Different strokes, I would suppose. I just prefer to hear a bit more mid in the direct snares. Though it could well just be due to the lack of room mics in this case. Those tend to constitute the crux of 'mid-ambience' for me, along of course with your own Z4 samples. As much as I would love to agree with you (since y'know, hell, you're the guy who made them), whenever I complete a mix using your samples and then solo the direct snare track, it just sounds like a really hi-fi deal, with the Z4, OHs and Rooms adding quite a lot of the tone, whereas the direct sample is adding purely punch and snap. Though, thinking about it, that's more or less how drum sounds seem to be done these days.
An example of where I used that approach is a track I did earlier this year, which you may recall:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/Music/Supersonic-MyMachine.mp3
The direct sample on the snare there is just pure crack (works good as a metaphor too), with the very middy OHs and Rooms adding the air. I hit it a bit harder with a second round of mastering (as the original MA had the level quite conservative) and that was as far as I was comfortable pushing the track without the drums sinking too far into the back.
I think essentially what I'm saying is that the samps work great for me as augmentation tools if there is some half-reasonable tone in the original drums. Sadly, I've never had much success in 100% replacement - and I've tried. As your samples caught on amongst some of the local metal acts down here after I started using them, many bands that sequence at home here now seem to use them when presenting tracks for mix.
Re: the mastering thing. Great! No problems, forget I ever said anything there. I've just had some issues in that regard with my own mixes, finding that the drum samps really want quite a bit of headroom to cut through. Sort of along the lines of what you were saying about cranking the drum faders to get them to cut.
Anywhoo, apologies for that. Don't mean to hijack your thread or anything, Joey. Great mix, once again. Technically fantastic, and really impressive considering the guitars are POD. As mentioned, the only thing that's lacking for me is some more of that natural ambiance on and variation between the drum hits, though of course that's way into subjective territory.
Not really the best way to get someone to work hard on your record, by destroying their livelihood...
