This month, John Q. Walker will channel the ghost of pianist Glenn Gould in a Toronto recording studio.

It won't be the work of magic, but rather, the result of four years of software development by Walker and his team at Zenph Studios, a Raleigh startup.

Zenph has developed computer software that can exactly replicate records on a sophisticated player piano and preserve them with the latest technology -- without the original crackles, coughs or other recording flaws.

The idea is something Walker has been dreaming about since the mid-1980s. Now Zenph's software and services are finding a market. In April, the seven-employee company signed a deal with Sony BMG to bring 18 jazz and classical albums back to life.

"We're able to take these old recordings, something even in mono, and make a new recording of the same performance ... in surround-sound so it sounds great in a home theater," said Walker, Zenph's co-founder and president. "This has never been done before in history."

Zenph's software grabs musical sounds and figures out how they were made. The programs go beyond individual notes, into the idiosyncrasies that define a performance and musician's style.

The Gould album, planned for a February release, is Zenph's first with Sony BMG. The second is "Piano Starts Here," by jazz pianist Art Tatum. The third album will have Sergei Rachmaninoff playing his own compositions. Zenph receives recording fees and royalties for each album.

Zenph and Sony BMG picked Gould, who has a cultlike following around the world, precisely because he is so popular.

Gould's 1955 performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations is one of the best-selling classical recordings, Walker said. That means listeners will know what it's supposed to sound like, and Zenph won't have to prove its accuracy.

Reproducing the artist's performance also is a bit of a risk. Purists might object to a high-tech re-recording of his work.

But Walker and Zenph have won over many of Gould's friends, family and colleagues. They will make the recording on the pianist's birthday, Sept. 25, at Glenn Gould Studios in Toronto. Gould died in 1982. "I think most people are probably skeptical until they hear it," Walker said. "We've preserved every single note, every mistake. The improvements are all related to the sound quality."

Zenph's performance is like hearing the record for the first time, said Malcolm Lester, managing director of the Glenn Gould Foundation. "It's a bit eerie because you see the piano keys going up and down as if someone's playing them," he said.

The piano was the first instrument to be technologically advanced enough to exactly reproduce earlier performances, and that's where most of Zenph's attention has focused. On the horizon are trumpet-playing robots, as well as robotic guitars, saxophones and drum kits, Walker said. The company plans to work through the available instruments one by one, eventually putting together an electronic jazz ensemble.

But the technology's applications go beyond classical and jazz. Hip-hop artists like to sample older music in their work, but often can't find high-quality recordings, Walker said. He has talked with Kanye West's producer about reproducing recordings.

He envisions Zenph's software as a fixture in recording studios. Not only can it reproduce recordings, but it also fixes mistakes.

"Someone can come in with limited time, do their piano track on an out-of-tune piano and miss some notes," Walker said. "Producers can come back and make it how they wish it would be."

Zenph is building a following among artists, including a New York doctor who hired the company to write a score from a 107-second concert improvisation.

Richard Howard, a biology professor in Amarillo, Texas, contacted Walker to resurrect an obsolete file of original compositions. He recorded the music just after his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease in 1995, but before he could get it produced, it was lost for a decade. With Zenph's help, "Prairie Visions" is in production by record label MSR Classics.

"The recording is sublime," Howard said. "I sat down and wept when I heard it."