Drum software for V drum player?

[al_diablo]

My brother is a drummer with no interest in recording, and an old-ish model Roland TD9 kit. He mainly practices on headphones.

I wondered if playing through a drum software library would sound more like a kit in a room and was curious if anyone here had any recommendations for products that would fit the bill

I already have Komplete with the Abbey Road drum series so we’ll try those first but wondered if there are people here with any experience of other libraries

Thanks

Alex

[Fishnish]

I've used Roland TD-9 and TD-4 kits with Toontrack's Superior Drummer. It's pretty easy to configure to use with V-Drums. The library has several different kits with numerous options for principal pieces and cymbals, the sounds are great. There are lots of layers and different articulations for each kit piece as well as a huge range of mic placement options so getting a coherent "real kit in a real room" sound is not difficult. Certainly a big step up from the internal sounds of these somewhat older Roland sound modules.

[Wonks]

I know Chris Blackwell (The Commander when he used to frequent these forums, and ex-Robert Plant and now one of the foremost library music composers) used a TD-20 brain, Hart drum pads with software providing all his sounds, BFD and Superior Drummer. Whilst he can, he rarely gets out his acoustic kit any more.

You can use the brain to provide latency-free sounds for monitoring when playing, but record the MIDI and then play about with the drum sounds you use to fit the track.

[Drew Stephenson]

When I was hunting around for drum libraries last year (or maybe the year before!) I demoed a number of them and they mostly played nicely with the midi out from my bottom-of-the-range Roland V-drum set (can't remember the model number now).
There were a couple where there were problems, I'll see if I can find the relevant forum thread as I might have written down which ones caused issues.
I ended up with an Abbey Road set though.

EDIT - found the thread and here are my conclusions at the time (I've bolded the most pertinent ones):
The Addictive sounds didn't really work for me - can't articulate why I'm afraid.
Superior is out of my price range, even on sale.
Strike wouldn't play nicely with either my midi files or my midi kit.
Jamstix again left me uninspired - shame none of the brushes options were on the demo.
Solid is nearly there. I really like the drum sounds, the interface is easy, but it doesn't play nicely with my midi kit (and doesn't appear to have a remapping option) and there's no brushes.
The Slate stuff I want to like. But the demo is very limited (just one rock kit) and it all sounds too, well, polished (I think that's what someone said above). I tried bringing it into a couple of projects and it just didn't fit.
EZ drummer failed at the first hurdle in that I loaded the demo and it immediately said it had expired. Toontrack support have given a bit of a rigamarole to try and sort it. Normally I'd drop a product in situations like this but I'm really holding out hope at the moment that it might be the right option.
Melda MDrummer also didn't play nicely with the midi mapping.

[ben howes]

I didn't enjoy playing 'recording ready' drum replacement samples on my kit. Much prefer unprocessed sounds that sound like my acoustic kit in a room.
You need good computer hardware as any latency is very noticeable when playing.
I'm sure the abbey road series has everything you are likely to need.
I can recommend the 2box modules. Also bought some usable vintage style samples from drum drops. Co. Uk

[resistorman]

Latency will be the biggest problem I bet, I have problems just using a virtual guitar amp.

[Wonks]

See my earlier reply. Latency isn't an issue as you can record monitoring the the V-drum sounds but recording the MIDI. You may not get the drum sound you want but you get the instant response and velocity feedback you need.

You may need to manually compensate slightly on the recorded MIDI track to allow for the few ms in production of the MIDI notes, but that's a simple task

Some e-kits may put out a lot of MIDI data, so filtering of the MIDI stream may be necessary to simplify things for the drum software to handle.

[resistorman]

See my earlier reply. Latency isn't an issue as you can record monitoring the the V-drum sounds but recording the MIDI. You may not get the drum sound you want but you get the instant response and velocity feedback you need.

You may need to manually compensate slightly on the recorded MIDI track to allow for the few ms in production of the MIDI notes, but that's a simple task

Some e-kits may put out a lot of MIDI data, so filtering of the MIDI stream may be necessary to simplify things for the drum software to handle.

The OP mentioned there was no interest in recording, just using the sounds

[Wonks]

D’oh yes. I misread it thinking the
OP was going to take the drums any use them themselves.

Latency will depend on the interface and the computer power. A stand-alone drum program will be less laggy than one running in a DAW.

But I’d be looking along the lines of a drum brain with sounds they liked. Or maybe just a reverb unit with better reverb than the TD9 has, and just use dry sounds with external reverb.

Have they experimented with the various reverbs on offer in the unit (he says not knowing anything about the unit and his own brief experience of owning a TD6 at least 17 years ago).