Play the drums without waking the neighbours

In this video we demonstrate the Ion iED05 USB Digital Drum Kit and discuss the differences between playing a digital drum kit and a normal one.

It has a low price tag for an electronic drum kit, and is ideal if you want to learn how to play the drums but don't want to upset the neighbours or sleeping children. Rather than real drums it uses pads that are connected to a central box, which is in turn connected to a computer.

Constructing the drum kit is fairly straightforward. Instructions are included and it took us about an hour and a half to get all the pads in the right position. A key diagram is included on the disc rather than as a paper printout, which didn't help matters. Software is supplied on the CD for playing the drums and a game.

In use the surfaces of the pads are quite tough. They are velocity sensitive and so respond differently depending on how hard they are hit. As the pads are quite hard there is not much physical feedback to your playing. The pedals are also fully on or off and it is hard to work out when it's going to make the sound.

There are 15 drum kits in the software but the software will not save recordings in MIDI format so they cannot be edited later. This is restrictive if you want to use the drum kit with other music software. It is possible to record a MIDI file using the Ion Drum kit, but it is not a simple matter.

The game will look familiar to anyone who has played Guitar Hero using coloured stickers stuck to the pads during installation. These stickers are much too small, making it harder to play. The game is unlikely to have the social appeal of Guitar Hero either, this is much more of a practice instrument and the game is harder to play than Guitar Hero.

The kit costs £130, a fair price for an electronic drum kit compared to other products. A budget physical drum kit would cost around the same but cannot be played as quietly. The next model up, the iED01, does include a proper drum machine so that recordings can be edited and played using different drum noises.