The playing is as good as it gets. The demo's are as good as it gets. Did you actually listen to dude playing?? Great jazz sound in the videos. Plus purpose of OP posting videos wasn't to critique the playing it was to demo and compare drum kits.
The playing could be improved, so to speak, note what happens around 0:37, 1:22, 2:01, 2:06, 2:45, 3:21, how the left foot is mostly always still when playing more intricate/choppy parts.
Then again, those things I pointed out don't take anything much away from the demo and as you said the point is not to show off the demonstrator's playing skills, rather to show the drums being played in a certain musical style (that of smaller jazz combos playing bebop), where it's so much more common and characteristic to tune the drums higher and let them resonate more than in other styles (big bands for example).
So the point of my observation, as I hoped would be clear from the explanation in my previous post, is that because of the beater-burying the demo doesn't do the best possible job of showcasing the kit played in a bop style/setting.
When did the theory that we should never, or only rarely bury the beater start? Modern miking and tuning maybe revived that idea on very resonant and sustaining drums with hyper close miking that reveals every little buzz.
No such theory exists, rather there's the notion that burying the beater vs letting it rebound produces a different sound, the first technique resulting in a higher pitched and (much) less resonant sound, sometimes even a buzzing sound depending on head and pedal spring tension, among other things (more evident if you play a drum with your stick pressing it into the head without letting it rebound).
Bop drummers, and jazz drummers more in general tend, for that reason, to let the beater rebound more often than not, as you can sometimes hear in recordings from that time period, or modern recordings of music from that period, as you can see from a number of videos easily found on youtube, and as you can read in a number of books and methods, the first that comes to mind is The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley, which states so in page 11.
That's not to say that a jazz drummer SHOULDN'T bury the beater ever because it's WWRROONNGG, rather that they should know what effect each technique produces, and that it's not very "period appropriate" to bury the beater all the time.
For an example of what I mean in case it's not clear enough, albeit on all the drums rather than just the bass drum, check out this short solo by Ari Hoenig - youtu.be/B6HVENsEGWI
Different musical styles, power metal for example, are much more commonly associated with the sound of the beater being buried into the head and it would be just as uncharacteristic to play that music with a small bass drum tuned high and letting the bass drum "boom" - everything would become an unintelligible mess.
Then again, over the years you can find a lot of rock being played with muffled bass drums without reso heads, think Keith Moon, but then imagine how the intro of When the Leevee Breaks would sound with the same click-y bass drum sound from Baba O'Riley...
So again, it's not wrong, it just sounds out of place in a style that, aside from that, is bop drumming in all intents and purposes.
Jazz greats like Papa Jo Jones, Louie Bellson, Buddy Rich, Elvin Jones and even Steve Gadd bury the beater. You gonna critique them lol.
I couldn't find any "modern" enough recording or video of Buddy Rich where I can clearly see or hear they're burying the beater or letting it rebound, though surely you see the difference between the high-tuned bass drums in OP's channel and the bigger, low-tuned drums used in big bands by most of the drummers you mentioned, and how the difference in sound is much less in the latter cases, on top of every other difference between bebop played on a bop kit and big band music played on a much larger kit.
I found a few videos and recordings of Louie Bellson and Papa Jo Jones where I'd say they're mostly letting the beater rebound - youtu.be/SODrEiAvxa4 and youtu.be/MjCg7o1quAQ
Elvin Jones is indeed burying the beater on an 18" bass drum and he's surely not best known for his playing in big bands; surely that is uncharacteristic as he's one of the few big name drummers who do that, though at that level I'd be inclined to think he did that because he wanted to get that specific effect rather than sounding "like he was playing bebop", especially since his work with Coltrane went a bit outside of the box of bebop to say the least.
Steve Gadd buries the beater as well, but as great as he is I definitely wouldn't call him a jazz great, he's played some modern-ish jazz but he's sooo much better known for his studio work, so that together with his 22x14" bass drum I definitely don't think he too wanted to sound like he was playing bebop either when he was recording Aja.
I hope my point is clear now at least
