In its simplest form, WaveMachine Labs' Drumagog (Basic version, US$199; Pro vesion, $289; Platinum version, $379) is a sound-replacement utility. This means that you can record a drummer and then, in post-production, replace the sounds that you recorded.

The obvious question is why would you go through the trouble of recording a drummer only to replace the sound of the drums? There are plenty of reasons.

For instance, part of the magic of a song is the feel of the band playing. Capturing the way a band gels is not something can be easily duplicated in software. So, having that feel is important, but what if one of the drums is dead or out of tune? That's enough to ruin the entire sound.

With Drumagog, you can replace the sound of that one drum to bring everything back into line again. It can be that simple, but you can take it a lot further as well.