I'm not willing to get into the modern vs classic recording debate.
There are new tools, and I'm curious about one of them.  I just want to know if anyone here has any experiences with it they'd like to share.  If you don't like Waves or Monster, start a thread!  :)

There's really no such thing as 100% phase alignment on multi-mic'd sources. Say you've got a drum kit with an XY overhead pair and some spot mics. In a typical setup, the snare transient will hit the snare mic before it hits the overheads, and bingo, you have non-alignment. You could decide to slide the snare to co-incide with the snare transients on the overheads, or vice versa, but then some other element will be non-aligned.
 
Better than thinking about "correct", IMO, is thinking about "good". You will have non-alignments, and some of them will create horrible cancellation, some of them will be unnoticeable, and occasionally, some of them will be kind of cool. And this stuff is all best solved with your mic placement, I reckon.

bitflipper
Actually, it's not a digression. It's relevant to the discussion. Of course you don't want to spend $100 unnecessarily, but Waves is going to do everything they can to convince you otherwise.
 
They are indeed very good at marketing.  The Apple analogy's not wrong, but I'd call them the Monster Cable of plugins: product quality is generally good, but there are plenty of less-expensive but functionally equivalent alternatives.
 
And although Waves has done away with the iLok requirement, they still employ an obtuse and fragile copy-protection scheme that's prone to failure. 
 
None of this negates your initial concern about the importance of phase alignment. Any time two or more microphones are picking up the same instrument, taking phase into account is essential to capturing a full sound. But there's more than one way to accomplish that.
 
Think about it: how did Andy Johns pull off some of the greatest rock 'n roll drum recordings of all time - without digital signal processing?

I use waves a lot, I have no problems with their license protection "scheme", in fact you can store your license on your computer, use iLok, or any usb dongle.  I find most of their plugs to do an outstanding job, maybe that's the reason they are used on so many Hit Records......

100%.  Unless you're mixing material you haven't recorded.