Today, I came across https://whisperdrums.com. They offer drumheads that supposedly feel and sound like acoustic heads but are 20 dB quieter. That sounds very promising. The company is based in Switzerland. While their products are not currently distributed in Germany, hopefully, they will be soon.

(from Playing Drums in an Apartment Building – E-Drums with a Great Playing Feel, May 4, 2026)

After contacting the manufacturer of the heads called Whisper Heads, I was directed to ageancymbals.de. Although the heads weren’t listed in their online shop at the time, making a direct inquiry paid off. Some time after my initial contact, Ralf from Agean Cymbals got in touch to let me know the heads were in stock.

The original text of this post was created by my human intelligence in German. The translation was a collaboration between man and machine. The man was I and the machine was Google Translate.

First Impression

It must have been late July when I drove to Agean Cymbals to test the Whisper Heads. My first impression was immediately very positive. In terms of volume, the name doesn’t quite live up to the promise. They aren’t exactly whisper-quiet. However, you can stand next to the drum kit without immediately fearing hearing damage *Caution: Layman's opinion!. The only downside is the price. They cost roughly 3x as much as standard drumheads. Since I was at a shop called Agean Cymbals, the kit fitted with the Whisper Heads naturally featured high-quality low-volume cymbals from the same brand. They sounded significantly better than the low-volume cymbals I knew from other manufacturers (Millenium, Zildjian, Meinl, etc.) or from music school. They are more expensive, though. And, of course, I couldn’t resist picking up a set of these cymbals from the Low Volume Dark series. In any case, I thought the shop was fantastic. For the first time at least as far as I can recall, I left a Google review for a shop. It’s something I should probably do more often in the future to support local businesses. Provided they perform. I play my low-volume drum kit almost every day and am very happy with it, as the playing feel is that of an acoustic kit. I haven’t noticed any excessive wear and tear, which was a concern raised by a few people I spoke to beforehand. The drums have a heavily dampened sound with very little sustain. Especially with a small bass drum, this can result in hearing almost nothing but the attack. With my 22" bass drum it is not as bad as with the below 20" model in the shop. I made a quick, unprocessed demo recording using just one microphone (AT2020) placed 50 cm in front of the kit.


You can find much better recordings on YouTube—for example, this one by Ralf.

Volume

Regarding volume, I wasn’t able to take precise measurements since I didn’t have a proper measuring device. I did try using uncalibrated smartphone apps, but those are useful only for relative comparisons at best. Further, I usually use particularly light drumsticks, which noticeably contributed to reducing the volume.

A few volume comparisons:

  • My Pearl eMerge e-drum kit is relatively loud for an electronic kit, but significantly quieter than the low-volume kit. In contrast, the physical sounds of the electronic drum kit often consist of the annoying clacking of plastic cymbals, whereas my family much prefers the sound of acoustic drums and cymbals; if they have to hear anything at all.
  • The low-volume kit is significantly quieter than the acoustic kit we use in our rehearsal room. The 15–20 dB volume reduction provided by the Whisper Heads — a figure I picked up from the manufacturer and retailer — seems realistic to me.
  • I still own the nylon-string acoustic guitar mentioned in {{ title “starting-drums” }}. When playing an open E-major chord strumming all the strings vigorously but within reasonable limits the volume is comparable to playing the low-volume kit at a normal level. By normal level, I mean not trying to hit the crash cymbal at maximum volume. So, you could likely play along quite well at an acoustic gig.
  • The Agean cymbals are louder than the drums fitted with Whisper Heads. The snare with the Whisper Head is audibly louder than the Sabian 14" Snare Drum Pad Classic or a snare with a standard head and an Evans SO-14 Tom Sound Off damper.
  • You can also shave off a few more decibels by removing the snare wires.

Btw., I am aware the dB live on a logarithmic scale.

Conclusion

You can certainly play quite loudly with a low-volume set. Electronic drums are usually much quieter. However, if playing feel is a higher priority than volume, the low-volume set is definitely a noteworthy point on the Pareto front *These represent optimal compromises. In other words, a drum set that is dominated by another drum set in both, silence and playing feel, would not be a Pareto point. Sorry. I’m a mathematician. of the compromises between volume and playing feel.