I've used ESU, Massoth, QSI and Tsunami chips in various locos and I would say if you want plug and play then massoth but the other three are far superior in sound and performance, BUT.
The more sophisticated chips do require more setting up as they are set for an average loco out of the box and have all required modifying the chuff and acceleration settings. You would probably have found altering the chuff setting made it sound better too as it wasn't clashing with so many chuffs.
Your jerky running could have been down to two things, not set for MTS 14 steps or that it was and the transition was instant between each step causing surges and strain on the gears. Funnily enough the worst case of this I had was on the LGB Harz loco with factory fitted sound. Until I programmed a small amount of acceleration and deceleration it took off like a speedboat on choppy water and nosedived under braking. No wonder they had a reputation for stripping gears. This is the main problem with 14 steps as it's far less pronounced on 28 or 128 with a fully NMRA spec system.