Well, as yo may know, Thunderfingers and I are working on getting a gigging act going. Our drums are midi. The origonal plan was to put them through the PA. I had seperate monitors for us so we could keep time ... but I just added a cab with a 15" woofer for the bass that is powered by a 125 watt power amp. This makes our virtual drum kit a pair of speakers with horns and 10" woofers powered by a 120 watt home stereo and the bass as mentioned above. It can make some noise. I could even run some drum signal to the FOH PA if I wish, but don't think I need it. It is a great setup! Any comments? Suggestions?
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
We just switched to electronic drums at church; we run FOH (which includes a huge subwoofer) and through the floor monitors. Honestly, it has been tough getting the mix right - when the monitors are at a level that the bass player (me) and the drummers like, it overpowers the house. However, for balance in this T-shaped 500-seat room, we need the FOH system. The result is we keep the monitors too low and I strain to hear the kick ... I've been pushing for in-ear monitors so maybe we'll get there some day.
For your needs, if you find your system loud enough then you may not need to use the FOH PA, but it can really help balance out the drum level throughout the room.
"Everybody got to elevate from the norm."
Personal opinion: don't use a drumbox but export the MIDI data into a proper samplelibrary and export as MP3/wave. This way you can get a much more realistic and better sounding drumperformance, properly EQ'ed and compressed, that is as easy as it gets to run through a PA.
