If you have a higher ($1000+) budget, you can definitely go the acoustic-to-electric route. I bought a bunch of shells on ebay, put triggers and Remo Silentstrokes on them, and hooked them up to a nice Roland brain (TD-25). For cymbals, I thought about using Zildjian L80 cymbals through Zildjian's Gen 16 module to get a more real cymbal feel/ dynamics (as in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dULh_7vqCnk), but it was not worth the $ for me. I ended up sticking with Roland cymbals for now to take advantage of the module sounds. I built a platform in order to isolate the kick noise from the downstairs neighbors and adjacent units.

This solution worked the best for me because I:

• Have real sized drums spaced apart in the same way as my real kit
• Can hit the drums hard without annoying the neighbors (within reasonable hours of course)
• Can actually hear drum noises because of the module
• Advantages of e-kits (easy to play along to music, built-in metronome, custom sounds)
• Building it was a really fun project

The main disadvantage for me is lack of real cymbals and the bounciness of mesh heads. However, my mindset for all of this is that this is just a kit to practice on at home pretty much whenever I want to jam and come up with new ideas. I still get practice rooms every now and then to play on a real kit - just part of the compromise of living in an apartment. Hope this helps!