It's tricky recording with the real cymbals because of the bleed from the rubber drum heads( Yamaha kit) which do not sound like real drums. This might be better with the V drums with the mesh heads. What I've done is record the electric kit first then record the real cymbals in a second pass. Then delete the midi cymbal events.

droddey


Cable length isn't an issue for latency. The signal travels far too fast for it to be a concern. The minute latency it would add is vastly overwhelmed by the other latencies in a DAW based environment.

One thing you could do of course is put down the track initially while listening to local sounds from the V-Drum kit, while recording the MIDI to disk. Then you'd have very little latency. You could then go back and select the actual sound you want after the fact. That could though be a bit of a vibe killer while recording.

Thanks for the feedback Droddey

25ft for a Midi cable does sound right, I knew there was indeed a limit. And I can' see rubber heads bleeding, but mesh should be fine. I kind of just want to buy mesh drum heads and a module with triggers to convert this old kit I have to see if its something that I'd even want to get into. Then it'd look like a normal kit and I could still use cymbals. Maybe....

Reporting back with my initial impressions.  After 10 hours or so of owning it, I am very disappointed in the factory drum sounds.  IMO they leave alot to be desired, especially for the price I paid for this thing.  Maybe they need tweeking, I dont know, but out of the box Session Drummer sounds better.

With that said, Ez Drummer syncs right up to it very easy and sounds nice.  It's a nightmare with Addictive Drums because I never installed the 1.5 patch, which contains the midi mapping.  I am lost with drum maps in Sonar.

The mesh pads are nice.  I can't find a good spot for the ride without it getting in the way.  Of course, this set is for real drummers recording for me....so I guess they can figure that part out :)

Probably need tweaking. Sure they don't sound better with the analog main outputs instead of midi output??

Hey Spacealf - First I listened through the headphones straight from the brain.  Then I messed around and recorded the stereo audio out straight into Sonar.   I've played with all the kits, the 808 kick is actually my favorite, the rest could easily be replaced with Session Drummer and be an imporovement

It's not as bad as a 1980 drum machine, but for 1,600 bucks I was expecting more. 

Makes sense though, they focus more on the technology and not as much on the sample library. Plus they know with MIDI you can connect it to control a whole world of different drum sounds.

When I've demoed them they sounded OK, I would defiantly tweak them but I fliped through a few pre sets and ya, they sound like all midi drum's every where.

If you are a drummer (Or used to hearing real drums) you will probably never be satisfied with the sounds in any hardware drum module, there's just to little memory in these things to hold a properly multisampled drum kit with many velocity zones and 8-10 round robins pr zone on each drum, so if you play well you will retrigger the same samples at the same velocity and with no round robins it's shotgun city. They try all kinds of tricks to make it sound better like velocity filtering and tuning the harder you hit, but it just won't sound right if you have heard real drums.

I wish they'd make a kit with nothing but a dumb brain and no sounds because it's just a waste of money for something you won't use.

Look at the full version of Steven Slate Drums, or if you'd really crazy, look at mixosaurus drums

With a little tweeking, I have used my Yamaha kit for live gigs with great success.  For recording, I use the MIDI to drive Steven Slate kits.