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Yeah, it's pretty much the music that matters. Some orchestral composers have been clunky when integrating synths into their orchestral scores, i.e. the resulting music has a stilted electronic veneer that seems keyboard-y and merely sounds like electronic versions of other instruments already present are sadly just being shoe-horned into the music.
Some keyboard composers can't write for full orchestra without it sounding synth-y, partly due their lack of understanding about how the various acoustic instruments sound together, in various combinations (such as that wonderful Goldsmith device of chimes playing in unison with a straight-muted trumpet to create a wholly new metallic sound) and so forth. The lack of any orchestration experience can also lessen the vitality of the compositions and render them subject to the tastes and talents of separate orchestrators who either aren't composing or are ghost-writing without credit and all that stuff.
Nirvana is having someone - well, like Goldsmith - who understood all this and wrote orchestrally for his acoustic players, wrote genuine synth parts for the keyboardists that refreshingly didn't just try to imitate other players and lines in the music (which is why we have the brilliant Explorers and Gremlins) and was comfortable with both groups in front of him.
Okay, so if push came to shove: I don't want any synths in the middle of Ben-Hur, ever. But I also wouldn't enjoy the propulsive action music of First Blood without synths and digital pianos on those famous five eighth notes!
So orch or synth? Give me both.
--Doug
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