How does the drum kit sound on your rig?

Good drum sound kills me...I really love it when it's right. I've been a musician/sound tech for many years (and love to play drums, although guitar is my main thing) and my biggest drum beef is with record producers NOT getting the scale right...the kit should seem contained without panning things extremely wide to make the drummer seem like a gorilla. Also, well recorded cymbals from great players can sound really sweet if recorded cleanly. Bill Stewart, amazing...Gabe Jarrett (Keith's son) is also a fave...one of the best sounding recordings I have is his obscure but brilliant one album (I think) of his Vermont band Vorcza called "Maximalist"...just a beautiful and brilliant kick ass trio in the Medeski, Martin and Wood genre but, trust me, WAY hotter. Another gripe: I really like recent Steely Dan stuff (including the amazing solo Becker or Fagan things) but wonder why the cymbals often sound sort of "spitty" and somehow less clean...weird as the engineer is usually the Grammy winning dude Elliot Shiner. Somebody tell him to SHAPE UP.

I find that there's a TON of really well recorded jazz stuff with amazingly real sounding drums...from Brad Mehldau to Bill Evans...Chick Corea's "Akoustic" bands, etc.

Live drums are as dynamic as the drummer wants them to be...if all drummers just pounded the crap out of the kit it would be a boring and monodynamic world. I've worked with a LOT of drummers over the years and the best have a sense of dynamics and tone that makes you want to hear 'em, and rarely do the great drummers sound anything but right...unless you're lying on the floor under the drum kit there is no need for earplugs.

I agree...recorded drums can actually sound better than live since, unless you sit in the drummers lap, rarely does an acoustic space produce a balanced sound. I have been successful with the simplest miking for a jazz drummer by using a kick mic and a single large diaphram condenser above the kit.