I have now wasted 3 days trying to get this to work!
Can anyone point me to some good guidelines on how to simply record a V-drum kit midi track into Sonar.
I have a TD-3 kit, UM-ONE MIDI to USB cable and Sonar Artist with Session Drummer.
WHY IS IT SO COMPLICATED??!?!
(The only time I did manage to get something recorded the playback was terrible - out of time, hanging, slowing down, etc..)
And please don't point me to the Cakewalk Help guide, it's useless.

Sounds like you're going to need to go through a process of elimination.
Do you have another controller you can try? 
Or, set up a Studio Instrument or some other VST and verify that you can create a MIDI track using the Piano Roll View and that it can play back with good timing.
 
Then see if you can input MIDI using a controller other than the V-Drum kit. 
 
 

It's not going to be as easy as it might appear if you are going to trigger Session Drummer for your drum sounds  via MIDI.
 
You will need to learn how to configure your PC and Sonar for use with virtual instruments, and to get the real-time audio latency as low as possible. By default, your Windows audio drivers are not going to get the job done.
 
Your general PC setup, as well as audio and MIDI setup will be crucial for getting usable real-time audio performance with your MIDI drums (or any virtual instrument).  See this PC optimization guide: https://www.sweetwater.co...-guide-for-windows-10/
 
The Cakewalk help guides are useful for getting over those first steps with setting up MIDI and audio in Sonar.

pramhead23
 
(The only time I did manage to get something recorded the playback was terrible - out of time, hanging, slowing down, etc..)

This quote reeks of latency issues.
I went through a similar problem when I tried to use my V drums with session drummer.
I used a Midi to USB cable. The latency was unbearable. Sloppy, out of tempo, random hanging.
Bought a good interface and problem was solved.
 
Try downloading a wrapper of your soundcard. ASIO4ALL will be should work.
My real suggestion is a soundcard with Midi ports, but ASIO4ALL might do it.
 
You'll also want to eventually split up the kit to take full advantage of V drums in the mixing stages

What you are trying to do is pretty complicated, so best not to complain about how complicated it is.
 
I have done this numerous times, so it is not impossible.  Now if I understand you correctly, you want to play the V-drum kit, and capture the midi output of the V-drums onto a track in Sonar: is that correct?
 
1) take a deep breath, try to calm yourself.  Remember that you are doing something pretty complicated and a calm frame of mind is needed.
2) Connect the midi out of the V-drum brain to the midi in of your midi interface.
3) Launch Sonar and create a new project.  Add a midi track to your new project.  Arm the midi track for recording. 
4) You need to tell the midi track to receive midi data from your midi interface, which midi port the data will be on, and which midi channel the data will be on.  I use the Track View for these chores.
4) Check the metronome and set the number of count-in measures to 0.  (How you set up the rest of the metronome depends on whether you plan to play drums to a metronome: you may also want to adjust the project tempo to whatever tempo you will be playing at - depending on whether you want the midi data to fall on the MBT timeline correctly.)
5) Set your V-drum brain to send the midi data on the correct midi channel (i.e. the midi channel you instructed Sonar to receive midi data from).
6) Press the record button on Sonar.  It should immediately be recording.
7) Play a couple of hits on your V-drums.  Midi data should now appear on the midi track you created in Sonar.
8) Report back to us what happened when you tried this procedure.  Report back to us if you do not understand any of the above instructions.
 
Don't forget to have fun.

If you are trying to play along with other trax like guitar, bass, piano, vocals, etc., set your master FX in Sonar to "off". That will greatly improve the amount of stabilization and help prevent crashes and out-of-sync-ness. The "FX" button can be found in the toolbar in a little box simply labeled "FX". When you click on it, it will turn blue meaning all FX in your project are turned off like reverb, delay, etc. Next, do your recording and then turn it back on when you are done for mixing.
 
FYI - it's not easy to get this to work smoothly. I have a new system with an Apollo Quad Thunderbolt and it still crashes, and that's after I spent about a thousand bucks on making my desktop super fast with a new Thunderbolt 3 motherboard. The Apollo midi drum recording performance is so bad I  actually reinstall my old Roland OctaCapture which works way better than the Appollo. With the Roland, I can reduce the latency to 32 samples which is great and use StevenSlate Drums, Add 2 drums, etc. and they record almost perfectly with few drop-outs. I feel your pain, this ability to record drum performances as midi notes has been here for years and yet it's not easy to get it to work smoothly. I also bought the official Roland midi to USB adapter and it helped quite a bit.
 
