Crappy sound with good engineering technique, please help

I'd start at the beginning of the chain and work your way through. Replace all the mic's, one by one. You've done the leads, so interface next, then computer drives, ram and motherboard, in that order. If none of that works, it's the shells, so start with each of those. Obviously it's not the software.
 
Your right. Garbage is garbage after all. Frustrating heh!

I'd also suggest phase. Zoom in on the recording and see if the snare is in phase with the overheads or, if you're getting a lot of bleed, with your tom mics. Also see if the snare and toms on your two overheads are in phase - if not, you may need to make their stereo spread wider to minimize the effect.

Sanderxpander
I'd also suggest phase. Zoom in on the recording and see if the snare is in phase with the overheads or, if you're getting a lot of bleed, with your tom mics. Also see if the snare and toms on your two overheads are in phase - if not, you may need to make their stereo spread wider to minimize the effect.

 
This was also the first thing I thought is happening: phase issue between room / OH mics and close mics.
 
don't forget to listen to the kit in the live room. e.g. if it doesn't sound good enough in the studio, you need to fix the kit itself first.
 
then check your OH/room mics (each stereo pair by itself, with everything else muted) - if it sounds/feels like what you heard when you were near the kit. if you are happy, check the snare by itself ...
 
If all close mics by themselves sound reasonable, take care of the phase (at least by flipping the phase switches properly) but better would be based on a recording where you can look at time differences between transients (e.g. snare compared to OH) and insert a delay plug-in (e.g. ChannelTools) which allows you to delay based on a specified amount of samples. Add the proper delay to all your close mics to match the OH and room mics (also match close OH and far room mics if you use several pairs) ...
 
Keep the tom mics out of the picture until you are happy with OH/room/kick/snare because that will give you most of your drum sound already. tom tracks might require heavy editing later anyway as they might just contain bleed that negatively impacts your sounds (for 99.9% of the recorded track) plus those 6 hits they during the 3 fills :-)
 
Let us know how it goes so that we can give you more hints on what else to try ...
 
 

not piling on just for fun<G>...
 
stop and take a breath - if you've done this successfully in the past you can do it again!

As folks have already mentioned, the basic troubleshooting process is three steps:
1) do the drums sound good in the room?
2) is everything working properly? (you seem to have that covered, nothing wrong with the Presonus interface!)
2a) have  you ever used these specific microphones on a kit before?
3) are the mics selected and placed well?

if you reach step 3 (suspect you will) then I'd fall back to a 3 or 4 microphone configuration to start -
D112 on kick, SM57 on snare/hat, something on overheads. I have tried the Perception microphone once, did not like it on vocals or acoustic guitar, and can't imagine it working terribly well on a kit - but that could also be personal taste!
 
While I'm being a big old wet blanket, any chance you can get a decent small capsule condenser microphone for the snare/hat? I love dynamic microphones, but there are some places where a condenser capsule makes life so much easier! Just beware of some of the more cost-effective products, many of them do not handle sharp transients as well as they might!
 
AND... how are you setting up the overheads? I find these can be a real challenge, especially if you have a lower ceiling. I usually set them up Mid/Side or Blumlein, or if I am using small capsule microphones I might try coincident. I've tried spaced pairs - large and small capsules, omni and cardiod pickup patterns- never got it to work!
 
anyway, if you start with the basic 3 or 4 microphone configuration and get that  to sound good then you can add additional spot microphones to taste, and you'll only be tweaking the position of one microphone at a time.
 
This ain't your first time at the rodeo - you probably have a strange and troublesome microphone in the  kit - most likely it is placement, nothing more, perhaps placement with respect to the kit, maybe placement with respect to a boundary?

One last trick, which you probably know, but just in case... a quick troubleshooting techniques  that gets used a lot for live sound, but works anywhere - mute all the microphones, unmute the kick, add in the snare - does it sound ok? add in the overheads - do they sound ok? Add in the rest of the microphones one at a time, whenever you have one that turns the drum mix to mid mute it and move on.

Have fun!

Almost surely phase related...
 
