The sound of my fingers hitting the pads is hard to tune out. There’s a limit to how loud I can turn up the speakers due to the neighbors, and I just get so distracted by the tapping sound. Anyone else struggle with this? Headphones are an idea, I suppose, but I like to save them for late night practice.
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Interesting, I completely ignore the sound of the pads but I find it really annoying when I watch my videos recording the live sound with my cellphone, but I used to hit the pads a lot harder because I was using an Arturia device and those pads have really awful sensitivity and you need to pound them really hard to play since I switched to an AKAI device with better and more sensitive pads I find myself using less force for playing therefore my tapping sound got quieter, could it be a solution?
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Yeah in my experience the really loud hits are mostly necessary on less sensitive controllers. I never turn my speakers up above say, 75db (to protect my ears as well), which is not a terrible volume if you practice during the day for say, an hour or so. I cannot imagine the neighbours getting mad at you for that.
In my experience living in an old apartment building the neighbours actually dislike the tapping (and the shaking of their ceiling because of it), even if I was wearing headphones! 
While I don’t really have a solution for this problem, I can say that hearing the acoustic sound you make also has benefits. I use it all the time to stay grounded. If it’s really distracting, I wonder if maybe the acoustic taps and the digital sounds are out of sync? If thats the case you’re suffering from some serious latency and that should be addressed for sure. Latency should not be audible when practicing timing and groove!
Let me know. Sorry for the late reply by the way… I’m dealing with some stuff at the moment. Hope to be back to replying every day soon!
Rob, sorry you have to deal with stuff. Take whatever time you need. You are precious to us! What you are teaching is the answer to a lifelong search, yes, a quest. And you are correct. I think my issue can be blamed on latency. I am working on the remedy.
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For the tapping noise the best thing to have is rubber, sorbothane to be specific. It’s rubber that can handle really shaky industrial things, so using at home you can expect amazing results.
I live in the third floor and have a digital piano and the vibration was annoying my neighbor, so I found this forum Using Sorbothane® to quiet down noisy keyboard thump - Piano World Piano & Digital Piano Forums
I’ve put sorbothane between the wood and support and no more problems.
Btw, I even have a friend that call me “Monk”, since I’m nuts with parasite noises 
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