An alternative to an acoustic set of drums is an electronic drum kit, which can be used with headphones or amplified and has been growing in popularity over recent years.
Electronic drums are almost always sold as kits and in this case the kit will also include electronic cymbals and all the hardware you need.
Apart from reducing the sound level, electronic drums usually offer several other benefits. They often include metronomes and training materials in their electronic brain, they can easily connect to other electronic equipment such as iPods or computers providing access to many practice and rehearsal tools.
Electronic drum kits also have a number of different sounding drum kits on board their module or brain.
Cheaper versions can have up to 10 different sounding drum kits whilst intermediate and more professional models can have up to 100 different sounding kits to play with. Often the parameters of these sounds are also variable, thus allowing you to create your own sounds and personal kits.
On some of the intermediate to professional models you will find a huge variety of sounds including, traditional drum kits, latin and world percussion, orchestral percussion, sound effects and of course electronic sounding percussion which makes for a lot of fun.