Now having used it on several songs, there is no question that drum replacer is a nearly perfectly designed tool. Particularly impressive is it's ability to perfectly mark transients- even from a completed stereo mix of drums.
Then there is audio snap which is impossibly bad at marking transients- even when they are painfully obvious and unobstructed. I am always baffled by the places AS decides to place a transient maker.
Now, if I go through and manually correct them all, AS works well. It's a great tool, but it's not intuitive or efficient.
Rant: why can't AS be as good at finding transients as drum replacer?

Hear, hear! 
By the way, because I'm lazy, how do you load custom samples into the Drum Replacer interface? 

BlixYZ
Rant: why can't AS be as good at finding transients as drum replacer?

I think the short answer is because it's not optimized for finding only strongly percussive transients with a largely fixed timbre and pitch. AS can locate transients in recordings of polyphonic instruments with much slower attacks and more variable timbre and pitch - even multi-instrument mixes. The specialized nature of drum replacement allows the detection algorithm (and the filtering, which wouldn't work with polyphonic material) to be optimized for that purpose.
 
 

One thing that needs to be improved in DR is the ability to add or move where the transients are. You can remove a transient, but not move it or add another one.
 
Also, if you haven't tried melodyne for replacing drums, correcting drum timing, or other drum work. Give it a shot, it can also do some great work with drums.
 
gabo

gbowling
One thing that needs to be improved in DR is the ability to add or move where the transients are. You can remove a transient, but not move it or add another one.

You're right that you can't move them, which is something I'd like to see. But you can add new transients. There's a second lane underneath the first lane that shows user defined markers. Left click to set position, right click and hold/drag to set velocity.

I'd also like to have zoom controls in the DR view, for more precision. That's an odd omission I think. But I generally agree with the OP; one Cakewalk's most impressive efforts in UI design and ease of workflow. It really is excellent.

John T
But you can add new transients. There's a second lane underneath the first lane that shows user defined markers. Left click to set position, right click and hold/drag to set velocity.

Ah thanks for that, never realized you could do that on the 2nd lane.
 
gabo