EDrum Choice: Roland TD-9 SX vs TD-9S

[mrhudson]

Good afternoon (should have posted in drums in the first place!),

I'm looking to add an electronic drum kit to my home set-up, and the two models in my subject line are in my price range and look like decent options. There are some sales this weekend that make now a good time to buy. I'm just looking to layer drums into my home recordings using a kit controller. Quality of the sounds are more important to me than superb feel/playability, and I'll end up using this kit to record midi into Logic Pro and then trigger other samples. Obviously want latency to be not a big deal (hope my imac can do OK for latency with a midi->USB cable direct into the imac - my Duet has no midi).

As far as these two kits go, the big product differences that take the price from $1800 to $2500 are the addition of mesh toms, fancier ride, and what looks like a somewhat better/different snare, though both kits have a mesh snare of some kind.

Now, I played drums for 5 years or so before moving to piano, but I'm hardly a drummer that will notice subtleties of feel. I'm leaning towards the cheaper kit but am curious whether folks have tried out either of these and whether the extra features end up contributing a big deal? TD9 appears to be the same. The price spread between the two kits would be money that could work quite well on something else, but I don't want to miss out on features either. But, if the key diff is just mesh toms, that doesn't seem worth the extra $$s - could afford sound libraries for that diff.....

Guess the difference is the ride and snare - any big diffs there? PDX-8 snare vs PD105BK snare......What makes the PD105BK snare better? Can you NOT get a bell out of the cheaper ride on the TD-9S?

Also, what software drum samples within LogicPro work the best with either of these vdrums? Are the subtleties/mappings of where you hit the drum, etc.., preserved through to when you trigger these sample packages?

[cortisol]

Yo - IMO you will be surprised no matter what kit you get because both kits are extremely playable and fun. You will in fact start playing and you will end up inspired by picking sounds from the brain that comes with your kit! You'll just be able to switch on and disappear into drumworld once the headphones are on!

So to my opinion of mesh toms verses rubber pads... in reality the toms have less bounce than the snare but even so you get used to hitting rubber toms in no time. The rubber pads are more reliable than the mesh ones as the heads can become damaged and the rubber rims will eventually wear out from hitting the rims. So with the mesh pads you will have to buy new heads and rims. It takes years of use for this to happen (speaking from experience) and is much less cost than maintaining an acoustic kit.

Even if you are just recording midi the feel and experience of playing a v-drum kit is great using the kit and brain whilst you are outputting the midi to your daw.

In all honesty I am very happy using my TD3 kit for the task you need it for. I even gig with this kit and use my fav sounds from the TD3 Brain which I augment with custom samples using a Roland SPDs. I have played on some releases using the TD3 brain as a source for drum machine sounds too so the brain is a tool to be utilized as are the drum sounds you get with Logic.

I suggest that you try out the kits and see which snare and configuration you find the mopst natural and expressive to play on.

Peace,
cortisol