Best headphones for electronic drums

People buy an electronic kit expecting silence, plug in whatever headphones are in a drawer, and discover the problem nobody mentioned: the kit is still loud in the room. Not the drum sounds — the physical noise of wooden sticks striking pads, which no volume knob touches.

That noise is what your headphones have to beat, and it is why drum headphones are a category rather than a marketing exercise.

Every pick states its Starter Path band, and we have not physically tested any of them — the method is on how we pick.

The problem is not the music

An electronic kit produces two entirely separate sounds. The drum sound comes out of the module into your headphones and is fully under your control. The struck sound is sticks hitting pads, and it exists in the room regardless of any setting.

That struck noise is louder than most people expect, especially on rubber pads, which produce a sharp slap rather than the softer thud of mesh — the difference is covered in mesh heads versus rubber pads.

With ordinary headphones, the only way to hear the module over that is to raise the volume. Do that for an hour a day and you have arrived at genuine hearing risk on an instrument you bought because it was quiet. That is the trap this page exists to prevent.

Isolation versus attenuation

Isolation headphones are built to physically block outside noise, using heavy clamping earcups, and then place drivers inside so you can hear your source. Block first, listen second.

Closed-back monitoring headphones are designed for accurate sound and incidentally block some outside noise. Listen first, block second.

Filtered earplugs block only — they reduce everything by a roughly even amount so the kit still sounds like a kit rather than a muffled thud. There is nothing to listen to through them, which is why they suit an acoustic kit.

Note that noise-cancelling is a fourth thing and it is the wrong tool here. Active cancellation works well on continuous low-frequency noise like an aircraft cabin and poorly on sharp transient impacts, which is exactly what a stick on a pad is.

The picks

The Vic Firth stereo isolation headphones#ad are the purpose-built answer for an electronic kit. Physical isolation combined with drivers inside means the struck noise is attenuated before the module has to compete with it, so you can play along to music at a genuinely lower and safer level.

Against them: they clamp firmly, which is what isolation requires and which gets warm and tiring over a long session; and they are voiced for isolation rather than fidelity, so they sound less refined than monitoring headphones.

The Audio-Technica ATH-M20x#ad is the better-sounding option and the more versatile purchase. Closed-back monitoring headphones with a fixed 3 meter cable — enough to sit at a kit without being tethered awkwardly — and they double for keyboard practice, recording and everything else.

Against them: less physical isolation than the Vic Firths, so on a loud rubber-pad kit you will end up further up the volume dial than is ideal. On a mesh kit, which is much quieter to strike, they are a very good choice.

The Etymotic ER20XS#ad are on this page for the acoustic case, because a substantial number of people arrive here who do not have anything to plug into. They reduce level fairly evenly across frequencies, so cymbals do not disappear and the kit still sounds like a kit — which is precisely why they get worn, and foam plugs do not.

The wider hearing-protection picture, including why this matters so much on an acoustic kit, is in hearing protection for drummers.

Getting the level right

Set the backing track first, then the kit. Bring the music up to a level you can hear comfortably, then set the drum sounds slightly under it. A drummer who sets the kit above the track cannot hear when they are out of time, which is the specific thing playing along is supposed to teach.

Use the aux input. Feeding your phone into the module and monitoring both from one place is far better than a phone speaker fighting your headphones — see electronic drum modules explained.

If you keep reaching for the volume, fix the isolation instead. That reflex is the warning sign.

Wired, always. Bluetooth latency and playing in time do not mix.

The thing headphones cannot fix

Worth being explicit, because it disappoints people who expected headphones to solve apartment drumming entirely.

Headphones handle what you hear. They do nothing about what your neighbors hear, and on an electronic kit the thing that reaches them is not the pads — it is the kick and hi-hat pedals putting repeated impact into the floor, which travels through the building structure regardless of your headphones.

That needs an isolation mat under the whole rack, budgeted at the same time as the kit rather than after the first complaint. The full argument is in best instruments for an apartment, and the rest of the kit you need is in drum accessories you actually need.