The Pacific Digital DrumXtreme DX-MIDI-PRO digital drum kit is the perfect kit for space- or noise-constrained musicians and would-be musicians. That is the main reason I decided to try it out in the first place and I found that I couldn’t have made a better decision. Here’s why.

It is a compact electronic drum set in its own rack-type setup, which makes it look and feel more like a traditional drum set. It comes complete with six separate 7.5-inch drum pads, 2 foot pedals, a rack/stand, drumsticks, MIDI and USB cables, and separate MIDI and USB consoles: MIDI for use with other MIDI-capable devices, and USB for integration with a personal computer.

The folks at Pacific Digital made a bunch of great features like adjustable percussion sensitivity and professional-quality sound that can be played full-blast or muted, to spare the ears of family and neighbors. A headphone jack also allows the player to direct all sounds to headphones, of course. DrumXtreme is easy to assemble and sets up or folds down in minutes. Set up-right, it’s 36-inches high, 36-inches deep and 18-inches wide. The kit supports up to 7 drum pads (hi-hat, snare, tom1, tom2, tom3, ride, crash) and 2 pedals (bass drum and hi-hat control). You can even mix and match your own drum samples.

Audio inputs and outputs let you feed external sources into your playing, and let you amplify or record your playing to other devices. The song recording feature lets you record your drum music to the sequencer in real-time (one track at a time). All MIDI channels are recorded simultaneously. All of these features are very handy when it comes to really composing the proper groove for your piece.

The drum kit package includes a Pacific Digital CD software tutorial with training videos, play-along 4-level drum game, exercises, interface to select from 20 different drum sound banks, with over 380 usable voices, plus a tone effect feature that helps beginner develop snare, tom, hi-hat, crash, and ride skills. It also includes full documentation and a CD with pre-recorded play-a-long scores (50 preset songs, 4 user songs, plus 1 demo song). All in all, I really couldn’t be more pleased with this device, especially considering its incredibly low relative cost.

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