Hey Ian
Better speakers, drivers, or whatever will not change the basic sound which is generated by your sound card - and therein lies the problem. The MIDI sound module on a sound card is awful. The samples are pretty limited. A sound module (Edirol, Roland, Yamaha, etc) will provide better samples, therefore better quality results.
The best results will come from using high-quality samples from the likes of Toontrack/East West or Native Instruments. I don't know if you have heard the recordings I posted of 'Mustang Sally' and 'Hoochie Coochie Man', but on those tracks the drums came from DFHS - which is a sample engine that comes on 9 DVDs and requires 40 gig of space for installation. Hopefully the sounds would be better for all of that.
Something else that makes a big difference is the actual programming of the file to begin with. Velocity and quantization are two things that can really affect the outcome. For example, a drummer never plays perfectly in time, yet a lot of midi files have the hi-hats all perfectly in time and played at the same velocity (volume), and the kick and snare falling perfectly on the beat.
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