I ran the two 1/4" (L/R) outputs from brain box into a "Y" connector (RCA inputs) and plugged the "Y" stereo male connector right into the PC "LINE" input.

I use Audacity, you may need to adjust the levels and set up for Line Recording as opposed to MIC recording.

Oh yes headphones, one way or the other you have to listen to yourself and the track you are playing to. It may be a simple set-up or you may have to figure out how to run the wires with a splitter to feed the drums from the brain box and the track from the PC into the head phones and then be able to adjust levels to manage all the sound.

The trick is to have the right male/female combo along with 1/4" 1/8", adapters, splitters joiners and patience.

I rate this set-up as: 3 trip to Radio Shack.

The general rule of thumb is that you will always have extra connectors you cant use and always will be one connector short of what you need.

Hopefully it's just me making life harder than I needed and all the wires go easily.

But hey when it all works, its great fun and sounds good too.

I currently use a full acoustic set mic'd up into Protools via an M-Audio Projectmix I/O interface. Once the tracks are laid down I can replace any single hit or an entire track using "SoundReplacer"..so as an example if I want a Roger Taylor snare on a song instead of mine, I just select the track and using the program it automatically replaces every hit with the selected audio sample and blends it with the existing snare hits as much or as little as I wish. I also sometimes use Reason 4.0 with assorted drum kits for quick demoing of songs.

I am not a drummer, but do frequently "play" them via a MIDI keyboard connected directly to the MIDI input of my soundcard. I use the sounds from my Roland Sound Canvas to monitor while I'm recording MIDI for near-zero latency. After it's recorded, I can split the MIDI to separate tracks (kick, snare, hat, toms, etc.) edit the MIDI and use whatever sounds I have available to suit the song. I use a DXi soundfont player most of the time to play the MIDI using a multisampled soundfont (Sonic Implants acoustic drums).

oh bother....

When using any drum kit electronic or acoustic. I download the original drumless track and then record it to my 8 track digital recorder onto Tracks 1 and 2 . I then hook the outputs of the electronic drum set to a Yamaha mixer and run the outputs of that mixer to the 8 track recorder, recording onto tracks 3 and 4, you can skip the mixer if you want and run the drum brain outputs straight into the recorder. I find I have a little more control over the EQ by going through the mixer. I monitor with headphones from the 8 track recorder. Using the 8 track recorder allows me to use sliders to control both the original song volume and the new drum track volume I am laying down. Most of the time I will put microphones on real cymbals and Latin percussion instruments running them into the 8 track recorder on separate tracks 5 and 6. I am using small condenser microphones for this purpose.
I will take all the tracks which are recorded onto a compact flash card by the 8 track recorder and import them all into the free stable version, not the beta "Audacity" for mixing and exporting. I will export the mix for Kompoz and then separate the drum track by highlighting and delete the original song leaving only the sync tone, then export for uploading to Kompoz. The stable version of "Audacity" exports as .Wav only and must be transferred again using "Switch" to an MP3 at 192. I always use the sync tone when it is available on the original track. You could also go straight to the software recorder. I have done this a few times and went back to the 8 track recorder everytime. It is so easy to do a track, and undo that track with the 8 track recorder, I think the thing I like the best are the manual sliders for level adjust during recording. They are quick and easy to work with verses a track volume software adjust while you are trying to play. It is just my work around and it seems to work the best for me. The 8 track recorder is so far bullet proof (musician proof I should say) and recording directly to a flash drive secures the recording. I have never lost anything with it in the many years I have used it, recording on a computers can have its glitches, one freeze or blue screen and you could lose that magic moment..Steve (DTX2)

... and furthermore, shouldn't we have a segment titled "recording real drums"? I'm sure recording digital drums is a piece of cake compared to recording them acoustically.

Yes, I will have a post on real drums, followed by a post on bass, guitar, etc. I'll then compile all the replies and create a new section on Kompoz titled "Getting Connected", with all of the best practices posted here.

I have an isolation room for the kit. I'll use all acoustic, all electric or a hybrid depending on the situation.

Signal Paths:

Yamaha DTXtreme module to "collect" the triggers/pads => MIDI out to keystation Pro 88 => USB to computer => DAW => Drum Software.

Keystation has a full 9 channel board built in. It's set up to tweak individual tracks of the drum kit (Levels, Pan, etc).

In tandem, 8 mics (Shure drum mic kit) to FIREPOD => firewire to computer => DAW audio tracks.

That's the easy part. Getting 'that sound' requires individual Compression/EQ for each drum. Some are grouped (like toms, overheads, close mics). Then all (acoustic and triggers/pads) are fed to a SINGLE master drum Group Track (Nuendo) for final processing.

I have different processing setups saved as files in Nuendo. So, if you need Rock Ballad drums for example, I call up the processing setup for that. Funk drums? No prob. In any case once you're set up it's quick, but getting there is a bitch.

I'll second that RB. If you are lucky enough (as we seem to be) to have a permanent setup all ready to go at a seconds notice it's the cat's ass ;) I would probably have never done 1/2 the songs if I had to setup drums or mic/processors every time.

I just wanted to add to remember and plug the kit power cord in. haha

and dont forget to sweep all those wood chirps from the floor every couple of weeks or it'll become like a dirty wood workplace...having a negative effect on your attention to what really is going to be done there