Is for someone to simply write a reference MIDI player, and provide some reference samples.

Whether or not you had the hardware, you could still hear the MIDIs in reference quality (either render > WAV or realtime playback?) and perhaps use the software as a device to playback MIDI.

Creative uses software for extra voices, and they claim it's something like 0.3% CPU time per voice, that's doable. And that was back in the day when Athlons were in Slot A!