the reason for the thing being so hard is to be usable with mountain bikes, which often have a single chainring in the 30-34 range

No, it really does not matter that much. The power phase would be slightly different (higher resistance @ lower RPM has power distributed a little more through the pedal cycle), but probably not that much. I had a KKRM and used their virtual power. I really liked it, but one of the shortcomings was that there was no way to do low cadence, high power drills. You can do those all day on a Muin.

The smart trainers like the KICKR change the resistance dynamically. For example, if I have a 300W interval, I could do it in my 36/28 gear or flip to a 52/11 and the KICKR would change the resistance so that my power would be the same in both gearings.

I found the resistance calibration curve for the Muin here: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/...rainer/rp-prod127518. I am not surprised you are spending a lot of time at the extremes of the cassette. I have a standard Elite fluid trainer and it certainly provide less resistance for a given wheel speed.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it will allow you to do low-cadence high-resistance work. For example if I try and do low cadence sessions at 60-70 rpm even in 53x11 the maximum resistance my trainer will provide is ~250 watts which isn't enough for specific over-geared intervals.

As to your question it requires a two part answer. Firstly most high end trainers aren't fluid based though because you can't have a true smart fluid trainer. So kickrs etc will feel different but so will every non-fluid trainer. Equally you can certainly buy other fluid trainers that would allow you to push a bigger gear at the cadence and power outputs. And all that matters is the combination of cadence and power output so I wouldn't worry about having to spend time in the little ring.

i couldnt find too much info online re: big chain ring vs little chain ring turbo training. I still have my kurt kinetic trainer, i dont do a lot of big gear work, im not sure if i should go back to it. Its strange being on the small chain ring, its as if my cadence is higher to compensate.

I had one of the early ones, and yes, it was brutal!
I and a few of my mates all sold ours pretty quickly.
The ramp up in Watts per gear is awful and unusable to us.
Now on a neo... miles apart ;)