As you know, in the 8-bit days, one usually clipped the samples a bit, to increase SNR.
I just made a very simple and optimal softclip, using two x-(x*x*x*0.3etc), in series with a threshold. This gives the third-order distortion of vintage gear, driven mixers, and often what people like with "hot" signals, on whatever it may be, on typically analog gear.
I recently tried OpenMPT on one of my old tracks, and with the Blackman Exact interpolation, it sounded actually quite good. I did however remember driving the levels there quite hot, but with the sampler of the time, (and most of them I think) there was no softclipping. So that can be retrofitted to the samples

(probably pr. voice, before interpolation?)
What do you think?
(Edit: having the softclippers in parallel might be even better!)