Bob, You recently posted: This is what many hardware synths do for a "performance" or "program." All of the instruments go through the same reverb (and chorus). The amount of reverb can be varied for each channel. With care, this can be made to sound ~OK. Electronic instruments are recorded directly, so there are no room acoustics. Other instruments are recorded in rooms with noticeable acoustic properties. When these instruments sampled under different conditions are combined, the room acoustics are imbalanced. In order to correct this problem, one can add reverb to those instruments which have little to none while adding none to those instruments which were recorded in some sort of room. What is really being done here is that the user is attempting to recreate the room that some of those instruments were sampled in, which may sound OK. If one then adds additional nonphysical reverb to the mix, the sound begins to deviate from that of a real room --- so "less is more" --- that is, less sounds more like a real room. Any rooms that samples are recorded in is usually small, so normally there isn't much overall reverb with this approach. I can't say and am not saying that this is what you are doing, but it may at least partially explain why you say "less is more." Personaly, I don't like the sound that my hardware synths produce when I attempt to do what you described. Part of it has to do with the reverb, but it also has to do with the artificial stereo separation for most instruments. It never sounds good with headphones with this approach no matter what I do. Even those genres which use little reverb don't sound good. The room acoustic models, such as they are, and listening models are physics-deficient.