Recording drums on Sonar X1 Studio with Roland TD-4K

I last recorded e-drums using a Roland SPD-8 or SPD-11 way back when I still was on Sonar 4.

IIRC, I just connected MIDI out to my interface's MIDI in, and MIDI in to the interface's MIDI out. I'd manually created a boom-chick track and did fills and incidentals with the pads over it.

I probably had the audio outs of the SPD and the interface connected to an external mixer initially, then when it was all correct, I recorded the lot back into Sonar.

Again, IIRC, it was necessary to manually offset to the recorded track.
 
Was I satisfied? From a technical viewpoint, yes, although it was fiddly setting it all up.

You say you had no success on an older version of Sonar.
What specifically failed to work?

Recording MIDI is preferable, allowing corrections afterwards.

But there is no reason not to record the stereo output directly if you have the skill to play a song correctly right through. Technically the easiest, too. Just record like you would any stereo synth.
 
Edit: I just remembered: I successfully recorded a friend's album using Cakewalk 4 for DOS (MIDI only. I forget what sound module he had). Unlike me, he WAS a drummer and he had a Roland octopad. Using only sticks and doing several passes, the results were very good.

I've recorded drums on both X1 and X2 (somewhat) successfully using that same drum kit (which is just awesome isn't it?). Damn, I was about to write how I accomplished this, but I saw that SONAR X1 Studio doesn't have Session Drummer 3, which is quintessential to my drum-recording set-up... Sorry to say I can't help you there, in that case... I would strongly suggest you upgrade to the Producer Edition if you're serious about recording e-drums, though, because it's a really cool bit of software.