Well, first of all, sounds like a fun gig on a fun rig...

And secondly, I bet you anything that, simply recorded (but not mastered), even your THIRD drummer is louder in the mix than any arranger piece you've ever played!

That's the thing about drums... even if they are squeezed a little bit out front, onstage (and close to it from the audience's POV), those drum transients are going to CUT. And even the best of modern arrangers struggles to have that degree of impact. Our samples, even Roland and Korg, even Ketron (those drum loops are mastered), let alone Yamaha's are compressed during recording. The 'snap' is gone...

If I'm TRYING to make an arranger sound like a live band, it's got to be drums and bass front and center, just to get back what was lost recording the samples, let alone the loss in dynamics form the limited 128 step MIDI system... It's just strange that the same people that will happily play in a live band with drums pretty much where they should be want to turn them down WAY past that point when they use an arranger to generate them. Ideally, you shouldn't be able to hear a difference (if you WANT to sound 'live').