Good afternoon,

I am helping a friend with a book project.  We're
trying to record the sound files.  He is displeased
with the sounds of the drum set.  I am using General Midi
for that.  Is there a drum-set sound set that can be
reasonably purchased to improve the quality of the
drum set sounds?  Any advice will be greatly appreciated. 

I have an I-Mac with VDL 2.5.1 and Sibelius 5.2
I use a Radium midiman keyboard, 61 keys.

We're in a bit of crunch time-wise.

Thank you,
Neal

Use Garage Band, and buy the rhythm section jampack if you don't find anything you like.  Some Universities have bigger discounts than the usual education discount too.  My school's bookstore has the jampacks for $40, or only $150 for Logic Studio which includes all of the jampacks.

Please forgive my ignorance, but do
I import Sib/VDL into Garage Band?
Import its sounds into Sib/VDL?
I really don't have time to learn how
to use Garage Band. 

Take care,
Neal

There are a couple ways:

1. Do everything in Sibelius, but when you export an AIF, mute the drumset.  Then export a MIDI file from Sibelius and drag it into Garage Band.  You can then use Garage Band sounds on only the drumset track.  Export and AIF of the drumet.  Now combine the VDL/Sibelius AIF and the Garage Band drumset AIF in Garage Band.  Add a little reverb and you'll have a good recording.

2. Write everything in Sibelius, but only export a MIDI file.  Use Garage Band for assigning both VDL instruments and GB instruments.  All of the VDL sounds and Kontakt Player are available in GB.  I wrote a tutorial on it in the Tips & Tricks section a long time ago.

Have you tried using the drumset patch from VDL? It's not recorded in the same ";studio"; manner as most GM drum kits, so you'll definitely hear more room/ambience in the sound, but it does seem to blend reasonably well with the other sounds from VDL. Since you're using a GM patch, as a quick test, you may try using the ";GM Kit"; from VDL so you don't have to remap all the drumset parts. That might give you a quick taste test as to whether or not this sound will be more to your friend's liking.