Another tip is to create just a one track version of your song to play along with and delete all the other trax. Do your recording and then just drag that midi performance back into your multitrack project. The fewer "other" trax, the better.
 
Good luck! 

Oh boy, been there done that.
 To make a long story short you need a MIDISPORT 2X2  or if you want to go larger the MIDIPSORT 4X4 between your V Drums and computer, and problems solved. These are NOT audio devices! They are dedicated MIDI patch bays, that's all they do, and they share their USB connection with nothing else but the devices that are plugged into it.
 Works great has super fast communication/transmission  with all Roland, Alesis, Yahama electronic drums, or anything else with MIDI control I've ever plugged into it
 I've been using big brother 8x8 for 2 decades never has any MIDI problems since, and never even had to update the drivers.
many years ago M-Audio bought out original manufacture MIDIMAN and never tried to improve change anything but the color and graphics.
 

user390096
 I have a new system with an Apollo Quad Thunderbolt and it still crashes, and that's after I spent about a thousand bucks on making my desktop super fast with a new Thunderbolt 3 motherboard. The Apollo midi drum recording performance is so bad I  actually reinstall my old Roland OctaCapture which works way better than the Appollo. With the Roland, I can reduce the latency to 32 samples which is great and use StevenSlate Drums, Add 2 drums, etc. and they record almost perfectly with few drop-outs. I feel your pain, this ability to record drum performances as midi notes has been here for years and yet it's not easy to get it to work smoothly. I also bought the official Roland midi to USB adapter and it helped quite a bit.
 
 
 
Good luck! 

 You might want to try getting a dedicated SIIG PCIe Thunderbolt card. Don't trust any little chip built into your mobo to reliably run something as high performance as an Apollo. Come on bro, that on par with running the Apollo off the mobo's tiny little built in audio chip and Windows drivers.
 Kinda on par with installing a tricked out 900 hp Hellcat Hemi race car engine in your stock grade family Dodge mini van.
 
 I had given up trying to use Firewire/Thunderbolt on a Windows computers because of unexpected crashing or simply vanishing from my list of input devices, and or just simply having an internal fight with USB for bandwidth in the computer's main buss and chipset.


Windows has a very maturely coded built in native USB support, there is nothing native about Firewire/Thunderbolt in Windows OS, it's an add on accessory built by Apple, and believe me, Apple it NOT going to go out of their way to support Windows systems.

Steev
Oh boy, been there done that.
 To make a long story short you need a MIDISPORT 2X2  or if you want to go larger the MIDIPSORT 4X4 between your V Drums and computer, and problems solved. These are NOT audio devices! They are dedicated MIDI patch bays, that's all they do, and they share their USB connection with nothing else but the devices that are plugged into it.
 Works great has super fast communication/transmission  with all Roland, Alesis, Yahama electronic drums, or anything else with MIDI control I've ever plugged into it
 I've been using big brother 8x8 for 2 decades never has any MIDI problems since, and never even had to update the drivers.
many years ago M-Audio bought out original manufacture MIDIMAN and never tried to improve change anything but the color and graphics.
 

For years, I would have recommended the MIDISPORT range. I'm using the original 8x8 and the 2x2 anniversary edition (actually two of these).
 
Since the 1803 release however, the 2x2 has been giving me dropouts - disconnecting randomly and generally being unreliable when MIDI traffic is high. I've got a dual boot and if I switch to my Windows 7 boot, there's no issues.
 
I've since moved to a MIDITech MidiFace 8x8: https://www.thomann.de/gb/miditech_midiface_8x8.htm
 
This has been absolutely rock solid for me.
 
I still use my MIDISPORT 8x8 for all my rack MIDI synths, but these get very light use nowadays.

 Good to know mark. Only time I had issues like that was solved by replacing an old USB cable, but that was well before Win 10 1803. Might even been before Win 7, LoL
 Truth be told only time I run through the MIDISPORT these days is to rarely make program changes on rack FX or to use my Kawai K 11 digital synth, it has 2 sound engines and 2 MIDI ports, so that would hardly congest MIDI traffic.
 
 GREAT horns sounds and piano come out of the K 11, but still rarely use it and stay in the box with audio FX plugins, DXi's and VSTi's.