To answer your question I say it's an issue of DYNAMICS. Yamaha could bring their drums MORE to life if they backed off on the compression. That's IMO a huge part of the problem. When the drums are over compressed.., you lose the dynamics..., and then you add "hard quantize" to it and again you lose more dynamics. It also has a lot to do with drum kits that have many levels of velocity switching... Roland for example has a lot of velocity switching in their kits... We've often heard Korg and Roland's style sound more LIVE..., well that's because they're not quantized at 100%..., the style utilizes the multiple layers within the drum kits..., you have moer specific ACCENT notes.., ect.