I have had the same experience with concert band music. The problem is actually very similar to orchestra - a huge number of people are involved so that makes it vastly more difficult to get a good performance than with chamber music or solo. As soon as all those people are involved, money is, and practicality.
Though I did have a good college band play two difficult pieces of mine pretty well - a concert march and a symphonic suite - with a fair amount of rehearsal. I was also playing in that band though. There was a recording made of both, but the VSL recordings I did decades later is much better.. I would never want to release the live recording as a serious presentation of the music. But I do have the VSL version of the concert march right now and am going to put it out in some form.
I love the symphonic band and it is an interesting problem to present that huge complex ensemble with VSL. You want to have at least 12 clarinets. I ended up with ten Bflat by doubling the ensemble clarinets and the solo 1 and 2. Also using the eflat soprano, bass clarinet and alto clarinet. It doesn't yet have the incredible richness that a live symphonic band has but a lot of that is subtle (often not so subtle!) detuning and timing. I am experimenting more with that and think a lot can be done to increase of the size of the ensemble.
By the way I just got the score and full set of parts of The Sinfonians by Clifton Williams, my all-time favorite piece for band - to study the printing of condensed score and parts. It is close to a nightmare to do the "proper" notation and printing of a piece for full band!