If only we lived in a world where every kick drum, snare and toms were tuned to perfection! Where rooms not only sounded good, but actually enhanced the sound of the instruments which occupied them. Not to mention having the perfect tools to capture such instruments from the microphone itself; to a quality lead, mic preamp, compressor, EQ and A Grade Conversion.

So when it comes time to record a band in your home studio and you want to utilise the best bits of equipment you can muster, what happens when you simply don't have enough quality gear to record every instrument within the band? And what if the band you are recording simply doesn't have good-sounding gear to record with in the first place? In times that have passed, this would have proved to be a serious dilemma however today's recording tools can serve up an entirely new method. Every audio producer says, "Get the sound right from the beginning" - and I for one agree with them - but, in some instances where time and gear get in the way, other techniques may be necessary.

Recording a drum kit is one of the hardest things to do in the studio. Does the following sound familiar?: You've just finished tracking all the drums and later returned to realise some parts of the kit don't sound as good as you had hoped!? Maybe you were tired during the session? Or maybe the rest of the band wouldn't stop making noise while you were busy checking that everything was in place. The actual performance from the drummer was fantastic but, in hindsight, you wished you had taken more time to get the microphone in the correct position, or even tried a different microphone altogether. You've tried all the EQ'ing and various processing tools your DAW has to offer, but none of this makes the drums sound as good as you had hoped! If one particular piece of the instrument doesn't sound right, replacing or "adding" to the sample could be the answer.

So what is 'replacing a sample', you ask? Well, the idea is to replace, or double, a below par sample with something of a much higher quality. Plugin's such as Drumagog, Soundreplacer and Logic Pro 9's Drum Replacer are some of many programmes that do just that: Replace drums! Whilst this seems to be a terrific and simple cure to all of your "below par' recordings, care and attention must be exercised when doing so.

In theory, replacing a kick or snare drum should be just that...only it's not. If you've ever listened to a soloed kick drum recording, you'll notice how different each individual hit is played. Obviously dynamics play a massive part in getting a "replaced" kick drum to sound "right". If each kick sounded exactly the same, the track would begin to sound lifeless and unnatural. In the programme of your choice, pay particular attention to the threshold or sensitivity control as this adjusts how hard the sample is to be triggered. Cross check the "sample" sounds to the original and try to match the dynamics to the original, recorded sound. Simple drum replacement programmes only vary the dynamics of one sample. This is not nearly as good as the more thorough programmes which actually change the sample for each level of dynamic trigger. This not only sounds better, but gives the drum recording a more organic sound. Some programmes also convert the original drum track into a MIDI file, which enables the engineer to completely adjust the dynamics and send midi signals to a vast array of devices.

One more thing to remember when using drum replacement programmes, is to make sure your DAW has delay compensation on as latency can become an issue. This is when the programme triggers a sample which isn't aligned with the original recording causing the sample to be out of time. Some replacement programmes have a Latency Compensation component and some don't.