How does the drum kit sound on your rig?

It depends on how well the drums are recorded, but on well-recorded albums, they sound spooky-real on my modest 2-channel system. I've been a drummer for 48 years.

The opening cut of side 3 of the Pat Metheny 3-LP set of the Day Trip album has astonishingly well recorded (and played) drums. I also have a direct-to-disk LP of the Buddy Rich Big Band and a couple of Sheffield DD Harry James disks (with monster fusion drummer Les DeMerle. Also have a Sheffield DD LP of Tower of Power with ultimate funkmeister Dave Garibaldi on the kit. These all sound quite real in m living room, dialed back for volume as previously mentioned.

To get the full effect of a live kit in-room, I think I'd need about 2,000 wpc driving a pair of Wilson Alexandrias or equivalent from YG, Magico, etc. But my modest 2-channel system definitely gets the fundamentals, timbres, overtones, transients and decay right. You can easily hear the differences among maple, mahogany, and acrylic shells, sharp vs. rounded bearing edges, etc.

It's an impressive testimony to just how good a well set up Audio Technica AT150MLX can pull the music out of the groove. Drum kits make extraordinary demands on a cartridge, including sharp, fast initial transients, bass drum fundamentals down to 30 Hz, bloom and decay, and the most complex and high reaching (up to around 16KHz) cymbal overtones. It takes a really good cartridge to track all that well. The AT150MLX proves it doesn't have to be a terribly expensive one.

I do some pro audio & drums on home audio sound like, well, drums on home audio. I've heard some really good systems that do an excellent job but most home audio falls short & some fall way short.

The drum kit sounds OK on my system but especially after playing w/8k watts running through a suspended EAW system, it's simply no contest.

Driver, I can achieve that on 50 watts. :-)

Johnnyb53

I have all those discs you mention and indeed David Garibldi is awesome.

I expect you likely enjoy Dennis Chambers. He does an amazing job on Roots and Grooves by Maceo Parker.

ToP

To get the full effect of a live kit in-room, I think I'd need about 2,000 wpc driving a pair of Wilson Alexandrias or equivalent from YG, Magico

A pair of ATC 100 ASL and an ATC 0.1/15 is more than sufficient in most home environments. Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Lenny Kravitz uses a pair ATC 200ASL and I have heard that a pair of Barefoot MM27 will also do the job (according to legendary producer and drummer Butch Vig).

Those who completely dismiss the need for such capabilities in a Hi-Fi are missing the point. It is about "High - Fidelity" which means that the setup can handle anything with the greatest fidelity. Anything less is guaranteed to deliver oodles of distortion even at modest levels when playing a "high-fidelity" recording (one that has the dynamic range of real instruments rather than compressed crap)

The big challenge with dynamics and percussion is "compression and distortion" - in order to sound realistic the system must not give out at the usual maximum of around 95 dB (mediocrity). Thermal compression and system distortion often rise exponentially above 95 dB meanwhile a drum set plays up to 110 dB cleanly....