Phase Alignment

I do this with my DAW without plug ins. I'll get the best sounds from my mics fairly individually and then track and make sure their POLARITY(not the same as phase..) is the same. Once I have the waveforms, I usually zoom in close and mark the crest of a wave during a hit on the overhead tracks. Most of the other mics will have a little bleed and you'll see the same hit, with the same general waveform shape on each drum track. I'll then nudge the rest of the drum tracks to line up to the overheads using the same crest of the same hit. Tada! Instant phase and polarity alignment for close mics. For the rooms, if I use them, I'll decide if the room sound is close or far sounding. If it's too close, you might have phasey sound. If that is the case, I'll observe a hit to make sure it is the correct POLARITY first, and then nudge it so that the crest of the hit lines up with the nearest crest on the overheads. If the room mic is "far", then I might let it stay how it is because the latency between the hit through the close mic and the hit through the room might be great enough not to have an effect. I'll still make sure the polarity is the same as the other drum tracks though.

JK,

Some reading:

Phase & Polarity: Causes And Effects

Seems authoritative.

Yep! Very helpful!

Minimal mics on drums are a great first step to phase coherency, and a true drum sound, the modern pop rock drum sound is due to die a deserved death IMO, i honestly believe most peeps have no idea what a real drum set sounds like?? I am obsessed with preserving phase from the get go, parallel compression, nudging, eqing, and any other processing has adverse phase effects, to different degrees, the more u do, the worse it gets, less is more in regard to phase accuracy, recording an entire band in one take, with minimal mics, sounds natural because it is very phase/time aligned, conversely, the synthetic smear of over everything modern music is an out of phase driven virtuality, and I personally can't stand that video game sound.
Basically what I'm saying is keeping it simple is the Best way to prevent the need to phase fix, and a natural sound. This plug seems like a convolution plug for the convoluted, but as always, ymmv

^I agree with a lot of this Chris, especially tuning, but I think the single largest factor in a great drum sound is how the drum is struck, thats the biggest diff between the men and the boys when it comes to drum sound IMO
That said, very few drummers know how to hit a drum and make it sing ime

I'd say that there are 3 main reasons for drum replacement.

1. Time. Getting drums to sound good is a tedious process. Many things go into this like head type/brand/model, in combination with the drum shell type/brand/model, in combination with the stick brand/type/model, etc etc. This doesn't even touch the differences in players or room. One lug being out of tune can ruin the sound of the whole drum. You can ruin a brand new head by tuning it badly the first time, etc. There are tons of things that take years of practice and learning to get right just so you can sit in the room for hours to make the drums sound good.. So long-term time and then short term time both have an effect. This can also cover the time in the studio too. Say you have a whole record to make but only a couple days to record.. You can cut time out by getting "decent enough" drum sounds knowing you'll supplement or replace later. It's the same as re-amping a guitar, which people do all the time without the complaining and fuss that somehow follows drum replacement around like a bad fart.

2. Ease. Sometimes it's just not worth the trouble. You know that the drummer in this band isn't going to cut it, but there isn't a budget for a session drummer. YES, I understand that whole "great drummer, great room, etc" but that's armchair engineer babble. In the real world, the majority of bands who record aren't world class players, they are just folks having fun. Not only is it impossible for them to pay someone else to play their parts, it's also humiliating and potentially deadly to the band, not to mention repeat studio customers! So, you do what you have to do to keep things rolling along. If the drummer isn't cutting it, then at least get him to play close to "in time" and either supplement or replace, or just figure out ways to fix the drums with tricks. Personally, I've never replaced a drum in my life once it was recorded. I'll find the most forgiving drum and tune it so that it's the most forgiving sound and then use mixing tricks to bring it to life.  As I've said before, it's the engineer's job to figure out how to make it sound good.

3. Matching professional records. Someone walks in and says "I want drums that sound like this" and hands you a song from the latest artist. It's obviously replaced drums, very clean, no bleed at all, everything sounds robotic and perfect. Guess what? If you don't deliver, that's an unhappy customer who probably won't come back because they'll find someone else who'll give them that sound. You better do it!

Cynical, I know, but it's reality, nostalgia be damned!

It really depends. I won't need to do for this gig, but on another with the same time schedule as this week I'd be very comfortable replacing stuff because we didn't have the luxury of working any other way. I generally make a note of distance between close mics and the overheads and use the 1 foot per millisecond rule to decide how much I need to delay a mic if the phasing is a problem.

I was doing a free jazz rehearsal a few days ago - so we had brush, baton and sticks on drums (Makes a huge difference with mic'ing imo), Bass, Electric Guitar with loads of crazy effects, 2 Vocalists, Alto Sax, Gong and a Laptop playing samples of explosions, marching, machine guns, conversations, machinery etc.

The room and monitor set up dictated that I use Ribbons in a Glyn John with the nulls pointed at the rest of the ensemble. Minimal bleed and then as close as I could get without losing the balance of the kit. Spot mics on every drum I could stick one on. 57 on snare, cheap SDC's on the toms and my Opus 99 on the kick.

In a solo situation I'd get my drum mics set up nicely and get the phase nice. But I barely got time to get a jist of the drum balance with my overheads, sit with the drummer and tune the ring out of the toms - then the drummer wanted to take the front skin of the kick but I noticed someone had done it to the (rental) kit before so I just tuned the front head to the rear and bang - and tweak close mics (literally about 2 tries a mic). He decided to tune the snare - great, I'll go get the Alto player set up. Straight back over, get the snare mic placement the way I had it. Stuck some duct tape and tissue on the kick cause the drummer and I were both complaining of how clicky the beater made the kick sound. DI the bass, mic up singers and the Gong (Omni mic up way close, all I had left). Get the monitors set up for vocals and the laptop audio. Boom, go. The guitarist was late for the first try so I had to get his sound and gains halfway through the next one as he played (SM58, the mic I didn't use on the gong).

Flying solo in location recording for a 40 minute improv piece, you simply don't have the luxury of taking your time. Everyone's ready now. You walk in with a plan and make the best adjustments you can within your time, you try not to paint yourself into a corner and try and avoid people flooding you with questions so you don't waste critical time talking before the work is done.

In regards to replacing, here's the deal. As mixing engineers our job is to turn a recording into what is the current standard being played to the masses. I'm not talking about specific niche genre's, these types of mixes I treat differently, and they usually spend an enormous amount of time getting things like drums and acoustic instruments to sound a certain way creatively. I take that into consideration and am less likely to do replacements. But when someone sends me a mix and says, I want this to hang on the radio and sound like "XXXXX XXXX" I will take a listen to that artist, and then get to work. If they are wanting the commercial sound 99.99% of the time I'll replace the kick, snare and toms. If the drums sound great to begin with I'll use more blend than replacing, if they are not good, sometimes it's almost entirely replacing. It's not that I just want to do this, but when I turn back on that reference mix and I hear the drums a certain way, I'll do whatever I have to do to make my drums get to that point. I will say that you can hear certain movement in the OH's and Rooms regarding ghost notes and subtleties. A lot of times compression can be your friend here if you're having to do a full on replacement, that will give back some movement, I tend to spend a lot of time getting my OH's and Rooms (if I use them or create my own) sounding organic.

Back to the phase alignment, svart's way of doing this is really intriguing and I'd never thought of doing it that way. I definitely want to give that a go on my next mix and see what comes out. I thought that post was very informative and clever. I like the detail about the polarity being the issue, not so much phase, great stuff svart!