Joe, your question didn't mention General Midi so I'm assuming you're just asking about the overall sound quality. You also didn't mention budget so I'm listing what most people with good home studios have or wish they had or are planning to get.

I don't have any expensive software libraries but I do have a bunch of them for SampleTank 2. They sound pretty decent but ST 3 is supposed to be a big improvement.

Otherwise I keep hearing about Kontakt for lots of bread and butter sounds but when it gets to the biggie, acoustic piano I keep hearing about the new Pianoteq and a few others like Alicia Keys and Ivory as plugins.

Hardware is where I'm really at, I have a Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Roland 760, Korg Pa1XPro.

Already the PC3 which was considered one of the best just a few years ago is surpassed by the new Kurz Artis. Also most keys players still say a Kronos is the absolute best as far as all the bread and butter sounds are concerned. None of the big name workstation keyboards have a B3 emulation that is close to the Hammond SK1, the Mojo or the Nord CD2.

Then there is the brand new Yamaha Montage that is getting a lot of press after NAMM. That or the Kronos keyboards will cost you $3-4,000 the others maybe a grand less.

I still read about how the best software libraries sound better than the best hardware for maybe half that cost but then you don't have the whole physical keyboard itself with all it's controls to use, you're stuck with a third party controller and your computer.

The best third party controllers like the Kawai K1 or Physis are about $1,800 by themselves. To me if you're going to spend that for a controller might as well get the Kronos. It's a great controller too and you have it's awesome sound engine. Non keys guys may not know but the Korg Kronos has SSD's on board for internal real time sample streaming and nine separate and discrete sound engines. It's a killer system for studio and stage use.

You asked about what's good. Good ain't cheap but it depends on how picky you are.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.