Millenium MD-90 Mobile Drum

I bought this drum for my personal home recording studio :)

I needed something to record a drum track and this is exactly what I was looking for. It doesn't take a lot of room (it fits in a wardrobe or under the bed), available sounds are good, it's easy to play once you get used to the small dimensions.

The only drawback I've found is that the pedals for hi-hat and kick are more or less two switches. The pedal just opens or closes a contact, there is no possibility to have a sort of "dynamic" as it is for all other pads of the drums. I mean that whether you kick hard or softly you always get the same sound where as for the pads it's different, you can get different sounds/volume depending on the way you beat the pad).

You can use it with headphones to play at night without bothering the neighbors (but if you play hard you can bother people living with you).

A 7 year-old kid also liked it a lot, so if you have a son/daughter is OK for him/her too.

First of all, please note that I'm a guitarist so my opinions may differ from those of a drummer.
Up until now I've been making drum tracks using a keyboard & PC, however even with good quality samples, somehow the end results always sounded a bit too synthetic to my ears. The MD-90 solves this problem - playing with sticks rather than your fingers gives a more natural feel to things.
The sounds are surprisingly authentic, and the compact size is obviously great for a home studio environment. USB connectivity extends the functionality of the device
My only criticism concerns the pedals. This has already been discussed by several other reviewers so I won't go into too much detail, suffice to say that they constantly move about, and there is often a problem with missing beats or getting extra ones. You really need to hit the pedal in a specific spot, and performance tends to vary depending on what shoes you're wearing!
Otherwise a great piece of kit and well worth the money.

I bought this because apartments in Germany aren't so drum-kit-friendly. I plug this into Garageband via USB and listen through my headphones If you turn down the master volume on the e-drums, then you only hear whatever drum sound you use in GarageBand. I've recorded awesome drums with this.

I gave it a 4 star playability rating because I'm used to the high hat being on the left of the snare. You can't do that here. The high hat is the centre-bottom pad and snare is left bottom. I messed up a lot in recording, but I got through. The kick pedal and and high hat pedal will move a bit during play. I used table legs from IKEA lack to hold them in place. Also, they are funny little pedals. They are full throttle or nothing because they aren't pressure sensitive. No biggy. The recording process is easy.

As far has how the drums themselves are, without GarageBand, just through the speaker, I am not sure. But this thing has tons of functions and features that I haven't tested yet. I can say that for recording in apartments that don't allow drums, this thing works just dandy. It has randomly disconnected from my laptop before. I turn it off and then on again. Wala! It's back in business.

I have been looking for a small drum set I can use for home recording (as drums are not my main instrument), which will not annoy the neighbours and can easily be stored in my apartment. This drum set is perfect for just that! Also it came with almost everything you need to start (foot pedals, power cable, and a nice set of drumsticks, only the usb-midi cable is not included). I will list the pros and cons below.

PROS:

- Small and portable, can easily be stored
- Not too loud if you're playing at home with headphones
- Midi, which gives you access to a wide range of drum sounds, and makes mixing them easier when recording (plus the sound quality is great!)
- Touch sensitive (except foot pedals)

CONS:

- The bass drum controlled by the foot pedal is not touch sensitive, and much louder than any of the other drums
- Foot pedal for bass drum sometimes "doubles" the beat if you step on it too hard
- Additionally, the snare is much quieter than the other drums for some reason.
- Foot pedals seem cheaply made (not a huge issue though).

The issues, however, are easily fixed by midi, where you can adjust the level of each drum beat individually, and add or delete beats as needed. I would highly recommend this drum kit to use for home recording, as it is small and quiet, and the sound quality is excellent, and easy to mix if you use its midi function. In this case, I would suggest adding a usb-midi cable to your purchase (I didn't think of this at first, but later got one locally).

I used to have one of these while living abroad, and got used to the concept of using a compact electric drumpad set as a MIDI controller for great drum soundbanks such as Addictive Drums or similar plugins.
I should say though, that as a standalone I wouldn't easily use it. I'm not really a fan of how its internal soundbanks sound, neither of the included reverb effect.
But considering the application I wanted to use it for (triggering drum samples from my DAW), it does get the job done, although I wish the pads were a bit more sensitive.
And it really is the cheapest solution in this respect if you're looking for a real drumset feel to your recordings.
Only other contender in this respect is the Yamaha DD65, which has alot more to offer actually (decent internal drum sounds, possibility to connect to external drum modules through MIDI connection, an array of effects, etc.), but for almost twice the price.