Steven Slate Digital Trigger Platinum (Mac/Win, $299)

In most areas of music production, you''re likely to run into situations where you could really use a drum-replacement plug-in, whether you need to change the sound of a drum you recorded or just beef it up with some layered sounds. One of the handiest of all drum replacers is Steven Slate Digital''s Trigger Platinum. The cross-platform plug-in offers both accurate triggering and excellent quality sounds, both essential ingredients in this type of product. For the former, you get several adjustable parameters that allow you to tweak the triggering to be as accurate as possible for a given part. There''s even a Leakage Suppression control to help isolate a drum track with a lot of bleed.

As for the sounds, they were recorded at NRG Studios in North Hollywood and offer a range of ambience, from dry to heavily processed. Our reviewer, Michael Cooper, was quite impressed. “Trigger is one of the biggest upgrades to the drum sounds in my productions,” he said in the review. The plug-in also comes in an EX version ($129), which offers the Trigger plug-in with a smaller library.