I completely agree, Rikki. Wise words.

We have progressed SO far from simple GM/GS/XG equivalency, I barely know where to start. Standardization is a thing of the past.

Drum kits... The juicy stuff now resides on note#'s outside the old GM kit range. Not to mention that a lot of arrangers have velocity switched drums, with no standardization of which velocity value the switch occurs at (or what it changes to).

Same with guitar parts. And many other sounds. And that's not even STARTING to deal with OS issues like different lookup tables for guitar sounds vs. regular sounds, proper 'Guitar Modes' or things like swell and volume changes (Yamaha use a different system to Roland). Then there's the issue of part range, where Parts start to drop octaves, whether lines stay in the range they were programmed in or jump about.

Expecting any modern style to translate well (think Tyros onwards, basically) is an exercise in frustration! Some will, some won't, some come out half a$$ed!