When I listened to both videos, I thought the Drumport 'resonant ass' sounded noticeably worse to my ear. All the punch from the low end was gone and instead it just sounded boxy. And overall it sounded unnatural, like a below average electronic kick. I was curious to see exactly how it was different in a more objective way, so for anyone else who may care, I sliced up the audio from their YouTube video (the last four hits of each drum for all three mic positions) and popped that into iZotope...
First of all, check out the waveforms:
This audio, recorded from the mics, has been compressed with something like a rack compressor or in the program used to record the file, because all the hits peak right at 0 dB. You can also plainly see that the Drumport hits were significantly more compressed than the reference hits. I don't think someone can logically argue the Drumport head could physically have such a big influence over the compression of a waveform, so that leaves two possibilities:
1) they used different compressor settings to intentionally try to make their head sound subjectively louder and seem naturally punchier with a longer sustain
2) the same compression settings were used for both but the guy was actually hitting the Drumport drum harder, knowing the compressor would make them have equal peak volume but would have much less effect on the lower-threshold reference hits
Now for the EQs (averaged over all twelve hits from above):
The fact that the Drumport is about 5 dB louder comparatively across the entire spectrum despite having the same peak volume gives further evidence of the compression inequality. Keeping in mind that different compression means that the two raw EQ shapes will be affected differently (especially if dynamic range compression was used), you can see that the Drumport head appears the give a big boost around 150-175 Hz. This is not where I really like to emphasize the bass drum's low end in the mix, and in fact I tend to make a modest cut centered around 200 Hz to get rid of boxiness, which I had previously noted about the Drumport, and boost somewhere from 75-125 Hz for thump. There's also a big difference in the 4-8 kHz range, which might explain why people have noted such a large discrepancy in the beater attack because this range is boosted in the mix if a slappier, 'thwackier' kick sound is desired. This could just be a consequence of it being more heavily compressed, but I think it's more likely that this is a genuine effect of the unique head design.
So in summary, I think this head gives some noticeable differences, one in the range that emphasizes aggressive beater attack (some like this, some don't) and another in
not a particularly pleasant sounding region of the bass spectrum, save for maybe 16/18" tight jazz kicks. But I think they have been intentionally misleading with the samples they posted to make it sound like their head makes a bigger difference than it really does. Meh, I hope someone got something out of this but if not, I enjoyed thinking about it at least. B)