The recordings are mainly done in stereo in a extremely professional studio with great acoustics, meaning you get the rooms wanted early reflections and the acoustic image with it.
Basics when you record drums for a production: You want to have a AB Stereo setup with Omni microphones that picks up the whole kit ~2 meters away and then you have mono microphones on Over & Under Snare, every Tom, Hihat and the Kick.
So in the Drum Kit you will receive both Stereo (2m away) and mono for the above mentioned parts. They’ll already be time-synced (Because else there would be a difference between mono and the stereo pair as it takes 6 milliseconds for sound to travel 2m). So then in your production you can mix in how much stereo sound on the Snare for example vs how much mono you want.
You will also receive multiple velocities for every instrument. For the Snares for example you will get five velocities. Meaning one hit is a softer hit than the other. Then of these five velocities you will get three different samples on the same velocity. As you probably understand, its many files and many possibilites. All of this is programmed and ready to run on the kontakt player. Then you receive the files, go in ur DAW, open up Kontakt (I use Kontakt 7) and load my multi file. Then everything will open, and you will be ready to play it on the piano roll or on your midi keyboard.
Rundown of what instruments the piano keys have.
Kicks: B0 and C1.
Snares: E1, D1, (Rimshot D#1) (Rimshot E2)
Toms: (10″ B1), (12″ A1), (14″ G1), (16″ F1″)
Hihat: Closed F#1, Semi-open G#1, Open A#1
Ride: C2
Ride Crash: F#2
Crash Left: G#2
Crash Right A#2
Ridley Music Production 