Sample Levels in DFH2

I'm getting to know my recent purchase of Drum Kit From Hell 2 and I don't have experience with soft or hardware samplers.

One thing that bothers me is the low level of some the samples, expecially the over head cymbals. With zero gain the crash is coming in a less then -12db totally lost in a mix, not exactly very crashy.

There are work arounds for this, for instance turning up the gain on the sampler output together with increasing the track gain gives a loud crash but the sampler adds noise with the extra gain. Use of effects such as a sampler adds more gain.

When I mix everything is OK, as I bounce every thing to audio, normalize then mix. But I was taught when recording keep the signal as hot as possible and it's frustrating during the composition and rough mixing phase.

What is the opinion of others? Is this low signal typical of samplers?

Thanks

Brett