Great Practice Set
The Alesis DM6 is about 75% like playing a real drum set, which is enough for effective practice in an apartment, without disturbing the neighbors. It takes up about half the floor space of real drums, it's sturdy enough to stay stable with moderately hard playing, and the sounds are good enough to .
You can use a real bass drum pedal with the kick pad, which is a plus. You don't want the kind that is a self-contained pedal and trigger like the hi-hat is (it's fine for that), they don't feel real or respond right. I like being able to use my own favorite pedal, as would most drummers.
I've had it less than a month, and it has already helped me improve my drum chops, by being easily available in my living room, so I get more drum time in. it will save me $60/month in practice space fees, not to mention driving and set up time. Unless you have a real set in your basement you can play any time, or you can spend over $2k on a better electronic kit, the DM6 is a great choice for any drummer who wants to practice more and get better, for under $500.
On the con side, you won't get the dynamics you get with real drums or say, a $3000 electronic set, so your loudest snare sound isn't a lot louder than the ghost notes. The bounce back feel is not terrible, but it's not quite like real drums and (especially) cymbals. You cannot fake real cymbals. The cymbals are not super sensitive, and it seems like they could have found better samples for some of the sounds on the kit generally. The sounds seem heavily edited and tweaked, not what you'd call natural sounding samples of real drums. But it's good enough for practice.
You can modify and save the 11 - 15 numbered kits, with the sounds and volume you want for each trigger pad, so you should be able to put together something you like enough to play for an hour a day. You can also upgrade just the module, and get a DM10, if down the road you decide you want a better brain with additional features.
Bottom line - The DM6 is appropriate for practicing patterns or recording MIDI data of your drum performance in Cubase or similar which you can edit later. It's not for gigging. If you don't want to spend over $500, but you want to practice drums any time without disturbing neighbors, this is probably what you want.
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