So many choices!

Well so far the shaack audio seems to be the best I've demoed. I will have to try out Voxengo though.

Is there a way to demo Mattertone & Grasso?

Just bought Grasso...Wonderful plugin! does it have presets??? couldn't find them

I just went through a couple of weeks of comparing a half dozen or so different transient designers, including many of those already mentioned, and my favorites were:

- Sonnox TransMod (expensive)
- Waves TransX (cheap)
- Flux BitterSweet II (free)

I ended up going with the Sonnox, even though it was among the most expensive, because I felt like it had the most usable range of all of them and seemed to work very well on a very wide range of material. But, Waves TransX was a close second, includes both single- and multi-band versions, and is pretty cheap at $64 (even cheaper at Waves Universe).

The spl transient designer is significantly different to sonnox.

The built in enveloper in Logic is a nice basic transient shaper, but sknote Grasso is just wonderful. i highly recommend it!

I gotta say Grasso is my favorate tube emulation/ transiant shaper/ basic eq

So it's a little different, in what way does it differ from a normal transient designer?

Quite impressed with Transient Monster from Stillwell so far.

well for one thing its a tube saturation plugin kinda like wave arts tube but a much less proses intensive and very smooth sounding but can still be made to sound like a old peace of shit tube Personally I like grasso better than the wave arts one but that thing was pretty impressive when i first demoed it.
Also it has a sort of compression thing on it, the control of the transient shaping part can work on ether the whole transient of just the main attack or the release(ask quinto im not 100% how it works) but basically you can make a kick have massive snap or make it sound like a crazy weird reverb. The eq's on the plugin are two eq peak filters I think and they are very smooth almost dynamic eq sounding.(again ask quinto) they can ether be on the whole signal or the attack or the release. It sounds like a odd thing to have but it comes in handy when controlling the exact character of whatever you want to do. Also you have more than one saturation you have 2 tube drives and 2 tube saturation modes. I love both B drive and B saturation it has a warmer smoother sound to me. but A has a nice rich bite that makes thing sound more aggressive and works nice with guitars.

Yes I was listening to the demos, it does look really good. I might just go for that. If It doesn't do what I need I might go for transient monster, I am quite pleased with that. I can't demo the waves plug-in again I don't think because the demo's expired, but I don't remember it doing what I wanted. I can't believe how expensive the SPL is now, I should have grabbed it ages ago.

I know how you feel I wanted to grab that a while back but the price increase kinda turns me off since I dont really need one that much. especially now with all of these great products for way cheaper. If you are just looking for something basic I heard the still well one is really good for just a transient shaping plugin but if you want alot of in depth stuff to really treat it I would say go for grasso or mattertone when it comes out that is going to be a great one. I never tried sonnox one but its supposed to be really good to

i'd love something in reason.

Anyway i have used everything and i am not kidding the best BY FAR and i mean no equal is logic's enveloper.. it's like the spl on steroids.

That said, for third party, the spl has the best overall "sound".

It is punchy and behaves in a way your ears automatically would think it would. Watch your dynamics with sharp attacks and your levels, with any transient shaper.

Now when we're all here discussing transient designers, I must say something I have noticed when teaching studio-stuff to people. People usually tend to just ADD attack with their transient designers... Let's discuss this a bit, without detailing the topic.

I must say I use e built in logic enveloper often to REMOVE attack, to push certain elements to the back in the mix. Like sometimes the drums sit too forward in a mix, competing with the vocals, or overly sharp guitars, remove some transient attack and voilá, without reducing volume, the competing instrument moves back in the mix depthwise.

of course... i often use it to soften a bass with a really bad click for example.. you do this by lowering attack.

Works 10x faster than finding the correct compression setting, and that said not many software compressors have a fast enough attack to truly deal with ugly clicks.

(blue cat, omnipressor do, for example.. amongst dozens i tested those two were the best)

Not sure if the OP has already purchased one or not, or if this would fall into the "cheap" category, but I just got a Guitar Center flier that is advertising the Sonnox TransMod (download version) at $139 after a $40 instant rebate. However, I don't see any mention of the rebate on the Guitar Center website. I just paid near full price from a different retailer a few weeks ago.