Pinball audio peaked in the late 80s and early 90s when games had synthesizers built in IMHO. BK2000 as mentioned above used several techniques to ensure everything is synced to the music, nothing clashes, and almost all the tracks switch between each other seamlessly (Brian Schmidt has a great writeup on the game here: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/interactive-audio-in-black-knight-2000-the-importance-of-integration)

Once the audio technology in pinball became hi-fi, I think the lack of limitations caused some pinball sound designers to forget what makes for really good pinball audio.

Comparing LotR to The Hobbit for example, LotR uses the BSMT chip which was completely outdated when it released, but the music and sound is still great. It fits the pace of pinball, it all meshes together, the call outs evoke excitement, tension, or informativeness when they should.

Meanwhile The Hobbit has a great, epic film style score, but it doesn't fit pinball gameplay. Random, sparkly tones and music stings play when hitting certain targets. When you get jackpots the announcer is a bad Smaug impersonator who sounds like he's having a stroke saying "jackpot" over and over again. There's nothing to get me excited when I should be getting excited. Line you mentioned, more/better technology isn't always better.

I could go on and on about my favorite audio packages in pinball, but I'll end by throwing Mousin' Around out there. It has a ton of great sound design tricks all in one package. Seamless transitions between certain tracks, seamless endings when the ball drains, lights that blink in time with the music, and pay attention to the sound that plays when the MOUSE TRAP letters are collected. Those and a few others sound effects are adjusted in pitch to match the current key of the music!

I love BSMT but I understand why some don't. Brian Schmidt designed it himself and then went on to compose lots of Data East's titles, and he generally took full advantage of it's capabilities. But because Brian was behind most of its soundtracks, if you don't like his music style, you won't like the chip in general.

I think it was pretty cutting edge for the time it came out ('91), and still had several advantages over DCS in terms of interactivity and memory when that was introduced ('93), but probably just hasn't aged as well as DCS due to relying on relatively low quality samples. In many ways the even the older YM2151 sounds better because, despite the limited FM synthesis sound palette, still produces crystal clear audio (I'm not sure what the exact tech specs are but YM2151 output is much closer to, if not higher than, 44.1 khz than the samples used to power the BSMT).

Interestingly, the BSMT originally had stereo support, but Data East eventually cut that after a few games. It's totally possible the chip's design was held back in other ways by budget, but I have no source for that, just speculating.

But yeah, most BSMT titles have some level of interactivity between the game and music which I love. And as good as a lot of the DCS era music is, a lot of that interactivity was lost with it. I was playing Baywatch at league last night and the game has the GI and lights flash with the drums in the plunger theme and in time with the multiball ready music and man, I'm just a sucker for that kind of detail haha. It's a simple trick, but effective all the same.