Spekkio, see what I said about "blinded by orchestra" effect? You saying that the synthesized instruments failing to capture the same effect as the orchestral instruments is still, even if it is true for many people, an opinion, and my opinion is that the Reunion orchestra version can't capture the feeling for the final battle of FFVII while playing the game as the in-game version actually does. I do respect your opinion, but I can't agree with Reunion version working in-game.

Have you taken other things into consideration? First, loading times. To play wave-type music instead of digital music during a PSX game takes a lot of machine power, especially when there's big effects like Super Nova spells and other things like that. It's that way for PC version too. The minimum requirement for FFVII PC is something like 133 MHz, if even that. However, even with my old 333 MHz, the game was lagging during Super Nova. If you put wave music there, it would be even worse. Remember the part where there's constant live FMV playing in the background when you go down the floating steps to fight Jenova*Synthesis? It's the flowing green Lifestream. The game slows down there, you can easily notice it on PC as Cloud's jumps and moving looks weird and delayed. I can't find the flowing Lifestream FMV in FFVII PSX Disc, but another similar 10-second FMV takes 3.42 MB. I doubt the Lifestream FMV is even that long since it's just looping a few-seconds-long animation.

Anyway, if that slows the computer down that much during gameplay, think about a wave-form music. In mp3 form, One-Winged Angel takes 4 MB. In audio form similar to what FFVIII used for Eyes on Me, it's about 40-50 MB. And I think the space-consuming audio form is more likely since with mp3 form, there's still the compression and the loss of sound quality to be considered. Clearly, though, a live version of One-Winged Angel would slow down the PSX and PCs (around the time it was released) so much that the final battle would become unbearable, and you could expect major lag or even crashes during Super Nova.

Second, looping. Orchestra version plays once, then stops. The game version plays until you defeat Safer Sephiroth or lose the battle. How do you intend to make the live version loop? You could always have it start again after finishing, but that creates a few seconds of silence when the song reloads. Even if you program it to reload a bit earlier to avoid moments of silence as much as you can, you must admit that the musical styles are so different at the beginning and at the end of One-Winged Angel that it wouldn't work. "Veni veni venias" and "Sephiroth! Sephiroth!" parts first thundering, then some fade-out, then the opening orchestral parts. IMHO, that would be totally unfitting and completely make the music go out of context, interrupting the flow of the battle rather than helping it with a thrilling background score.

You could, of course, do like One-Winged Angel game version did and have it loop from "Estuans interius" part. However, as far as I know, that takes a lot more programming with wave music than with midi music, and there's still loading times to be taken into consideration. Besides, where do you intend to make the loop? In the game, the jump from "Sephiroth! Sephiroth!" to "Estuans interius" is totally smoothless as the former is ending the song (good place for a loop to end) and the latter is starting a new part of the song (good place for a loop to start). But in Reunion version, there's a few bars of quiet instrumental intro before "Estuans interius" choir which pretty much ruins it. I quite can't think of a good way to loop the orchestral version so that it wouldn't sound bad, to be frank.

I could probably try to bring up other technical reasons too why the orchestral version just wouldn't work in the game, but I think I've covered a lot of that point already. You said you've only played the PC version of FFVII, and without a good sound card. Haven't you ever heard the PSX / soundtrack version of the song? Or the Project Majestic Mix version of the song, which is also synthesized? The PMM arrangement doesn't actually have any choir at all, but it's still excellent, IMHO. Oh, and to Kakashi509, there's no English version of the Majestic Mix One-Winged Angel since there's no lyrics in it. Anyway, Spekkio, if you haven't heard those versions, how can you say the synthesized version of One-Winged Angel is bad if you've only heard the synthesized version with a card that doesn't have good midi playing capabilities?

I have a Sound Blaster Live! Value card myself, and for me, the PC version sounds pretty good, and yes, it plays the choir during the final battle even if the whole song is midi. I recorded and uploaded the PC game version of One-Winged Angel midi so you can listen to how it sounds in my computer. I don't have much space in my site, so I'll probably delete it quite soon, so please check it out as soon as you can. That's not a midi converted into mp3, that's done with WinAmp playing the midi while another program was recording everything coming out of my sound card and then saving the recording in mp3 form.