud??)..........

Now most of you are probably saying 'I can do this in my XYZ arranger' and it's true, you probably can. But spend a little time on a G70 (or E80) and you will probably find out how much easier Roland have made this critical function. And the easier something is, the more likely you are to USE IT!

As manufacturers have continued to one-up each other in the realism stakes, simple compatibility with GM files has mostly gone out the window. What is most important now is, how easy do they make it to fix the problem? Easy enough that you a willing to edit the hundreds of files you use?............. If your keyboard doesn't make this task easy enough that it is an utter chore, first take a look at the G70s system, then yell at YOUR keyboard's maker until they make it as easy for you.............