transient designers

[joninc]

I have messed around with these a bit over the years to varying degrees of success but I still often feel like I don't really know where to put it in the chain on say a snare track or a kick that you want to add some snap orpunch to....

post compression and eq?

looking for some good tips / tricks and fave transient designer plugs... I have the softube and plugin alliance ones... maybe a izotope one as well...

[Theo_Karon]

A subtractive mindset can be more interesting with these, though it isn't most people's first intuition.

The knobs go both ways!

[digitaldrummer]

if I'm going for more snap on drums, I usually get that from a parallel compressor. Sometimes an 1176 can do it (med attack, short release), or the Distressor, but the SoundToys Devil-Loc is usually my go to there. I usually put the darkness around 3-3.5, crush around 4-5 and then crunch on 0.5 to 2 at most (it goes a long way). Mix at 100. then run kick and snare into it and adjust. sometimes it might need an EQ before to cut some low mids or even low-lows - just to tighten it up. depends on the drums.

I mentioned in another thread I have the free version of Flux Bittersweet and I've used it to do the opposite - take the edge or snap off of something -- usually an acoustic guitar or bass that has too much pick/string attack.

so while I do have the PA SPL Attacker Plus and maybe others...? I rarely use them.

[trodden]

I've used the SPL Transient Designer a few times. Usually when I didn't get a snare sounding like it should and eq'ing it just makes things worse. Same on toms a couple times. I can't remember where in the chain i had it, i likely moved it around from first to last and decided what sounded best. I found it to be a pretty helpful tool for those times I had to track a full band in a ridiculous short amount of time at a commercial studio, like "we can only afford one day of tracking", and I have to work quickly and didn't have a chance to make everything as perfect as I could. I know I can get sucked into a snare drum tuning black hole and sometimes there's no time for those black holes.

[Nick Sevilla]

I have messed around with these a bit over the years to varying degrees of success but I still often feel like I don't really know where to put it in the chain on say a snare track or a kick that you want to add some snap orpunch to....

post compression and eq?

looking for some good tips / tricks and fave transient designer plugs... I have the softube and plugin alliance ones... maybe a izotope one as well...

I always use a transient designer as the FIRST thing in the chain, to help a crappy recording sound better. Then, it can hit the compression / limiting as if it were a better recording, as well as the EQ.

Have you seen Eventide's new EQ and tonal shapers? They are quite good.

https://www.eventideaudio.com/plug-ins/#structural

[TapeOpLarry]

Don't be afraid to put a TD after a compressor on a kick drum and reduce or increase the sustain/hang of the kick's low fundamental if needed.

[Nevil-O-Bottom]

I totally get where you're coming from. Transient shaping can be a bit tricky sometimes. Personally, I like to use transient designers after compression and EQ. It gives me more control over the attack and sustain of the sound. As for plugins, the ones you mentioned are great choices.

[Rob Coates]

I got one once to see if it would help with removing or softening the ticky transients from a hard picked acoustic guitar. Maybe I didn't spend enough time but I couldn't get it to sound good for that purpose and sold it.

[vvv]

The only transient designer I dealt with wanted to stay a few weeks on my couch after getting glitter everywhere ...

[frans_13]

I use Sound Radix Drumleveler for this - it is much more than it looks like at first. You can use it as a compressor or as a gate. But the best thing IMHO is that you can manipulate the length of drum hits as you feel like, regardless of if its a loud or a soft hit. Or just take the transient of the hit and expand the tails a bit.
Hold = how long you want the transient to be
Recovery = a kind of decay/release dial
Gate Range = how much expansion you need

Sometimes i insert two instances after another. The first does levelling, the second envelope curve.