Is this post about ARRANGER drums, or just drums in general?

It's kind of unfair to start comparing ANY ROM arranger drums to the cream of VST or sampler kits. BFD, DFH2, Scarbee Imperial, all of these are capable of blowing ANY arranger out of the water, including Roland's.....

What you CAN'T do with them is go out and gig (at least not without a boatload of work!) with an arranger. So before we muddy the waters, let's decide what we want to do with these drums....

If you are home based, or doing session work, the GIGA and VST streaming libraries will usually be the best choice. If you are arranger ONLY, it depends on what you want to sound like. In your face live drums seem to be more of Roland's forte, but you CAN get good results with Yamaha's (as I said earlier, someone posted some T2 stuff with the compressor off and pumped up in the mix - THEY sounded much better than Yamaha's general mix 'philosophy'), but you are going to have to work for it.

Given how few even want to spend ANY time re-tweaking all their styles and SMFs to account for the vagaries in newer, better (but less 'standardized') drumkits, you are better off making your decision on the 'factory' sound.

For me, as I primarily play my G70 with at least a guitarist, and often more, I need that 'live' sound to keep the drums from getting run over by enthusiastic playing! But if you are a OMB, and have rigid control over lead sounds (rare, from user tune postings), you can survive the 'background' drum approach Yamaha take.....

Just stop over-compressing the arranger's final mix. WAY too many people overusing the Master EQ and compressor... You want to sound 'live', you've got to cherish those dynamics!