The OP mentions that the sound coming off the overheads sounds good/balanced.
With the OH mics playing, add the snare close-mic track (nothing else while trouble-shooting).
If the sound doesn't get fuller (or gets weaker), then there's phase cancellation going on.
You can resolve this several different ways.

• Quick way is to try using a phase switch (which will change the phase 180 degrees).
• There are also plugins that allow exact adjustment of phase (not just 180 degrees)
• You can also zoom in and manually (visually) align the phase of the snare track with the overheads.  Since the snare mic is closer than the overheads, it's signal will be a littler earlier.  Drag it back to where the waveform phase aligns with the overheads.

Phase related issues are common when using multiple mics at different distances.
Drum kit is an obvious example... with room, overheads, and clock mics.
The Overheads are much more distant from the snare and toms than the close mics... so it would be common for them to initially be out of phase.  With careful mic placement (overheads), you can minimize/avoid this issue.
Google search for "3:1 mic placement".
 
Add one drum mic at a time... making sure the new track is in phase (sound gets bigger/fatter).
Once all mics are in phase, the overall drumkit should sound pretty decent.
 
If you're working in modern pop/rock/country, I'd suggest routing the individual drum tracks to a Drum Subgroup.
On this drum subgroup, apply a bit of "bus compression".  The SSL Bus Compressor is perfect in this application.
Gives the drumkit more "weight/umph" without making it sound overly squashed.
Be careful with compression on cymbals.  Too much... and the cymbals sound unnatural.
 
IMO, The key to getting good acoustic drum sounds starts with the overheads.
If the overheads sound good... you've got a solid foundation on which to build.
If the overheads don't sound good... I'd recommend re-positioning and re-recording.
 

Puggles
 
I just got a bunch of new XLR cables and I tested them and they all work just fine

An outside chance, but did you test the new cables with a cable tester or multi metre? It has only happened to me once in 30 years, but I recently  bought 12 brand new mic cables only to find that pins 2&3 were cross-wired on 2 of them. 

I think most missed the intent of this post, as evidenced by the responses. Having said that, some great information passed on. It's a good topic after all. But the MO of the OP's (read plural) post (s), in my view, tiresome!
 

tenfoot

An outside chance, but did you test the new cables with a cable tester or multi metre? It has only happened to me once in 30 years, but I recently  bought 12 brand new mic cables only to find that pins 2&3 were cross-wired on 2 of them. 

There were a number of imports last year Bruce that were dodgy. All appeared high quality cable, good hardware, great terminations/heat shrinking etc, that were failing straight out of the box, or with little use, and were terminated incorrectly. I had one cable that had 5 breaks in the positive conductor over a 2 metre length. I got the cables from Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, but they were the same cable. L and R's reversed, pins reversed on XLR's, and the faults within the cable themselves as mentioned. I've bought a 100m roll of Mogami and make what I need now, after a number or tracking projects went wrong due to the above problems. Frustrating. We appear to be a dumping ground at times.

MacFurse
There were a number of imports last year Bruce that were dodgy. All appeared high quality cable, good hardware, great terminations/heat shrinking etc, that were failing straight out of the box, or with little use, and were terminated incorrectly. I had one cable that had 5 breaks in the positive conductor over a 2 metre length. I got the cables from Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, but they were the same cable. L and R's reversed, pins reversed on XLR's, and the faults within the cable themselves as mentioned. I've bought a 100m roll of Mogami and make what I need now, after a number or tracking projects went wrong due to the above problems. Frustrating. We appear to be a dumping ground at times.

I guess quality control on imports has fallen victim to ebay prices MacFurse. I thought my experience may have been anomalous, but it looks like it's time to break out the soldering iron again. Ahh - I love the smell of roasting soft metals in the morning!

vanceen
...
Some people might disagree, but I would say that going from a half dozen SM57s to using 14 expensive mics on a kit can take you from "good" to "very good"....

I agree with your logic, but not that you need 14 mics or that they have to be "expensive".  For example I have a pair of CAD M179s that are a thing of beauty on Toms.  I paid $300 for the pair.  That's just one example.  Definitely agree, though, that SM57s will only go so far.