Once I met a professional sound engineer at a music exhibition and asked him what he thinks about electronic drum kits and his response was clear:
"They suck!"
I was somewhat perplexed and told him, that I had been using e-drums for a while now on live gigs and his comment was something like:
"Well, if they work for you that is great, but I don't use them!"
Sure, from a sound engineers point of view e-drums suck, because they use samples instead of a more individual approach.
Samples are by their nature more limited than acoustic drums with more parameters one can influence.
Even if the enormous amount of high quality samples, virtual mic positioning, virtual tunings etc. provide electronic drummers with more possibilities than ever before.
While it is not possible to use electronic drum kits with specific techniques such as brush-use, the more meat-ier stuff remains largely the same.
Apart from a few very specific shortcomings however electronic drum kits offer a wide range of advances over acoustic drums.
-Portable: Often electronic drum kits use rack systems, which allow for folding the whole kit together without the need to disassemble too much gear.
See: https://www.roland.com/us/products/v-drums_portable_td-4kp/
-Space efficient: A 22x18 bass drum requires a lot of space and we have not even touched on Floor Toms or 20 inch Ride cymbals. E-drums use way less space, as your bass drum often is often just 5-10 inches in depth and 3-12 inches in diameter, while Ride cymbals often are the size of acoustic Crash cymbals.
-Highly adaptable sound: If a component of your analog drum kit is too loud or not sharp enough in its sound to cut through the wall of sound you are rather limited in your approach to fix this. With electronic drum kits you can change the volume of each component or simply select a sample that fits better with your situation.
Especially the fact, that the volume can be changed by a knob on your sound module is extremely useful, when playing in small places or when practicing with your band.
We made a huge leap forward in our cover band, when we switched to electronic drums in our rehearsal room as the more controlled sound helped us dramatically to become tighter and pay more attention to details as tiny errors became much easier to spot.
Gone are the days, where our guitarist complained about being too loud. Now he complains about having to play perfectly as otherwise you would easily hear him messing up somewhere.
Live it has been so easy to get a perfect sound and despite people having a lot of prejudice over electronic drums, I often get told how well balanced the sound is.
-More sterile sound: Often quoted a disadvantage, the more sterile sound e-drum modules make it easier to get unwanted frequencies out. For example the snare in an acoustic set creates noise, when certain resonant frequencies are hit. This does not happen with electronic drums.
-Easy control and mixing: Most sound modules these days, allow for onboard mixing, EQ, tuning, ambience, dampening etc. This makes it super easy to adjust your sound to the conditions needed within seconds.
-No microphones needed: E-drums do not need microphones as each pad is directly connected to the sound module. So just plugging in your cables into both and you are done.
-Different sounds for different songs: With the ability to switch between kits you can easily use a noisy punk sound for one song and more sterile samples for the the next industrial metal song. This allows for a wide variety of different song types.
-Easy recording for everyone: While the sound might not come close to a perfectly mastered real drum kit, directly recording your drum modules output into your audio interface gives you semi-professional results nonetheless with almost no effort at all.
Here is an example of my Roland kit:
https://on.soundcloud.com/A9gQ
Bottom Line: For most drummers not in the big studios, electronic drum kits offer great benefits and should be considered as an optimal solution for most situations.
